We start with balance in the water, but if you cannot get truly horizontal in the water, then balance is hard to achieve. Most of my clients are Silicon Valley professionals – hence, a desk job at a computer for years, if not decades, with their upper (thoracic) spine and neck both dropping down, and their shoulders pulling inwards towards their chests as they look down on monitors and type on keyboards. When your posture is like that, and for many years, your body and mind think that is normal posture. All your structures and muscles have (mall)adapted to this shape. Then, one day, you want to start an athletic endeavor (great!) but unfortunately your posture is now not in an optimal shape for movement.

What does poor posture, and therefore, poor spinal alignment, produce? The body is an amazing machine. It has mechanoreceptors (nerves which sense mechanical pressure or movement) which will fire the right muscles to do what the brain is telling it to do. If you want to move or lift or whatever, and your spine is aligned, then the correct muscles will fire to perform the movement. Primary movers, big muscles like your pectorals and lats, that are designed to move your body parts fire and do the main work. Stabilizers, smaller muscles whose main function are to keep your body parts in alignment during movement, fire to keep the body structures stable so that primary movers can do the heavy work.

When the spine is not aligned, your body will do its best to enable it to perform whatever instructions your brain gives it. But knowing that your spine is not properly aligned, it will begin to fire the wrong muscles, meaning stabilizers or the wrong primary movers, in order to perform the movement. Stabilizers are great at one thing; they are designed by nature to keep the body in alignment – they are not great at creating power for large movements over long periods of time. They are smaller, and they do not have the proper mechanical leverage due to their location on the body which is not like primary movers which are placed in the right locations and attached to create huge mechanical advantages for movement. Consider the list from the Postural Restoration Institute in the document entitled Swimmer Dyssynchrony Syndrome. Muscles perform duties they were not designed to do, leading to poor swimming and injury.

Not only do muscles perform the correct functions, but also things like balance in the water get hard to accomplish. Trying to press the front part of your body down into the water becomes nearly impossible when your upper spine is frozen in a curled position. Nor is holding your body truly straight possible – so the lower part of your body wants to bend downward and trying to straighten resists muscles and structures that won’t or can’t get there.

Fixing posture then becomes a critical part of swimming well.

Sometimes, posture can be addressed by practicing activity. For example, some coaches have told me that continuous, diligent practice with Superman Glide can often aid in postural correction enough to improve balance.

Humans were designed for movement. It is the lack of movement that is creating problems in our postures. So sometimes getting people moving again and doing something other than sitting is enough. Other times it is not. Or, if someone wishes to speed up the process, then other interventions are possible and desirable.

There are many resources to address posture. I recently took the Gokhale Method which was excellent. Its methods are very much suited for the non-athletic population and think they are great for both athletes and non-athletes.

Another great resource is Foundation Training. Their therapy involves a bit more exercise and movement. However, there are some excellent exercises to help you tone up muscles and your nervous system to hold your body’s shape during movement. You can look at their DVD or find a resource who is trained in their methods on their website.

If there is anything I’ve discovered about swimming, it’s that swim training doesn’t have to take place only in the pool. There is a lot you can do out of the pool. A lot of postural correction and training can and needs to take place out of the pool. It can be like Gokhale Method where the practice does not resemble traditional exercise, or it can involve practice like more traditional exercise, like the movements described more fully in Foundation Training. Working on spinal alignment and reawakening muscles that support proper spinal alignment is a 24/7 activity.

In summary, postural improvement is an important part of swimming. Corrections to your posture both in and out of the pool will be beneficial and speed up your ability to become a better, faster, more healthy swimmer.

Coach DShen coaches Total Immersion swimming in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more posts at his training blog.

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Samuel Beckett, the Irish playwright, and Stanislas Wawrinka have put it more elegantly.  Who is Stanislas Wawrinka? He’s the Swiss tennis player who has always been overshadowed by Roger Federer. But, it’s Wawrinka, not Federer, who is still alive the men’s draw at the U.S. Open, which will conclude this weekend at Flushing Meadows.  Yesterday, Wawrinka beat Andy Murray, the defending U.S. Open and Wimbledon champion, to advance to the semifinal round.

Tattooed on Wawrinka’s left forearm is a quotation from Samuel Beckett: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better.”

“It’s my vision of my job and my life in general,” Wawrinka said. “In tennis, if you are not Roger or Rafa or Djokovic or Andy now, you always lose. But you need to take the positive of the loss and you need to go back to work. It’s that simple.”

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There are two spearing angles: depth and horizontal.

Most people think of spearing angle as mostly depth. Actually, you can also spear at a horizontal angle. Using the shoulder line as center, you can spear inward towards your body centerline – a bad thing to do – or outwards or away from the shoulder line – much better and safer.

Spearing depth angle helps with body balance.

The depth angle at which you spear your hand/arm into the water can greatly affect your balance. Spearing deeper will tip more weight onto the front of your body and bring your hips up like nothing else. Spearing higher is possible, but there is a higher risk of your hips dropping unless you have good control of body balance independent of spear angle.

Spearing horizontal angle can alter direction of travel and affect stability.

You can definitely spear wider of the shoulder lines and still go in one direction. However, spearing in a direction can also start you moving in that direction as well. So horizontal angle spearing acts a method of steering.

We have also found that spearing wider can improve your stability in the water. It provides an anchor on which you can ride your body on its edge, thus improving streamline and reducing drag.

In open water when the conditions get rough, spearing wider can help you stay stable and on course when the water is constantly moving and waves are present.

Spearing angle is dynamic, not static.

Given many different factors, spearing angle can be very dynamic. For example, if you are swimming a long distance using Early Vertical Forearm (EVF) and you are getting tired, you may want to switch to a lower depth, non-EVF spear to recover a little. As mentioned previously in open water, you may need to adjust to different conditions by altering the depth of your spear. In an open water race, you may need to do a turn around a buoy and horizontal spearing angle will help you make the direction change quickly.

Spearing angle can also be dynamic based on what you’re trying to do. For example, when I practice Skate with Kicking, I always spear much deeper than when I swim full stroke because I instinctively know that I go horizontal with a depth of spear, and it helps me kick my way across a pool while in Skate position.

Spearing angle will also change based on your skill level. A deeper spearing angle is great for beginners because it is the quickest way to achieve good balance in the water. But as your skill increases in affecting body balance, you can start spearing more horizontally to learn other aspects like EVF which require a horizontal spear to perform.

Spearing deeper provides many advantages for beginners.

In TI, we teach a deeper spearing angle to most beginners. There are many advantages to this for someone just beginning to learn and imprint good swim habits.

We have already mentioned one, which is a deeper spearing angle is the easiest and fastest way to achieve a horizontal body position. The other ways: pressing the chest, leaning the body, using the weight of the recovering arm, etc. all are much more difficult and require time to master. I have found that spearing deeper is much quicker to learn and affects body balance in a positive manner the most, than any other balance aspect.

Another advantage of spearing deeper is that it helps cure the dropped elbow problem which sets you up for a poor catch and less than effective stroke back. By getting your hand/wrist below the elbow with a deeper spear, you simply cannot have a dropped elbow.

With the hand pointing at an angle downward, we say to relax the fingers and let them droop downward. When this happens, your palm is already nearly, if not fully, facing back and in perfect position to catch and push water straight back. This removes issues with spearing more horizontally with the wrist locked, and then the stroke back happens with either locked straight wrist which results in water being first pushed down – dropping your hips – then pushing back – adding finally to forward momentum – and then pushing water up at the end – again dropping your hips down. A similar thing can happen when the stroke back occurs with a locked straight entire arm.

Deeper spear angles does not necessarily mean you swim slower.

It is true that there is more frontal area exposed on the upper arm to the forward direction of motion when the spear is deeper. In theory, this does mean that a deeper spear should have more drag than horizontal spear. But in reality, we’re only talking about a thin sliver of an arm. When compared to the drag created by dropping hips due to a horizontal spear, the drag of a slightly deeper spear is pretty miniscule. The optimization of this aspect should be left to those who have sufficiently developed their skills such that they need that extra bit of speed to win a race.

There are many swimmers who do not spear horizontally, nor do they use EVF, and still swim VERY FAST. They have awesome body balance and streamline, and they have fully developed their coordination of using the entire body during a 2BK to drive their bodies forward. These factors are much more important in speed than worrying about whether your deeper spear angle creates that much more drag.

If you have to, use the deeper spear to get your hips up. This will give better results than spearing horizontal to attempt EVF but your hips start dropping.

As mentioned previously, when you fully extend your spear, your hand is already in “catch” position. All you need to do from there is pull it back, pushing water straight behind you. Accomplished swimmers will also have perfected their ability to keep their palms pushing water straight back, versus pushing in all sorts of directions other than back.

In order to swim with EVF, you must adjust your spear depth angle to horizontal.

There are many factors related to achieving EVF. One of those is that you need to get your arm as high as possible in order to be able to let the forearm/hand drop below the elbow. If your arm is not horizontal, then your arm isn’t really dropping too much since you are partially “catched” already. You also lose a little bit of stroking length in front of you – spearing horizontal means you can get your arm as far forward as possible and use the full potential of stroke length to push water from front to back.

To many swimmers, there is THE spear angle that they must find. In my experience, spearing angle is a complex, dynamic element of swimming that changes given conditions, fitness and skill level. The ultimate skill, therefore, is to build your ability to swim at a multitude of spearing angles and you can easily switch between all of them depending on what situation you find yourself in.

Coach DShen is a TI certified coach teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area. Read more posts at his blog.

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Back in January I’d registered for the 3-mile open water swim event– part of the Kingdom Swim in Newport, VT–scheduled for July 6^th. At the time it struck me as a good challenge and a great adventure which I could share with lifelong friend, and fellow TI enthusiast, Cab Grayson.

But by late May–following several demanding months at work that left insufficient time or energy for what I thought was the necessary training–our 3-miler no longer seemed like a lark.  As I hadn’t yet swum even two miles in a training session, my commitment to swim three miles in just a few weeks nagged at me. Ever since I learned TI, I’d loved swimming. But now–not so much.

Worries about endurance had displaced the pure enjoyment of slipping through the water TI-style.  I knew I needed to stop obsessing over distance and, once again, focus on making every stroke feel great–to replace the uncertainty I felt about my endurance with confidence in form that would let me swim as easily as I pleased.

I enlisted Cab’s help. Cab’s stroke is as smooth as butter, and lightning fast to boot.  Even better, he has a waterproof camera. We began to regularly record and critique each other’s technique, above and below the surface.

My main goal was imprinting a clean Mail Slot entry of my perennially obstinate right hand.  Video also revealed I could better align my head with my spine; this would reduce drag and make each breath easier. As I swam, I also visualized Shinji’s superhumanly smooth stroke–which I’ve watched so often, I can call up as a mental movie at will.

Cab and I had been attending Master’s workouts for conditioning. We cut back on that to spend more time focusing on form.  Instead of breathless speed sets, we were cultivating a sense of swimming tirelessly.

We upped the fun quotient by inviting friends to join us for ‘synch-swimming’ after which we discussed stroke refinements.  Cab even allowed me to don fins on occasion, because he knew how much I enjoyed the feeling of greater length in my stroke and the thrill of speed.  (I needed every knot I could get in order to keep up with him!)

My stroke improvements seemed to consolidate in May.   One day, while practicing solo, I swam a silent mile, eliminating bubbles and splash. This proved to be an exercise in focus, which seemed to produce effortless endurance.  One week before the Kingdom Swim, I extended my silent swimming to two miles feeling fresh throughout. From that point, I knew I could swim three miles.

It turned out to be a great swim indeed.  I used my ‘silent stroke’ and really stretched.  My kayaker was a champ and gave me plenty of encouragement.  I finished 3 miles in 1hr, 35 minutes.  What a victory.   Cab finished in 1 hr, 27 minutes.

An indomitable Christian exults after Save the Bay, amusing Cab.

For next summer, we’re thinking about making the jump to swimming the Kingdom Swim’s 6-mile event, but this season we still have “Save The Bay” in Narragansett, RI (1.7 miles) and Alcatraz in San Francisco (1.5 miles) in September.

Postscript: Since sending Terry the account above, Cab and I had another great experience doing Save the Bay. Save The Bay was more confirmation of the soundness of TI’s philosophy of focusing on enjoying every stroke, rather than results.

During the middle leg of STB, we faced a strong head-on wind, which drove swells and chop into our faces. I slowed my pace, emphasized the Patient Lead Hand, and tuned my breathing to the rhythm of the waves.  My leisurely rhythm may have cost me a little time on that leg, but I gained invaluable confidence from knowing I can ‘tune’ my TI technique to challenging conditions, while feeling  relaxed, calm and in control.

In the final leg, we had the wind and waves at our backs. Saving energy–by not fighting the forces of nature–on the previous leg helped me take advantage of them on this leg. It felt fast, easy and fun!

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Such a discussion could occur nowhere else but the TI Forum!

I should clarify that swimming more slowly isn’t the object. Rather it’s to improve at swimming with consummate ease and to explore your ability to slow particular aspects of the stroke, while maintaining overall flow and body control.

Martial artists have long known the value of moving as slowly as possible to increase awareness, control, fluency and integration. It’s a harder sell in the swimming world.

It’s also a much more exacting skill in the water, than on land. Slower movement highlights errors in Balance and Stability. Which makes it exceedingly valuable.

This morning, Ken B posted the following: I’m enjoying this discussion. I am 74, with the usual age related challenges. Continuing to swim with ease into my 80′s is my main mission. This winter I’ve been pushing gently off the end of the pool feeling the delicious, effortless glide then trying to maintain that feeling to the other end. If I achieve a clean well-timed catch and maintain my original long-axis posture ,and breathe with absolutely no head lift I can drift into the far wall with no energy used at all. I know I’m getting somewhere because I looked up this morning to find I had an audience.

Ken captured the spirit of this enterprise exactly. He recognizes that swimming this way is a highly exacting and very rewarding SKILL.

For the goals, priorities, and – yes - values Ken cites for his swimming, he could hardly make a better choice than this.

My goals are similar to Ken’s. I wish to swim well, enjoy it limitlessly and even continue improving for 25 to 30 more years — i.e. into my early 90s.

At the same time, I also maintain a vision of breaking the national 85-89 record for 2-mile cable swim, and contending for a FINA World Masters open water championship in the same age group in 20+ years. And hopefully repeating that in the 90-94 and 95-99 categories–which thus far no swimming-nonagenarian has yet attempted.

My initial lengths every day–I call it my Tuneup–is guided by exactly the thoughts and actions Ken describes. But with the addition of a  ’side game.’

While swimming as easily as I can, I also time myself, often for 100y/m repeats. When doing so, I always swim faster over a series of 6 or more 100s–even while trying to maintain my initial sense of relaxation.

While doing these, I often visualize how my swimming would appear to an audience–as Ken found himself with the other day.  This turns my Tuneup series into a Beauty Contest as well as an Exercise in Ease.

But even with far-off goals of breaking age group records or winning world titles,  the main reason I swim this way is that it feels so amazingly good — in both body and psyche — in the moment I’m doing it.

The video of TI Coach Shinji illustrates something like what I describe and strive for. But I try to make my 2-Beat Kick even gentler than you’ll see in the underwater segment. This is because I’m trying for maximum ease and relaxation, not minimum stroke count, in my Tuneup swims.

Happy laps!

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A critical choice I’ve made about where to focus my energy this summer has been influenced by my conviction that Enjoyment and Improvement are not just compatible, but inseparable.  And that merging them will benefit everything I find meaningful.

Virtually every summer for the past 10 years I’ve been an avid open water (OW) competitor–usually swimming 5 to 6 OW races over the course of two  to three months. I enjoy winning my age group and, more often than not, I do. But my motivation for racing has more to do with process than outcome.

The Lure of the Lake

Between mid-June and early September I swim in Lake Minnewaska as often as possible. What lures me there is a combination of stunning natural beauty and the Flow States I experience during practice.

Flow comes from doing meaningful activities that involve a level of skill that requires immersive focus. I’ve long gotten that from practice sets that test my ability to tease a bit more Stroke Length from a constant Tempo or, conversely, push Tempo higher while maintaining Stroke Length.

One attraction of Lake Minnewaska is how its 200-yard rope line facilitates these Flow-producing sets. On any swim I can either count strokes along the line—my SPL ranges from the high 140s at Tempos of 1.2 (sec/stroke) or slower to the low 170s at Tempos around .95 or faster. Or I time myself and divide Time by Tempo to calculate stroke count.

I do these practices mainly for the Enjoyment produced by doing exacting tasks and the immediate gratification—because having such concrete metrics lets me know precisely how well I met the challenge.

But there’s an extra frisson of satisfaction that comes from knowing that my practice tasks also develop skills and instincts that will be invaluable in a race.

Punching Above My Weight

At 62, I’m usually among the oldest swimmers in the field; in a typical race field of 100+ there are seldom more than a handful older than me. And, among the relatively small number who are fairly serious about competing, my training volume is quite modest. So I gain some satisfaction from knowing that my exacting practice helps me ‘punch above my weight’ as boxers say.

I’m confident my stroke will be among the most efficient and economical in any race field. Then there’s the knowledge that few in any field have as much experience in OW–this year marks the 40^th anniversary of my first OW race at an ocean lifeguard tournament in 1973.

But perhaps the most valuable mental strength I bring is the knowledge that I’m neurally programmed to respond to nearly any situation in a way that will probably bring some advantage.  My Stroke Length + Tempo tasks—which I do primarily to experience Flow States—also hardwire stroking patterns proven to make the difference between winning and losing.

So what’s noteworthy about my choices this summer? Mainly that I’m planning to considerably scale back my summer racing schedule. Where I usually swim at least four races during July and August, this year I’ll swim only one: the Betsy Owens 2-Mile Cable Swim in Mirror Lake, in the Adirondack village of Lake Placid, on Aug 17. The photo below gives you some sense of why I never miss this race.

The Cable Course in Mirror Lake

I’m racing so sparingly because this summer I’m more excited about writing than racing and want to conserve physical, mental and emotional energy—as well as time–for the creative process.

Writing Fueled by Purposeful Practice

On July 1, I started the clock on a period of 10 weeks during which I intend to spend my most productive hours–6 am to noon—writing a series of ebooks which will ‘update the public record’ on TI Methodology. (We’ll announce release dates on www.totalimmersion.net.)

But while racing takes a back seat, my practice will be as focused and purposeful as always. That’s because I know the anticipation of an enormously satisfying swim later in the day will renew me for the hours I’ll spend at my desk. And my swims will generate energy and enthusiasm—plus insight and inspiration–that I’ll pour into my next writing session.

I’ve modified aspects of my practice plans for the summer according to the Pull vs Push principle of generating energy. In my next post I’ll describe this principle and explain why I feel I’ll not only write better, but race better as a result.

This short video features both the natural beauty of Lake Minnewaska and my Stroke Length and Tempo practice plan for the day.

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I ordered Tim’s most recent book The Four Hour Chef the day it was released five months ago. Partly because I’m an avid cook. Preparing and eating good food closely follows swimming among my enthusiasms.

And partly because my curiosity was piqued by the subtitle The Simple Path to Cooking Like a Pro, LEARNING ANYTHING [both caps and much larger font size on the cover] and Living the Good Life. For over a dozen years, we’ve given equal emphasis to teaching the behaviors and mindsets of expertise and mastery as to teaching skillful swimming.

As soon as the book arrived, I leafed through it and, as I related in the blog  META-Learning: Who Would You Rather Have As A Teacher–Phelps or Shinji? was surprised to find on p. 31 a familiar picture—a screen shot of TI Coach Shinji Takeuchi’s #1-ranked youtube video, above a screenshot of Michael Phelps’s #2 rated video.

How to Learn ANYTHING

The book’s first section is a guide to what Tim calls Meta-Learning – greatly accelerating the process for learning nearly anything by uncovering clever shortcuts and avoiding failure points that impede and dishearten most people. That Shinji who only took up swimming at 37, gained more followers on youtube than Michael Phelps, who began swimming at 7, makes him a great example of Meta-Learning.

Tim invited those who were eager to begin cooking to skip ahead to the next section where he begins to present cooking skills. I took him up on it after writing the blog about Shinji. Yesterday I returned to the Meta-Learning section to read it in full.

And again, to my great surprise, on p. 62 I found this series of five pictures of me, taken from screen shots in the TI DVD Self Coached Workshop: Perpetual Motion Freestyle in 10 Lessons.

Accompanying it was text, in which Tim extolled TI as an example of a Meta-Learning program – and this section explaining how learning to swim with the help of a TI DVD made him feel like Superman. Here’s the excerpt:

Despite having grown up five minutes from the beach, I could never swim more than two laps in a pool. This was a lifelong embarrassment until I turned 31, when two catalysts changed everything.

At the end of January 2008, a friend issued me a New Year’s resolution challenge: he would go the rest of 2008 without coffee or stimulants if I trained and finished an open-water 1-km swim during the year.

Months after this handshake agreement, after many failed swimming lessons and on the cusp of conceding defeat, a former non-swimmer Chris Sacca, introduced me to TI.

Total Immersion offered one thing no other swimming method had: a well-designed progression.

Each step built upon the previous and eliminated the usual failure points—like kickboards.

The first sessions including drills like pushing off in shallow water and gliding for 5 yards or so, at which point you simply stood up. Practicing breathing came much, much later. Learners of TI, by design, dodge that panic-inducing bullet when they most need to: in the beginning. The TI progression won’t allow you to fail in the early stages.  There is no stress.

The skills are layered, one-by-one, until you can swim on autopilot. “

[Summarizing the next part: Tim cut drag by 50% in his first self-coached practice and had more than doubled the distance he traveled on each stroke by his fourth. Within 10 days he’d increased the distance he could swim nonstop from 40 yards to 400. Note: A 1000% increase! In 10 days!]

Several months later, at my childhood beach, I calmly walked into the ocean, well past my former fear-of-death distance and effortlessly swam over a mile—roughly 1.8 km—parallel to shore. I only stopped because I’d passed my distance landmark, a beachfront house. I felt no fatigue, panic, fear—nothing but the electricity of doing something I’d thought impossible.

I felt like Superman.

And here’s Tim telling the same story at a TED Conference

More posts about Tim Ferriss, TI and Meta-Learning

How Tim Ferriss Learned to Swim in 10 Days

Could Tim Ferriss turn The Situation on to Swimming?

How to Build World Class Muscle Memory

META-Learning: Who Would You Rather Have As A Teacher–Phelps or Shinji?

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Which—other than the last week of March at our Open Water Experience in Kona–will be the longest I’ve swum since January.

Since 2007, from November through April, I’ve experienced chronic achiness and fatigue, which is exacerbated by even mild exertion. My doctor diagnosed it as an autoimmune condition. But now I suspect it’s actually a reaction to chlorine. Or at least the ‘chloramine fog’ blanketing the surface of the 50-year old, poorly-ventilated college pool in New Paltz.

What do you do when your pool becomes toxic? I’m fortunate to have an Endless Pool, which is well-ventilated and has a sanitation system that needs only a trace of chlorine. I usually swim for just 30 minutes, mostly in a quite gentle current. Not the kind of preparation traditionalists say you need to reach your potential in open water distance races.

With my first race, the 2 Bridges 5K in the Hudson River just three weeks away and a planned crossing of Gibraltar Strait in October with three friends, should I feel concern about being under-prepared for long open water swims? Well, I’m not, and I believe I have good reason for my sanguine attitude.  Three good reasons in fact.

On three occasions, I went into an event or open-water season woefully-undertrained by conventional standards. Once by plan, and twice because of circumstances beyond my control. Each time, I was pleasantly surprised—even stunned–with how well things turned out.

June 2002 Manhattan Island Marathon Swim

In Dec, 2001 I decided to enter the 2002 MIMS, in part to celebrate having reached life’s half-century mark a year earlier. I’d swum only perfunctorily since the previous summer, and one day after I registered the college pool began a 3-week holiday closure.  With travel for work in late January, I finally began swimming regularly in early Feb, leaving just four months to prepare for a 28.5-mile swim.

While I lacked an aerobic base, I felt confident in my efficiency base and decided to focus on making that even stronger. I wanted to test the proposition that it’s possible to comfortably complete an ultra-marathon swim on non-ultra training volume.

For the next 16 weeks I averaged about 16,000 yards per week (a half to a third of what other MIMS’ers were doing), with the exception of swimming a 10,000-yard, 3-hour pool practice in weeks 14 and 15, raising my total for those weeks to a bit over 20,000 yards.

I swam those not with the intent of building extra endurance, but to see if I could finish each session feeling more energized than when I started by swimming with consummate ease. Doing so showed me I was on track for a successful marathon.

On marathon day, I swam as easily as possible, but intent on making every stroke count. Or, put another way, not wasting a single muscle contraction. Taking a quite leisurely 49 strokes per minute, it was essential I travel a good distance on each.

Swimming like a tourist, (and slowed by relatively sluggish currents where my paddler guided my hugging the Manhattan shoreline—the rest of the field was closer to mid-river where the currents are much faster) I reached the Harlem River, about 8 miles into the race, well behind the rest of the field.

But over the next 20 miles I passed three other soloists and a relay. Not bad for an ‘undertrained’ swimmer. And despite being badly dehydrated in the final miles, because of inexperience planning my nutrition and hydration regimen, I felt only moderate fatigue upon reaching the finish, which I reached in 8 hrs 53 minutes. After drinking 64 oz of water on the drive home, I felt fully recovered the next day.

2005 Betsy Owens 2-Mile Cable Swim (US Masters National Open Water Championship)

In October 2004, while doing a bench press set—mindfully, with moderate weight and impeccable form—I ruptured the biceps tendon in my right shoulder. For a swimmer, this is normally a very serious injury requiring 9 months or more to return to full strength. HMO requirements delayed surgery for 5 months, while I did more conservative therapies.

It was evident I’d need surgery (I didn’t have a diagnosis yet—an MRI was inconclusive)  because, after months of therapy I experienced disabling pain attempting undemanding tasks like pouring tea from a kettle, flipping a wall light switch, donning my seatbelt. However, two months after the injury, and before surgery, I could swim pain free.  By modifying my stroke to avoid pain—the origin of the Mail Slot focal point—I was able to swim pain free, and even a bit faster than before the injury!

I had surgery in Feb 2005, followed by 3 weeks with my right arm in a sling and 3 months under doctor’s orders not to swim any whole stroke. I used the Endless Pool to replicate exercises I was doing in PT and to gently explore range of motion. For that time, ‘swimming’ meant easy reps of the TI SpearSwitch drill, in which I could hone balance, streamlining, and rhythmic rotation without lifting arm from water. To avoid over-eagerness, when I applied water-pressure with my right hand, I visualized the staple holding tendon-to-bone pulling out.

Five months to the day after surgery—following just two months of quite moderate whole-stroke training—I swam the Betsy Owens 2-Mile Cable Swim.

In 2004, I’d swum a personal best of 49:20. Swimming with modest expectations, I was dumbfounded to see 45:40 displayed on the race clock as I reached the finish line. I led the 50-54 age group for the National Masters title for 3000 meters, being passed in the final 200 meters to finish 2^nd, to that date, my highest finish ever in a National championship.

What could be the explanation for improving my personal best for two miles by over 3-and-a-half minutes after having my training severely restricted for most of the 10 months preceding the event?

Summer of 2012 – Top 10 Percent 4 Consecutive Weeks

Last year at this time, I was looking toward the upcoming open water season with rather modest expectations. Because of a torn meniscus in my right knee at Christmas, then four months hampered by autoimmune symptoms, I was restricted to swimming in the Endless Pool three times a week for 30 minutes (the equivalent of less than 5000 yards per week) at very gentle current speeds and minimal effort levels.

As I began my racing season (also at 2 Bridges), I told myself I’d take pleasure in the social aspects of attending the events races, seeing friends and enjoying the experience, not allowing finishes below my usual standard to detract from the pleasure of simply swimming.

In that first race , on June 2, I finish in mid-pack but enormously enjoyed being there nonetheless. A week later I began swimming regularly in Lake Minnewaska, and my symptoms also began to abate. I began swimming at steadily brisker tempos, using my Tempo Trainer.

During my five months of gentle stroke tuning in the Endless Pool, I’d acquired an unprecedented feeling of silky synchronicity in my strokes. That feeling held as I increased tempo from 1.10 to 1.0 to 0.9 seconds/stroke. Soon I felt as if I was flying effortlessly up and down the 200-yard line at Minnewaska.

On July 22, I swam my second race of the season, a mile in the ocean at Coney Island. I maintained that silky feeling throughout, but didn’t expect the finish I had. I won the 60-64 age group by a minute. I also placed in the top 10% of the field overall—something I hadn’t done in at least five years!

Over the following three weekends, I swam three more races—another ocean mile, followed by two races of two miles. I won my age group in each by steadily larger margins. And in each I again placed in the top 10 percent in the field—the most exciting, and least expected, level of sustained racing excellence in my 40 years of open water racing!

Again, how to explain this in light of entering the season significantly undertrained —by conventional standards—in both volume and intensity for the rigors of open water distance racing?  In particular, all three occurrences of hard-to-explain success occurred in my 50s and 60s.  When I was much younger (I swam my first open water race at 22) I never raced well unless I’d done long, hard training.

Do Less, Get More

The short answer is that—to a far greater extent in open water than in pool races– it’s possible to do quite well with smart, strategic—yet fairly modest–training. This seems counterintuitive—isn’t open water racing reputed to be far more grueling than pool racing. But there are far more opportunities for error in open water—in starting, pacing, navigation, etc. And it’s like that most of the field will make those errors.  Minimizing error can compensate for gaps in training.

Doing more with less in open water swimming is of great interest to aging swimmers like me. And of even greater interest to triathletes, who have to make time for three sports.

In next week’s blog, I’ll share the particular lessons I’ve taken from these experiences and will apply in my training for the upcoming open water season.

COACH YOURSELF IN OPEN WATER SKILLS AND STRATEGIES (click links below for details)

Outside the Box DVD

Outside the Box ebook

LEARN OW SKILLS AND STRATEGIES FROM TERRY LAUGHLIN AND TI COACHES (click links below for details)

August 1-4  Open Water Camp in New Paltz NY

Aug 13-17 Open Water Camp in Lake Placid

The post How Age and Cunning Can Win the Day in Open Water appeared first on Swim For Life.

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If you’re not sure whether to be a neurally- or aerobically-oriented swimmer consider this: If you emphasize aerobic training, you have no assurance that your brain will be stimulated in a way likely to promote brain health. And there’s a pretty good chance you could compromise the quality of brain stimulus. But if you emphasize neural training, you always receive quality aerobic training.

I’ll illustrate by giving examples of typical sets of both types, and describing their effects.

Aerobic Set Swim 12 x 200 on 30 seconds rest

An average pace for a 50-ish swimmer on a set like this might be around 3:00 per 200. With a 30-second rest interval, the set would take 42 minutes to complete, at a a work-to-rest ratio of 6:1 (3 minutes swim, 30 seconds rest). This combination of relatively long overall duration and relatively brief rest intervals would be good for metabolic endurance and a healthy heart.  You could develop a bit more aerobic power or oxygen uptake by shifting from a steady pace to a varying pace with some repeats easier and some faster — perhaps descending 1-6 and 7-12, or alternating one cruise with one brisk.

The shortcoming of such a set is that too many swimmers are likely to shift into mental autopilot state or let their minds wander to deal with the tedium produced by doing a relatively unvarying activity for 42 minutes. Once you’ve gotten started on your first repeat, there’s little else to do but count down repeats until you’re done.

Neural Training Set: Swim 4 rounds of [3 x 200 on 30 seconds rest]

Rounds 1 and 2 (or 1 and 3): Swim 1 x 200 each with these Focal Points: Weightless Head — Align Body on ‘Tracks’ — ‘Patient’ Lead Hand

Rounds 3 and 4 (or 2 and 4): Swim 1 x 200 each at these stroke counts: 13 to 14 — 14 to 15 — 15 to 16 (OR  1 x 200 each at these stroke tempos: 1.15, 1.10, 1.05)

In this example you’d be required to pay close attention on every lap and every stroke. In the case of swimming with Focal Points,  to assess the sensation in each stroke and compare it to the ‘mental blueprint’ you form for each thought. In addition, you’ll be ‘wiring together’ cognitive and motor neurons. In the case of swimming with Stroke Counts, you’ll have to calibrate your Stroke Length on each stroke, then recalibrate it on each subsequent 200.

Because the overall set duration and work-to-rest ratio in the Neural set remain the same as in the Aerobic set, you would receive precisely the same metabolic endurance/healthy-heart benefits. But by giving your neurons a mission, you would also build more Cognitive Reserve which neuroscientists tell us is the best thing we can do to increase our chances of having a razor-sharp mind in our 80s and beyond.

Mens sana in corpore sano. It’s an ancient Latin quotation, taken from pre-Socratic Greek philosophy, meaning “A sound mind in a healthy body.”  If you’re a neurally-oriented swimmer, it’s not just a slogan.

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