The video presentation is embedded on my blog here:  http://www.tribasetraining.com/main/top-3-freestyle-swim-tips

The post My Top 3 Freestyle Swim Tips appeared first on Total Immersion.

Unfortunately, this also works the other way. Every lack of discipline (or bad habit essentially) affects the rest of your habits and disciplines and will alter your performance in a negative way.

Let’s look at some examples of how this may look in different areas of your health and fitness. I am going to just give you two examples and I have purposefully made these fairly far apart in their analogies so you can see how wide this is. We will start with how you can see this principle in your nutrition/diet and then depart from that concept a bit and apply it to the physical act of swimming. I could do this for any area of life as Mr. Rohn does but this blog is about triathlon, swimming, fitness, nutrition, and health in general so let’s keep it somewhat inside the box (the philosophical nature of this post is far enough outside my box as it is…). I don’t pretend to be a business philosopher or motivational speaker like Jim Rohn or Brian Tracy or anything like that…these are just my personal musings on these subjects and I thought I would share them with you.

See the rest of this blog HERE

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There is simply no reason to do this with the technology and solutions that are available to you today as a swimmer (or aspiring swimmer). 99% of people have nothing more than the “common cold” or an “ear infection” when it comes to swimming problems. In swimming talk, I would relate the common cold to simple balance and streamlining problems. The problem is likely not that you aren’t strong enough in the upper body (which of course can be fixed as well in most cases), the problem is not that you just “sink like a rock” and there is nothing you can do about it, the problem is likely not that you are just too out of shape, and the problem is most likely not chronic and irreparable. Very few people have “swimming cancer” that cannot be remedied with the simple, holistic drugs known as balance and streamlining and a healthy dose of mindful practice. All you really need is a proper diagnosis, corrective actions, and practice.

The best part is that there are some easy options out there for getting the proper diagnosis, the proper corrective actions, and the practice methods. Here are my favorites:

1) Take a weekend workshop or get private instruction with a Total Immersion swim coach. Admittedly, this is probably your most expensive option but it is also likely your quickest way to improvement. If you are in my area, you can see my private instruction info HERE. Also, I am holding a weekend workshop at the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center at the end of June and will likely hold more there. See the details HERE

NOTE: I will admit that there are good swim coaches out there that are NOT Total Immersion coaches (I know a few in my area), but there are a lot of bad ones as well (like the one that told one of my clients that they just didn’t have enough upper body strength to swim faster and they needed to go to the gym more). So, I will keep my suggestion to Total Immersion coaches and workshops because at least there is a set standard there that I can recommend wholesale.

2) Get the Total Immersion videos and use them to diagnose your issues. This is less expensive but it is also more difficult because you may not have the experience to know if you are doing it right. You can help yourself with some of that by doing the videos with a swim buddy and watching each other swim and practice and comparing to the videos.

3) Film yourself and send it to a Total Immersion coach or post it on the Total Immersion forums. With the latest underwater video cameras costing less than $100, it is pretty feasible for just about anyone to take an underwater video and have it analyzed by a coach. Contact me by email (ryan@tribasetraining.com) if you want to arrange to have your video analyzed.

Please don’t give up on swimming or settle for poor swimming when your condition is completely correctable.

The post Don’t Give Up Swimming – Go See a Swim Doctor appeared first on Total Immersion.

The videos embedded on the post don’t seem to be working so please continue reading this blog on my site HERE

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It is not terribly uncommon to see a swimmer’s speed increase year to year as they train. Everyone hits points where they feel like they aren’t getting any faster and some do stay stagnant for a quite some time and don’t get faster, but in general a good portion of those that train on a regular basis do get a bit faster. Especially in the first few years of swim training where there is a great deal of improvement to be had. As form and experience increase, it gets more and more difficult to get faster but some still see minor increases year to year.

The one thing that IS uncommon though is for a swimmer to be able to tell you exactly how they got faster if they do indeed succeed at getting faster. Do you know what variable in the speed equation you changed to make you faster? Do you know how you changed it?

I have talked about the simple swim speed equation in other blog posts in the past and Terry Laughlin has talked about it extensively on his blog and on the Total Immersion site but I am going to go right back to it for a minute here.

Swimming Speed = stroke rate (time per stroke) x stroke length (strokes per unit of distance)

For example, if you swim at a stroke rate of 1.00 sec/stroke and take 17 strokes, it will take you 17 seconds. Add in the distance you covered and you get a swim speed in sec/yd or whatever units you use.

So, basically, we have an equation with three variables. The equation is not a complex one and it is easy to solve for any of the variables if you know the other two. The problem is that most swimmers only measure one of the variables and the one they usually choose to measure is speed. Just about any swimmer measures how long it takes them to complete 50 yds, 100 yds, 200 yds, 500 yds, 1000 yds, 1.2 miles, or whatever the distance is that they are swimming that day or in that interval. So, they know how fast they swam those distances a month ago and they know how fast they swam them today. If it was faster today than a month ago then that is considered a win. Understandable, right? Sure.

However, from the equation, there are two variables that you can change to affect your speed. Do you know which one you changed to swim faster today than you did last month? Did you stroke at a faster rate but at the same stroke length or did you increase your stroke length at the same stroke rate? Maybe it was some combination of the two. If you don’t know what changed to make you faster, how do you know what to work on to continue to improve?

These are extremely important questions if you want to improve your swimming in the most efficient way. For instance, let’s say that all of your training over the last month has been sprint interval sets and it has really taught you how to increase your turnover rate. Awesome…so now you are stroking faster and swimming faster (not always the case if you lose grip at the same time but let’s assume for now that it is true). At some point, you won’t be able to continue to stroke faster and faster and see speed improvements…there will be a point when your faster stroke rate will just become an energy wasting churning of the water because the rate is too fast to hold proper form. This doesn’t mean that you can’t still get faster though. You can still change the other variable…stroke length. Having a longer stroke at the same stroke rate makes you a faster swimmer too! Unfortunately, the purpose of this blog post is not to explain the details of how to train for a longer stroke or a faster stroke…that is a whole different post or maybe a series.

OK, so with all that said, let me see if I can get to the point of this blog post.

Q: What can you do to make sure you know how/why you got faster (or why you didn’t) in your swim training?

A: MAKE SURE YOU MEASURE AND RECORD 2 OF THE THREE VARIABLES IN YOUR MAIN SETS INSTEAD OF JUST 1.

  The cheapest and lowest tech way to do this is to simply add stroke counting into your swimming on a regular basis. If you time your swims (which you are likely already doing) and you take an average stroke count for either one length or one lap of the pool, you have two of the variables in the equation. A great way to do this is to keep “swim golf” scores during some of your swims. A swim golf score is the sum of the number of seconds it takes to swim a lap and the number of strokes taken. For example, my golf score today hovered around 69 (30 total strokes, and 39 seconds in a 50 yd lap). With this simple game, you can see what happens to your score as you increase or decrease your pace. If you swim faster and take the same number of strokes as before, your stroke rate went up while stroke length stayed the same. If your strokes go down, then you increased stroke length and so on. You can focus on various elements of your stroke while playing swim golf and see how they affect your score and see what improves your swimming the most.

A more high tech and precise way of measuring a second variable is to invest in a Tempo Trainer. Tempo Trainers can be set at a very wide range of stroke rates (in sec/stroke) and will give you a nice beep for every stroke to keep you on tempo. With a tempo trainer on, your stroke rate is constant and takes the possibility of increasing or decreasing your stroke rate as you fatigue or lose focus almost completely out of the picture (obviously, you could ignore the beeps if you wanted to). You can read about my progress from last season with a Tempo Trainer here.

As an example, last year, I swam my half ironman at a tempo of 1.05 sec/stroke on the tempo trainer. I trained in the pool this way and in 300 yd timed swims before my race, I was swimming 4:20ish at a tempo of 1.05. Today, I swam a 300 yd timed swim at the end of my workout with the tempo trainer set at 1.05 and finished in 4:07. From this data, I know that I am now able to cover more distance per stroke at that tempo than I was able to cover last year. This makes sense because most of my training this year so far has been working on increasing my stroke length with very little high intensity interval work or stroke rate work. If I had done these timed swims without a tempo trainer or at least counting strokes, I would have no idea if I had increased tempo, increased stroke length, or some of each. Now, with that data in hand, I can focus on being able to move that same stroke length into a slightly faster tempo using the tempo trainer. I should see some speed gains there as well.

If you want more info on how to swim with a tempo trainer, there is a ton of info in the “favorite practices and sets” section of the Total Immersion forums or you can contact me via email at ryan@tribasetraining.com Happy Swimming!

The post So, you are swimming faster than before…but do you know why? appeared first on Total Immersion.

• The battery is not replaceable. So, when it dies there is nothing you can do but buy another one.
• It only displays in sec/stroke so it doesn’t work well for running or biking where you want strides or cycles per minute (yes, I realize you can do the math and still use sec/stroke…90 strides/min = 0.66 sec/stroke…but that is a pain).
• It doesn’t float. So, if you swim open water with it and drop it…it is probably gone forever.

Tempo Trainer Pro

Enter the Finis Tempo Trainer Pro. With the release of the new Tempo Trainer Pro, Finis has fixed every one of the issues I had and added a little more even. It was almost as if they had my house bugged and listened to me complain about the older version (obviously, I wasn’t the only one that had suggestions…I don’t have that kind of power). So, here is what the new version has:

• A replaceable battery! Yes!!!!
• 3 different display modes – Mode 1: Sec/stroke just like the old tempo trainer – Mode 2: Triple beep from 1 sec to 9:59 – Mode 3: Strokes or strides or cycles / minute
• It floats!
• Synch button: Just hit the synch button any time to restart the mode. So, if you are using mode 2 and you want to start your next interval early (or late), just hit the synch button when you are ready to go and it starts a new set. This will also help a coach synch the tempo trainer to a swimmer as they swim their natural pace.

So, let’s talk about each of the modes individually and what you can use them for.

Mode 1

This is the same as the old tempo trainer so I am just going to refer you to my other blog post where I talk about my progress with the tempo trainer in the pool. CLICK HERE. Basically, this will still be the primary use mode for swimming since the tempo is adjustable in 1/100th of a second and it makes the most sense for stroke length and tempo work in the pool.

Mode 2

This is a completely new mode and offers some interesting versatility to the tempo trainer. As an example, if your coach gives you a set like 10 x 100 @ 1:50, you could set the tempo trainer pro to mode 2 and 1:50. Hit the synch button when you are ready to go and swim your 100. Now, for example, if you finish your 100 in 1:30, you would have :20 to rest and you would go on the next triple beep. No more watching the clock or doing math to see when it is time to go again. As another example, you could set the tempo trainer pro in mode 2 and set it for 5:00 and do a "T5". In other words, you would swim as many yards as possible in 5:00 and stop and record distance when you hear the triple beep. The old tempo trainer did not have this capacity at all.

Mode 3

To me, this is actually the best part of the new tempo trainer pro. In running, it is a widely accepted principal that a stride rate of about 180 steps/min is an efficient stride rate (that is counting every foot strike…you may have heard this as 90 strides/min when counting every right foot or every left foot as in ChiRunning…same thing). In cycling, 90 rpm is fairly widely accepted as an efficient rate. I have heard as low as 80 rpm and as high as 100 rpm from different coaches and sources but 90 is pretty close to what most teach to be the cycling cadence to aim for. On the bike, it is usually pretty easy to know your cadence by just buying a cycling computer that gives cadence. However, running is not as easy. Some GPS units and footpod units will tell stride rate but it is not as common for runners to have these tools (or use them for that purpose) as it is for a cyclist to have a computer with cadence. Now, with the new tempo trainer pro, you can set your stride rate in mode 3 and go for a run and hit your perfect cadence for the whole run. As I said above, yes you can take the old tempo trainer and convert the sec/stroke number to do the strides/min you want, but that is a pain in the butt. I know what you are thinking…isn’t that thing annoying just beeping in your ear during your whole run? Well, I suppose it can be but it doesn’t bother me at all and you don’t have to have it next to your ear or even on the whole time. I clip it to my waistband so it is a little more of a faint beep and you can always just use it to check your cadence at different points during the run. Also, you don’t have to use it at 180 beeps/min. I actually run with mine on what they call a "waltz beat". So, I set my tempo trainer at 60 beeps/min so that it beeps on every third step (right (beep), left, right, left (beep), right, left, right (beep)). You could also do 90 beeps per minute so that it beeps on every right foot or left foot strike. However, I find that it causes an overemphasis on landing on one side and can cause some problems in your stride. I recommend either 180 bpm or 60 bpm (waltz beat). I must say, after my first weekend of running with this tempo trainer, I am even more sold on the idea of training with a tempo trainer. It was already my #1 swim training tool and now it goes hand in hand with my Newton Running shoes as one of my top running tools as well. Want to get a tempo trainer pro at a 10% discount? CLICK HERE

 THIS BLOG IS ALSO AVAILABLE ON MY PERSONAL SITE HERE

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 I just posted the story of a triathlon client of mine on my other blog (see the link below to the entire post).

Brian Whelan was diagnosed with MS in 2004 but has always had the dream of completing an Ironman.  He made his first attempt at Cozumel in late 2010.  He barely made the swim cutoff (cutoff is 2:20 and he finished around 2:16).  Because of the energy he expended on the swim, he was out of gas at mile 75 on the bike and couldn’t make the cutoff for the bike. 

Following his DNF at Cozumel, Brian came to me to train him for Coeur d’Alene 2011.  Using Total Immersion, Brian swam Ironman CDA in about 1:48 and felt amazing following the swim because of the energy savings.  He completed Ironman CDA and became an Ironman despite many other setbacks as well. 

He is a true Ironman and you can read his entire race report here:

The Story of a True Ironman

The post The Story of a True Ironman (saved by Total Immersion) appeared first on Total Immersion.

First, let’s talk about why you would want to use a tempo trainer:

The most common goal for any swimmer is to swim faster. While I will admit that there may be some out there simply looking to swim with less effort or more comfort, in the end it all comes down to moving through the water with the most velocity possible at a given level of effort or exertion. Forgive me if there are those that don’t look for that but I think that should cover most, if not all, of the people reading this blog.

With that in mind, we should look at what elements make up the speed equation. In it’s most basic form:

Swimming Speed = stroke rate x stroke length.

In other words, it is simply a matter of how fast you move your arms multiplied by much distance you cover on each stroke. Seems simple enough, right? The problem is that most people overlook the stroke length piece of the equation. It is very easy (instinctive even) to move your arms faster when you want to swim faster, but if the result is a faster stroke rate but a shorter stroke length, you may not end up being much faster (if at all). Terry has written fairly extensively about our instinct in water compared to our instinct on land as terrestrial mammals (see some of that here), so I don’t want to go into detail here as this is just a little introduction and not an extensive lesson in stroke rate, stroke length, and land vs. water instincts (I am not the expert).

So, with that in mind, the tempo trainer is a tool that you can use to measure and become more aware of how stroke rate and stroke length interact and translate into speed at different distances and tempos. If you don’t know anything about tempo trainers, let me just give you a quick overview. The tempo trainer (pictured below) is simply a device that beeps at different tempos. The ones that most swimmers use are made by Finis and are adjustable to different tempos measured in seconds/stroke (or more exactly seconds/beep). You can buy tempo trainers right here on the Total Immersion webiste in the store section or here on my site.

OK, enough introduction on theory of why you should use a tempo trainer and what a tempo trainer is. If you want to get more in depth on that, take a look at Terry’s series on swimming faster here and take a look at Dave Cameron’s website as well.

My tempo trainer training over the past few months:

SEE THE REST OF THIS BLOG BY CLICKING HERE

The post My Tempo Trainer Swim Progress appeared first on Total Immersion.

Anyway, let’s talk about how using your hips properly in swimming, biking, and running can increase your performance. Now, it could be that you already use your hips correctly in some, if not all, of these three disciplines. But, chances are that you could at least use a little reminder of how to use your hips for power and posture, and many of you could probably use a little "hip 101". I won’t try to fool you into believing that I am the expert on this subject but I will give you what I have learned thus far and point you in the direction of some good resources that will show you what I am talking about.

Before I get started, I have to give some credit to my Dad for this post. I got the idea for this post while he and I were wakeboarding in Kauai in September of (2010). He tricked me by taking lessons in Florida before we went to Kauai and ended up smoking me out there on the water (what a cheater). The one piece of advice that he kept giving me was to push my hips out so that I wasn’t bent over at the waist…at the time, I didn’t realize that he was relaying advice that he got from the professional wakeboarder that he took lessons from in Florida (again I say, what a cheater!). However, when I did that, my muscles weren’t as tired, I had better control over where I was going, and I was more stable. My thoughts immediately went to my swim coaching with Total Immersion where I had learned about the importance of the hips in developing the freestyle swim stroke. As I began to think about it more, I realized that each sport in triathlon actually had quite a bit to do with how you use your hips (mostly about positioning them properly so that you can engage core muscles in the most effective manner). Not only that, but almost every sport or activity seems to be about how you use your hips. Just do a google search on swinging a bat or a golf club and see how much info you get about using your hips.

 read the rest here

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So, this morning while on the scale (which I use way too often), I was disappointed with the number that was shown on the digital readout. I really shouldn’t be surprised with the number given the way I have let my nutrition slip over the past few weeks leading up to the holidays. As some of you may know, I have been doing Insanity over the past 8 weeks and have been working very hard on my workouts. For the first 4 or 5 weeks of the program, I also worked very hard on my nutrition and dropped a few pounds, but over the last few weeks I have become more relaxed in my daily nutrition and the results have been as one would expect (no weight loss and even a pound or two creeping back in). However, even though I started out disappointed with the number, I did something that I always try to remember to do when I become disappointed with my fitness results or the number on the scale (which is not the best measure of your fitness anyway): I took a step back and reviewed my last few years of fitness and remembered my victories and then I made new goals for moving forward.

Click here to go to my website and read the rest of this post.

Ryan Chapman

B.A.S.E. Training

www.tribasetraining.com

ryan@tribasetraining.com

The post Looking Back and Moving Forward appeared first on Total Immersion.