Now what?  After the workshop

Now that you’ve had a first exposure to swimming with more efficiency, it’s probably likely that you may experience, "it’s just not working like it was on Saturday" syndrome.

To address that dilemma, here’s a short fix list:

1. Feeling drag and less flow through the water.

Check balance–two pretty common things that lead to uphill swimming are:

a)      Head position: Exaggerate–be obnoxious about how far you lower the forehead.  I sometimes purposefully go too far and then back off a bit.

b)     Arm position: If the hand/fingers point up, the arm will skate upwards, taking the chest up too.  Also, recall that overreaching and pushing down at full arm extension causes an ‘opposite and equal reaction’ of lifting the chest.

c)      Core engagement  and wider arm are icing on the cake.

1. Lack of power–no momentum generated with each spear of the hand forward.

a)      This is almost always a timing issue.  Throwing the arm with extra force

won’t substitute if the hips are not leading the rotation. Old habits lead folks to throwing the arms hard as a solution, albeit ineffective. A kinetic chain of  energy unwinds, flowing from the simple down-snap of the kick, ascending through the hips, then shoulders and finally the fingertips reaching 1 inch farther.

Remember that it takes time for the hips to roll sufficiently in preparation for the ‘unwinding’ of the coil.  Take all the time that’s necessary to get the hip (belly button) in place to be released.

Provided that you’re balanced, with the arm extended onto the rail at target depth, you’ll sail through the water while maintaining your velocity.  No need to rush another stroke; enjoy the glide. Challenge yourself to get there in a stroke or two less, thus allowing, if not forcing time to prepare.

What happens between strokes is more critical than the strokes themselves!!!  That’s why we spent so much time on Friday evening attending to body positioning issues. Glide long while holding a clean, tight line.

1. Can’t breathe; disconnecting from the surface (and air)– two common ways.

a)      Driving the energy of the spearing arm at too steep an angle will cause you to follow your arm downwards away from the surface and the subsequent breath attempt.  Spearing uphill puts the body uphill, taking the chin downward more than it would be if you were balanced level.

b)     Breathing late–not following the shoulder with the chin–allows the overhanging arm to push your body downwards away from the surface.

Both are usually, unfortunately, accompanied by a push down of the lead arm.  Laying the back of my head against the leading arm as the chin follows the other shoulder has helped me keep the laser beam down when breathing.

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