Posted by heathweaver

Ever feel a bit sick, a bit tired, and a bit unmotivated and then really tear shit up? That is the perfect sentiment for today swim. I can tell a cold is sneaking up on my nose and my motivation seemed to be heading in the other direction. Getting into the pool I felt like I wanted to take it easy and see if I could swim in a non-aggressive way. After a while of that I started to work on my keeping my stroke rate as low as possible. After swimming for about 20 minutes I tried to push myself a little faster and saw that my lap time was around 17 seconds.

When I saw that time I knew with a block start I could knock a couple seconds off my time. In addition to beating my previous fastest time I broke 16 seconds, which was a mental hurdle for me. To make the sprint more difficult because when I hit the water my goggles folded back and I couldn’t see a thing. It felt really good, but a bit like I was really lacking any kind of technique, but I guess all the meters of focusing on technique must have some effect, right?

Posted by heathweaver

Coaches often toss around the concept of getting a feel for the water, which, they say, means to learn to hold on to the water.  Both of these concepts are interesting, but without further explanation leave a lot to be understood of what they actually mean.

The drill I have been working on to develop the idea of anchoring in the water is what I call fist paddles. The drill is very simple: Swim normally, but keep your hand in a relaxed fist. That’s actually all there is to it.

You should learn a great deal about your feel for the water when doing this drill. If you find yourself feeling like you are completely standing still in the water (or going backwards for that matter) you’ll have discovered that your stroke has serious issues. Swimming the crawl stroke really well is largely about how you position your arms and the fist paddle drill proves this. Your hands act as paddles when you swim and most swimmers rely on this exclusively to propel them through the water. The giveaway is a high stroke rate, lots of motion in the water, and low elbows.

The real trick to improving how you anchor is a combination of arm angle and shoulder movement. Here are some stills that illustrate this well:

Most swimmers I see have never learned how to access the most efficient muscles when swimming. They tend to rely on their triceps and shoulders to move through the water. This is often sufficient if you want to swim only for your fitness, but if you have read this far in the hopes of finding drills to improve your stroke technique then the fist paddle drill can do wonders for you.

As you think about the arm position of the images above and keep your hands relaxed, but in a fist you will start to feel which position moves you through the water the best. Here is a set of Ian Thorpe from the front to give you an idea of how high is elbows actually are.

The danger I personally run into when swimming the fist paddle drill is that of pushing up with my arms instead of back. You can see above with all of the strokes that they have a way to bring the lever of their arms to apply force back. I often find that as start to move my arm into the high elbow position that I am pushing down with my catch, rather than back.

Overall, it is a good drill and should allow you to easily spot issues with your anchors,er, your arms.

Posted by heathweaver

First a few stats about Stefan Nystrand

• Birth Date: October 20, 1981
• Birth Place: Haninge, Sweden
• Height: 193 cm (6′ 3")
• weight: 85 kg (187 lbs)

Stefan Nystrand is the current world record holder in the short course 50 meter freestyle and the short course 100 meter freestyle. There are some fantastic videos of his swimming style. The first video is of him swimming while focusing on his technique rather than speed. The second video is him swimming at top speed. After some comments and videos I have taken both sets and done a frame by frame comparison.

One note about Nystrand’s stroke is that many people don’t like his arm recovery in races, as it looks really brutish, because he has very little elbow flex as he brings his arm over, but there is no mistake that he is extremely fast.

The first video allows you to see him swimming at a slow pace (the video is 30 seconds and he swims 50 meters). For me it is striking to see how he moves his body. Some of the things that really stand out to me are how much body rotation he gets on each stroke, how much he looks forward, how he turns his head to breath, how long he keeps his head back to breath, and how well his kick is timed with his stroke. 

The images on the right are from the clip where Nystrand is swimming at top speed and the images on the right are from the technique oriented clip.

Posted by heathweaver

This is a very interesting post I found. I think it is from a coach of a swim team and discusses the differences that water can have on swim times. I’d certainly like to see some more research on this issue and will try to put some together.

Someone told me yesterday that the Lacombe swimming pool was a slower pool. Meaning swimmer times can be off a little. What is a Fast pool or a Slow pool? I have no idea so I looked it up. When in doubt “Google it” . Water temperature makes a difference. A cold pool is slower and a hot pool is slower. 26 degree temperature is the standard. So water TEMPERATURE makes a difference. Further reading says POOL SANITATION makes a difference. A murky pool affects the swimmer as they have difficulty judging the distance of the wall when making turns or touching the wall. Pool LIGHTING can also make a difference allowing swimmer to judge distances and see other competitors. Water TURBULANCE, waves caused by swimmer, can make a difference. Lane Ropes are designed to kill waves caused by swimmers. And there are others so as you can see there are a number of technical items that make a fast pool and a pool slow. Interesting.

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Posted by heathweaver

At some point it is important to look back and enjoy the gains you have made. I often forget how far I have come and I really enjoy thinking back to one year ago, thrashing around, the water fighting me on every stroke. My first blog post on swimming came on June 27th and I have posted 34 times since then. That works out to about 5 per month, although I haven’t been consistent each week.

June 27th also corresponds to when I started keeping detailed records of my swimming. I have been swimming pretty seriously now (at least twice a week and often five days a week) since October of 2006. I have no idea what my sprint time was back then, but I guess more than 25 seconds on 25 meters.

When I started keeping track of my times I was swimming 20.90 on 25 meters, but I had made a lot of progress over the previous six months.

By August I had whittled four seconds off my time and reached my personal best of 16.37 on 25 meters and 37.79 on 50 meters. For the last two months I have been working to improve my technique and although my personal best doesn’t show it I feel like I am preparing for being able to swim much faster.

Another big factor of my personal best probably has to do with the amount of swimming I was doing. During September and October I was swimming over 7,000 meters per month, while in November I swam around 4,500. I don’t know exactly how much I swam in December because I lost my SportCount timer and so I wasn’t keeping track of my swimming, but I guess it was around 4,500.

It works out that when I am swimming over 7,000 I am swimming about nine days per month. Another interesting fact is that during October my regular crawl time was about two seconds faster than my other months. My average crawl time on 25 meters is 29.62 per lap, but in October it was 27.95. While two seconds isn’t much because I was swimming quite a bit during that month then it means that I was pushing myself on almost every lap. When I had set my personal best on the 16th of October the two sessions before my average was just above 24 seconds.

That analysis tells me pretty clearly what I need to do if I want to reach a new personal best in 2008: Swim FAST all the time.

Here are my goals for 2008:

1. Swim 10,000 meters per month
2. Keep an average regular crawl of 25 seconds or less
3. Break 30 seconds on 50 meters

To accomplish this I will need to make sure I swim 10 times per month, which is at least three times per week. When I am at the pool I need to make sure that my workout includes 1,000 meters, which is about 40 laps of swimming. I’ll post my workout in a while that will hopefully get me to my goals.

In the end, I feel that I have made a lot of progress, but over the last two months I have stopped doing the things that helped me reach my personal best. So it’s time to get back into gear and push myself harder and harder during every workout.

Posted by heathweaver

Here is some biographical information on some of the world’s greatest swimmers.

Ian Thorpe

• Birth Date: October 13, 1982
• Birth Place: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
• Birth Name: Ian James Thorpe
• Height: 6′5" (195.58 cm)
• Foot Size: 17
• Arm Span: 192 cm
• coach: Doug Frost, Tracey Menzies

Alexander Popov

• Birth Date: November 16, 1971
• Birth Place: Sverdlovsk, Russia
• Birth Name: Aleksandr Popov
• Height: 6′7" (200.66)

Pieter VD Hoogenband

• Birth Date: March 14 1978
• Birth Place: Maastricht (Netherlands)
• Height: 193cm
• Weight: 71kg

Grant Hackett

• Birth Date: 9 May 1980
• Birth Place: Gold Coast (Queensland)
• Height: 198cm
• Weight: 90kg

Michael Phelps

• Birth Date: June 30, 1985
• Birth Place: Baltimore, Maryland, USA
• Height: 6 ft. 3in. (193 cm)
• Weight: 165 (88 kg)
• Shoe size: 14
• Arm Span: 200 cm
• parents: Fred and Debbie Phelps

Cullen Jones (21.84 on 50 meters)

• Birth Date: 29 February 1984
• Birth Place: The Bronx, New York, United States
• Height: 195.6 cm
• Weight: 88.5 kg
• Coach: Brooks Teal

Posted by heathweaver

It is immensely frustrating to not see any progress on my personal best times. Ten weeks ago I had dropped below 17 seconds on 25 meters and below 38 seconds on my 50, but as the time has passed my times have gotten worse and worse. The funny thing is that I feel like I am improving my technique.

The disconnect between feeling more comfortable in the water and improving my swim time is connected the way I practice. When I practice by sprinting almost as fast as I can on every lap I saw a constant decrease of my swim time. What I notice is that when I swim around 24 seconds per lap (in 25 meter pool) my technique is, what I feel, quite correct. However, when I sprint I revert back to the technique that I had six months ago.

The ideal situation is where you swim very slowly to work the kinks out of your stroke, but then sprint enough to apply those to your sprint stroke. Within a workout I’d advise swimming a few 100s quite slowly, a few 50s slowly, and 2×25s on a Dolphin kicks and Sharks. Then once you are really focused begin swimming 25s and 50s as fast as you can. No need to use the blocks, just push yourself to swim your max, then rest.

If you feel your technique is slipping then do a couple of Superman drills (usually called side kick drills). Then go back to your sprints. Finish up with some sprints off the blocks and see where you end up.

Posted by heathweaver

A couple of amazing freestyle swimming videos. The first video is especially superb. The video is all underwater shots of Grant Hackett. The second video is really well done, but must be part of some ad, rather than anything particularly useful.

Posted by heathweaver

After a second very frustrating week I finally made some serious progress back towards my record time. I chopped a second off my previous time and am now only one second more than my previous record. grr.

At some point while I was swimming my feel for the water came back. It is strange, because I have been working to get rotate my body strongly in the water as I stroke, but when I swim at my fastest my torso actually rotates very little. It’s the same when I am swimming a shark stroke. As my head is out of the water it is very difficult to rotate the torso, but it is still a very fast stroke.

Well no interesting break through’s to report until I can get up to speed again.

Posted by heathweaver

Being sick is seriously not fun. I had a week of vacation and I thought I would rest my arms as I had strained my tendons. But then I went and got sick. Ouch, out of the pool for two weeks.

After jumping back in this week I have made a massive un-improvement. In fact, my 25 m swim time is so bad that I have apparently lost 11 weeks of training. I really hope that I will get back to setting records much faster.

We’ll see I guess.

I am going to take this as an opportunity to re-learn a couple of things. The first being my breathing technique. I am going to need to study this one a bit, because I don’t even know where to start. What I do know is that it isn’t my strength keeping me from going, rather I get so out of breath.

The other issue I want to re-learn is my kicking. When I started I told myself that I would learn how to kick after I learned how to use my arms. I think this was a mistake. I should have done both even if it would have taken longer. Kicking correctly is challenging, but it is important and shouldn’t be neglected.

Well, back to it.