Hooray we have reached the half way point. Week 7 is all about recovery.

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I took some of the guesswork out of this for you by grabbing some screenshots of a recent open water swimming video posted on YouTube by Chris Leito. The clarity of the water in Kona provides a fantastic opportunity to study the strokes of those who have worked hard to get to Kona in October.

Watch this sequence of still shots where you can clearly see a few of the same excellent swimming techniques that we teach in Total Immersion swimming programs. These fundamentals are key…if you can get a video of yourself or a partner to watch you, see if you can match these three swimming ‘checkpoints’. Can you get a ‘stroke score’ of three out of three?

Stay Long on Wide Tracks

In this still shot you can see several things going on, the most important being that his lead arm remains on a wide track, and waits there while he ‘cultivates’ his grip on the water. In the side view at nearly the same point in the stroke, you can see his palm ‘searching’ for a solid feel, and waiting until the momentum of moving forward creates solid leverage in his stroke.

Side view at same moment in the stroke. Visualize the lead arm still remaining on a wide track here as shown above.

You can finish reading the rest of this post over on my blog at Steel City Endurance…

The post Chris Lieto’s Triathlon Swimming Technique Analysis appeared first on Total Immersion.

12×25 DPS.  How low can you get?

12 x 50. Pause completely sideways for 5 seconds after each stroke. Use a pullbouy for this

(600 of various fist drills)

12 x 25 DPS.  Pull hard, see how low you can go.

I think this coach has good intentions in helping the swimmer find  a long stroke.  But the main thrust of the set is to see how low you can get, with little guidance of how to do so aside from pulling hard, gliding for 5 seconds and using a pull bouy. Again, I htink the intentions are good…encouraging a horizontal body position (Balance), but this set uses an aid to do so…how well do you think that will translate when the swimmer goes back to full stroke? Another recommnedation…"Pull Hard".  This somewhat defeats the initial purpsoe of trying to reduce stroke count…low count is reflective if reduced DRAG, not incraesed POWER.

The best way to start thinking about DPS is not  "how low can you go", but rather, "How efficiently can I swim?"  Can I keep my usual swimming effort and still drop a stroke or tow by focusing on active elements of my swim & body position to eliminate drag? (rather than adding power)… If you can re-orient the intention then better swim habits and body position will be incorprated into all aspects of this swimmers form, not just when drilling, or doing a set with a pull bouy.

And once you can drop a stroke or two after a warmup focused on body position, why not see if you can sustain that form? after all, that’s why we practice drills…to take over something into whole stroke freestyle.   Here is a slightly more enlighted version of the above swim set.

4 x 25 Easy, effortless strokes, count SPL.

4 x 25  as follows (Fist only, 2 fingers, 3 fingers, palm).  Keep effort light. How does stroke count change wiht each length?

4 x 25 evens: focus on tall posture, head suppored by the water.  Odds:  focus on spearing to a target 6-8" below the water surface to help bouy hips.  Count strokes

Use the best focuses from the previous sets to swim another easy 4 x 25 at your most comforatable SPL.  call this "N"

Main set:

4 x 25  + 3 x 50 + 2 x 75 + 1 x 100  Hold your "N" for each length.  If SPL climbs to N+2 or more, first try to focus on good posture & spearing targets to reduce back to N.  If you still cannot achieve "N" to "N+1" then rest longer and repeat that length. If unsucessful, go back down the ladder. If successful to 100 yds/m at "N" to N+1, repeat 100s with rest until you can no longer hold it. Note how many in a row you were able to do.

CD:  4 x 25 Easy strokes, feel resistance melt away and try to reduce strokes to N-1

The post DPS Drill in Swimming – How to do it the right way appeared first on Total Immersion.

Our first half dozen lessons or so were all about refining the drills, balance, streamline, glide, superman, skate, etc,etc.

Well as we continue to swim together ,the lessons get both more challenging and more intersesting . More challenging in that I have to look harder for what needs help.  More interesting in that it’s so much fun for both of us to spend an hour on a simple body movement, like how the shoulderblades shift while she swims.   (She loved that lesson).

Today Sophie was feeling a little bit blue.  You see last week she brought her iPad to the pool (for no good reason, it was just in her bag), and since she had it, I used it to film her swimming and some drills.

She watched and was terribly disappointed in herself. I’ll need to resend  her the videos from last spring to remind her how much she has improved.  When I asked her what bothered her the most, she said, "I don’t look like Shinji when I swim!"  Well that was  a tall order, but we were up for it.

The biggest flaw in her current swimming was a dropped left elbow in the left skate position.  It was almost like her elbow was parked as far down below her as she could get it, with the forearm meekly reaching forward nearly a full arms length below her shoulder.

I’ve noticed this in the past and assumed that it was due to some arthritis, limitations in her neck & shoulder mobility and never spent excessive time on the position.  But today, i notcied that she was fully capable of a good skating arm on the right.  Furthermore when she stood up, she had full range of motion of her shoulders, elbows, wrists and neck…there was no good excuse for her arm to be hanging so low!

The process of correcting it included 2 basic parts. The first one was just developing an awareness of where the elbow was pointed.   Initially, the elbow was "pointed" at the bottom of the pool so that in order to stroke, she had to reposition the entire arm, including the hand and palm to get any purchase on the water for stroking…it looked like she was dribbling an underwater basketball in her hand.  

So step one involved letting her extend her arm, and while looking at it (under the water), she gently bent then straightend the arm to be sure that the point of the elbow was facing the outside of her body (ie towards the wall) rather than the bottom of the pool.   This helped to place her arm higher in the water, creating less drag and allowing her to be in a better stroking position without having to readjust the pitch of the arm first.

This helped but her old arm pattern was so ingrained that at the first lapse of focus, or introducing swimming as opposed to switching, the elbow was hanging there nearly all the way to the bottom of the pool, upper arm angling down and forearm parallel to the bottom.

I decided that radical measures were needed to shock this out of her system…so I taught her the silky magic.   

Part 2 coming up …. 

The post I taught a 64 year old lady the silky magic today (Part 1) appeared first on Total Immersion.

I’ve made huge improvements in my swimming the past 2 years since being involved as a TI coach. But as always, I want to be better, and faster.   While speed isn’t necessarily my primary goal, it’s hard not to sometimes look around at other swimmers in the pool, know that many aspects of my technique are "better" than theirs and yet still they seem so comfortable swimming 10 sec/100 faster than me. Rather than engage in "secret racing" I choose to focus more intently on my own swim and what I can do to improve it. 

The breakthrough came at the end of a set of the following:

4 Rounds of:

3×100 Free + 1 x 100 IM on a 2 minute base, rest 2 minutes between rounds. 

The intent of the set was to hold a consistent SPL for the Free while maintaining or improving my speed. The IM was focused on mainly the short axis strokes doing some focal points I’ve recently been working on. I managed to hold 17/18 SPL for all of the free (1 or 2 lengths of 19), and descended my time from 1:40 to 1:34 while doing so.  

But the lady next to me was still swimming 1:25s for 300yd repeats!

 At the end of the set I focused on my catch. I’ve been workign on this for awhile with Coach Dave, trying to eliminate a "too early" elbow drop. Even though I’m following his, and my own advice, I just continued to feel awkward. 

I tried another focal point I was reminded of by Terry this past week…"Move your elbow forward".  In the catch position, the notion of moving the elbow forward helps bring the forearm into a better catch position keeping the elbow from dropping too soon. From a standing position, you can see how this small thought & movement helps bring the elbow into better orientation for a good catch. 

 I tried 2 lengths of it and it still felt awkward, my stroke count was 22 and I was frustrated. 

 I motioned again at the side of the pool and relized that there was only so much "forward" I could gain while practicing the movement standing still at the end of the lane.  I reasoned that when i swim, my body is already moving forward…why not try to simply KEEP the elbow moving foward as my arm fell into place?

The next thing that happened was magic!  I swam as I normally do, but this time I thoought about moving the elbow forward not with an awkward twist in my shoulder joint, but simply keepign the elbow moving as my body slid over the rest of the arm.  There was a point where the arm then naturally moved backwards as if I was lifting myself out of the pool deck on a press out. 

I had mentally visualized this, and even demonstrated the movement on dry land hundreds of times…but it suddenly came together in the pool just by delaying the stroke a fraction of a second. 

 I used the momentum I already had to move the elbow forward in a relative manner to the rest of my arm.  I swam the next 2 25s in 20 seconds and the next 50 in 40 seconds and hardly felt winded. In the recent past, these would have been all out sprints for me.

 The key was in waiting, and during that waiting time, the palm is applying that oh-so-gentle pressure that I’ve heard about, as the body rotates and continues to move forward…but what follows feels like silky magic, rather than the big arm of water I’d had before. 

 I definately will need to experiemnt more with this and I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.  

 What does your catch feel like? 

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In contrast to walking upright, riding our bikes or running, the visual information you have while swimming is limited.  We receive so much visual information on a moment to moment basis, our brain actually discards or ignores most of it.  The eyes have specialized to filter out peripheral information to just colors and movement, while the actual "focus" of our vision involves just a small part of the retina.  Contrast this to swimming where your head is down, eyes are in the wtaer, visibility is often limited to a few feet or a few inches, and you can understand why some people may panic or be fearful of open water.

Seeing where you are going while you swim is like driving a car at night. Imagine driving your car from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh during a snowstorm at night.  It’s about a 5 hour, 300 mile drive. Even though it’s a couple of hundred miles from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, you can drive at night only being able to see few hundred feet ahead of you at a time.  Driving in a snowstorm, visibility may only be 30 feet…yet you can still drive in a straight line from point a to point b with just small bits of visual information at atime.  You don’t need to be able to see downtown PIttsburgh from the Philadelphia airport in order to make it there.

The act of gathering visual information about our destination while swimming is called "sighting".   Rather try to fight the water lifting your head up for several seconds at a time in order to get a clear and unobstructed view of your landmarks or buoys, accept that it’s OK to only see a little bit of information at a time.  In a few more strokes you can take another peek and gather some additional information.  You only need to see a little ways in front of you, or that you are mosty headed in the proper direction. 

The actual sighting technique, which I’ll talk about in detail in the next article and an accompanying video, requires just a "peek" above the water.  A small slice of visual information.  in a brief moment, the light hits your retina and travels to your brain faster than you can process it.  By the time you’ve thought about what you have seen, there is already new visual information streaming into your brain.

Try this exercise to help train your mind that you only need brief "slices" of vision in order to navigate.   Face some direction that has discrete objects in front of you such as parked cars, people, planted flowers or even zoon animals.  Close your eyes.  Now as quickly as you can, open and close your eyes and keep them closed.   What did you just see?  Keeping your eyes closed, see if you can pick out the elements of the actual scene in front of you.  how many cars were there? What colors were people wearing? Which directions were the animals facing?  More than likely you wont be able to recall the entire scene.  Repeat the quick glipmse, this time specifically trying to gather a missing piece for your minds eye…the color of the last car on the right for example.  Or was that a mother with a stroller, or was she pushing a piece of luggage?

You can practice this exercise anywhere and everywhere.   Do it until you are comfortable not having that continuous stream of visual information.  Impress your self with how much information you can collect with just a small slice of information like a slide show.

With these two major psychological barriers to open water swimming under control, the actual sighting technique you’ll find to be a piece of cake.  Can you think of any other mental tricks that would help other swimmers with their open water sighting? Please leave a comment below!

The post Open Water Sighting Techniques- Overcoming Psyschological Fears appeared first on Total Immersion.

 Last month he & 2 friends came down for a dedicated 90 minute session on breathing and it was very enlightening, all three improved dramatically, and their underlying fears (YES FEARS) of the water surfaced and were driven out and replaced by positive breathing stroke thoughts. (Search the forums for my "Swim Breathing Thread)

Yet he still begged me for feedback on his kick.  Since we can’t get together to swim anytime in the near future, I sent him this exercise to practice. For about 50% of the people I teach this to in groups, it’s a true "AHA" moment.  Some still struggle with it and if you are one of them, don’t worry.  You may simply need a different focus to make the connection. Anyway, here is the exercise, let me know if it works for you.   

(Coach Ryan posted similar thoughts a while ago, but as new visitors are always coming to the website, no harm in repeating a great exercise)

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he Two Beat Kick (2BK) is an efficient kick used for by both competitive long distance swimmers and triathletes that helps provide a coordinated weight shift from right side to left side used in freestyle swimming.  The kick is used mainly for rotation rather than propulsion.

Here is a nice exercise to get the feel for the 2BK.  Start in superman glide and pushoff without kicking. Let the legs streamline behind you.  Glide until momentum stops or you need to breath.  Do this a few times focusing on streamlining your legs and keepign them "quiet"

Next, start in superman glide and rotate into Skate by gently pulling one arm back to your recovery position (arm molded along your side), and the other arm extended along a wide track.  Do this a few times on each side to get comfortable, reaquaint yourself with the motion.

Next, Start as above.  This time as you rotate to LEFT side skate (left arm extended), simultaneously kick downward with your right leg as a flick.  You should feel a connection between the right sided downbeat kick, and your body rotating to the left and ending in left sided skate.

Stand up, repeat.  stand, repeat. Stand, repeat.

Try the same thing on the right side.  Connect the opposite arm & leg to synchronize the downbeat kick and the extension to skate.

Start with that and let me know how it goes. 

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Abraham Maslow was a psychologist ahead of his time.  While his peers examined illness and abnormalcy, he chose to study aspects of health, wellness & peak performance.  He came up with a learning theory know as Maslow’s 4 Stages of learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Maslow)

Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.

Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.

Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.

Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

In regards to swimming, most of us are in stages 2 & 3 the majority of the time.  If you were not already at least in stage 2, you would not be reading this post.   There are so many different fine points to swimming well, that you may be in stage 1 for some skills, stage 2 for other skills, stage 3 for a few more and maybe stage 4 if you’ve been focusing on swimming with good technique for awhile.

As you continue to practice your swimming, you’ll find yourself slipping back and forth between these different stages.  Again, don’t let self-judgement or frustration get in the way of your learning and practice.  Choose a focus and choose a focus threshold (one superman glide, 4-6 non-breathing strokes, a single length of the pool) and see if you can complete that task.  

Some focuses you’ll find more challenging than others. If it’s too easy, perhaps you’ve reached stage 3 or 4 of Maslow’s learning matrix!  if its too hard, perhaps you are deeply entrenched in Stage 2 and don’t quite know how to climb out.  IN swimming at any level, from novice to elite, choosing a task that is challenging and remaining mentally engaged in order to accomplish that task can help you reach a "peak" performance in nearly every swim practice.

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Each swimmer came to me with their own set of habits that need to be changed.  Because they’ve had so little practice time, every lesson seems to be a review of the previous week’s lessons. 

But by bit they are starting to make imprinted changes in their stroke.  Nancy, who used to sink like a rock, is now a master of balance in superman glide.  When I ask Nancy to focus on a specific stroke thought, however, her lizard brain (or rather her non-amphibian brain) takes over and tries to pretend she’s a land animal again.  Her shoulders tense, her neck arches, she lifts her head and her hips sink to the bottom of the pool. 

So we take a step back to the basics and repeat superman glide…and her balance is fine. We move back to skating position focusing on nothing but head position…balance is fine.  The moment I ask her to focus on her hand while skating…balance almost instantly dissappears. 

For Nancy, identifying those drill moments & thoughts that keep her in balance, in harmony with a peaceful, non-panicked mindset are the key to her being able to practice on her own. 

I bring her back to a place where she is successful in the water at the specific task I’ve given her (neck relaxed, eyes down, laser beam forward). It’s the most basic of TI drills, yet 2 months later, it’s still Nancy’s safety point…a point where she feels calm and in control.  

 And mastering this feeling of being in the water and being calm and control is the most important skill a swimmer can have. Tonight we revisited this point several times as we progressively moved through a sequence of spear and swing switches.  And by the end of the night, she had created a succesful sequence for doing 3 swing switches with proper timing and balance.  

It’s still a fair way from doing whole stroke swimming with continuity, but Nancy is developing a toolkit for mastering her own practices.  Know your strong points.  Have confidence in the skills you do well. Don’t be afraid to revisit a place of control and calm.

What is your reference point? What stroke thought or drill do you turn to to regain control of your practice when it’s gone awry?  What other tricks do you have up your sleeve for keeping your practice moving forwad?

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