Swimming Lesson

Since I'm an invalid as it relates to running and cycling right now (and I've gained at least ten pounds since the beginning of the year) I have been forced to change the things I'm doing to try and stay in shape. Thus, I've been making more trips to the pool of late; thankfully my work-at-home schedule allows me to take advantage of non-peak times at the Wilson Pool.

Due to the increased swim training volume, I figured it would be beneficial to drop a little cash ($70) and have a swim coach take a look at my swim stroke and recommend some improvements. I was referred to Kirsten Grigor by a friend and we met at Wilson on a Sunday (3/18) and shared the far (extra-wide by diving boards) lane in the 25-yard orientation.

She had me swim a few lengths and took some notes on what she saw. She also got in the pool and swam to the side and front of me to get a better idea of what I was doing. From there, we discussed her findings and she suggested drills to address each of the concerns. We worked together through each of the drills to make sure I was doing Most made sense but some were difficult to consistently implement immediately. Like anything, it takes some work. The main things I need to work on are the mild crossover in my stroke, extending the length of my stroke, relaxing my recovery, and improving my "catch" or "scull." I spent some of the post-analysis time incorporating the lessons and trying to get used to the new techniques.

Wanting to work again while the lessons were fresh in my mind, I went back on Monday (3/19) to practice. Arriving at Wilson at 1:00pm, the pool was basically empty-a great time to visit! I didn't write down the drills Kirsten gave me but in comparing my memory to her write up (below), it looks like I was able to cover everything. I did a very brief 100m time trial at a medium pace and I cut 10 seconds off my lap time. Talk about immediate results! I'll continue to incorporate the drills into my workouts and hopefully I'll get to the point that I look natural in the "Fast" lanes.

Kirsten's Write Up:

Summary

Overall you have a very good stroke. You have good high body position in the water and a good underwater pull. You bilaterally breathe which is especially important for open water swimming. The things you can work on are: not crossing over, loosening your recovery (and your stroke in general), increase efficiency by relaxing your fingers, working on extending catch at the top of your pull and finishing passed your hips, increasing rotation, not breathing “backwards”, loosening your ankles on your kick, and not breathing into your flip turn. The two areas where you should focus most of your attention first are not crossing over and relaxing your recovery.

General points

Efficiency: A good stroke is an efficient stroke. Any movement should be moving you in a straight path forward. Think about swimming through a tube: reach directly out in front to catch the water, move it passed your body and push it directly behind you. Keep your legs in line with your body and rotating around an imaginary centerline – no lateral movement. Enter fingers first (not thumb) and breathe “forward”.

Speed: One important thing to note is when it comes to speed in swimming, you should think of speed as power and efficiency. Do not try to “muscle” through your fast swim. That approach tends to cause a tight stroke, which is far less efficient than a fluid stroke with powerful and efficient underwater pull. So, from now on when you swim fast think powerful underwater pull with smooth and fluid recovery and relaxed body position.

Crossover

You have a slight crossover in your stroke (your hands cross the center line of your body). This is the first thing you should work on. We did wide entry drill to correct this issue. Think about entering with your hands towards the far corners of your lane. Generally for people who tend to crossover, if you feel as though you’re entering very wide, you’re probably about where you want to be. Enter and extend your hand forward which will also increase your rotation and set you up for a good catch (more to come on this).

           

Tight Recovery

Your over-water recovery is tight. Think about your over-water recovery as your split second chance to relax before your have to start another powerful underwater pull. You want to get your hand from finish to entry as quickly and easily as possible. The drill we worked on to achieve this is fingertip drag drill. At the end of your stroke, gently drag your fingertips along the surface of the water. Be sure you are rotating enough so that your fingers are just skimming the water in a straight line from finish to entry (along your side) and your elbow should be nice and high. If you feel tension in your trapezius, try increasing your rotation slightly – there should be no tension anywhere on the recovery. Be sure to enter with your fingertips first (not thumbs) so you are set up to immediately catch water and start your next underwater pull. Be careful you do not go back to crossing over. You may want to do fingertip drag in combination with wide entry drill to be sure you maintain both techniques. In order to do this, start by doing about a 100 or so of wide entry then add the fingertip drag drill. Generally you want to focus on one thing at a time but this is a case where, once you get a good feel of each drill, you can combine them to reinforce both habits.

Tight hands

When you first swam, I noticed you had your fingers tightly squeezed together with your thumb out at about 90 degrees from your fingers. You want your hands to be relaxed with a bit of space (~1/8 of inch) between each finger. This maximizes your pulling surface area and, by not squeezing your fingers, you’re conserving some energy (a small amount but every bit goes towards a more efficient stroke!). You seemed to correct this pretty easily once I pointed it out. Just check in periodically to make sure your hands are relaxed but not spread too far. By focusing on relaxed hands, smooth entry and strong catch, you’ll also notice you start to pull less air bubbles through the water – a sign of an efficient pull (since you’re only pulling water, not air).

Short Finish

Be sure to finish your stroke completely passed your hips. This maximizes each pull and puts you in a good position to start your over-water recovery. The drill we worked on for this was finish drill. With each stroke, focus on completely extending your arm to finish passed your hips. Then flip the water off the tips of your fingers. Another way to check that you are finishing each stroke fully is to brush your thumb on the outside of your thigh. The only thing to watch out for with that is, be sure you are not extending your thumb away from your hand to brush – with your rotation, your entire hand should be close enough to your hip for your thumb to brush. It is especially important to focus on a strong finish as you get more tired toward the end of a workout as the finish tends to be one of the first things to go!

Catch

I think one of the most important parts of the underwater pull is the catch at the top of the stroke. You can extend this reach and catch more. The extension comes from more rotation (see section below) the catch can be achieved by getting the feel of skulling. By reaching out and catching water at the top of your stroke, you are maximizing the length of your underwater pull as well as catching a lot of water to start moving passed your body. The drill we worked on was skull drill. With minimal kick, extend your arms out in front of you with your face a little bit in the water or a little bit out of the water (whichever is most comfortable). Sweep your hands in and out in a small quick motion over and over again. This is very similar to treading water (NOT little breast stroke pulls). You caught onto this drill pretty quickly. Just remember it is a VERY slow drill. This is a great drill to do with some swimming – it really gives you the feel in your swim of what you’re trying to accomplish. Do about 10 yards of skull, then switch to swim. You should feel the extra power in your catch. Repeat for a few more 25s

Rotation:

Your body position is good (high in the water) but it’s a bit tight. This goes along with your tight recovery and as you worked on loosening your recovery, it also made the rest of your body more relaxed too. So I think the body position will work itself out with the recovery. The one thing you can work on when it comes to body position is increasing your rotation. You should focus on getting more rotation from your hips. Your core controls this movement and it’s your core that helps your hips snap from one side to the other.  We used a pull buoy to get the feel of engaging your core. With your ankles squeezed together (or squeeze towards each other if they don’t actually touch) do pull and rotate until you get the sense you are going to “fall over”. At that point, engage your core and rotate back to the other side. Make sure you don’t fish tail – if you find your legs going side to side instead of rotating directly behind your body, don’t rotate quite so far. As we worked on this, I noticed you have great rotation onto your ride side (right side towards bottom of pool). Try to increase rotation onto left side (left hip/side towards bottom of pool).

“Backwards” Breathing

Remember all motion should be sending you forward. You also want to breathe slightly forward. Right now, you breathe slightly backwards which pulls your body from side-to-side. When you take a breath, think about just letting your head rotate with your body. You should be looking directly to the side and even slightly forward. If you were swimming on a clock, you would want to look between 2 and 3 on the right side and 9 and 10 when you breathe to the left.

           

Flip Turn

Try to eliminate your breath into the flip turn. When you pick your head up to breath, it makes your legs drop. Then you have to get your legs back up and over your head. Work towards taking a breath to the side, then another stroke before flipping.

Kick

The key to a good kick is loose ankles. Your feet should be like flippers: loose ankle, then snap the water off the end of your toes.

             

Additional Points:

Underwater pull: We talked about pulling straight along the bottom of the pool or doing a “key hole” motion with your hand. It is sort of both and depends upon if you are talking in relation to the pool (straight along the pool bottom) or in relation to your body (slight sweep out, in, and out again).

Paddles: Remove the wrist strap from your paddles. The wrist straps hold the paddles artificially in place and when you remove the strap, they become a self-correcting tool. If there is any wobble in the paddle, it means you’re not pulling directly against the water. If you find you are pushing with the tips of your fingers, try to focus on pushing with the joint where your fingers meet your palm.

Body position and head position: body position is not something that is easily taught. The thing that I find helps body position the most (especially for people who don’t naturally have good body position) is rotation. Rotation helps with keeping the legs afloat. Rotation and body position come from core, not from head position. Your head should be comfortably down and slightly forward – think open airway. This also sets you up for good head position when you breath as you just let your head rotate with your body and there is not any extra movement in your neck.

Conclusion:

Your stroke is very good. The issues are mainly small tweaks and you seemed to pick up all of the drills relatively easily. If you have any questions about what I outlined above or as you start working on things, please let me know. Also, let me know how your races go.

Thanks and good luck! 

First Gear Review: Speedfil A2

Quick update on the knee. Still not getting any better. Felt worse after the 4-hour bike ride on Sunday. I've decided that I should stop cycling and stick to swimming for the time-being. Hello parched skin.

I did some reading about the best position and aerodynamic effect of water bottle location on a bike. The best place to put it according to the study, was in-between the aerobars at the front of the bike. Apparently, it actually provided an aerodynamic benefit. Thus, during the Washington Half last year I rigged up a standard 24 oz water bottle between rubber-bands in a quasi-web between the aerobars. Unfortunately, within 25 yards of starting the bike section, I hit a speed bump and ejected the water bottle. Since it provided the basis of my nutrition for the next 3 hours, I had to stop and run back to retrieve it - extremely frustrating.

Due to that episode, I've been on the prowl for a better option. At long last, I found the Speefil A2 hydration system. The creator ingeniously developed a water tight screw top that fits all specialized-size water bottles, allows on-the-bike refills, and has a bite-valve straw to easily drink while riding. Once it arrived, I eagerly washed everything and after drying assembled it all. There is a natural bend in the straw due to the way it is packaged so I used that to aim the straw down towards the bottom of the bottle and tapered the end to make it easier to suck up the last of whatever liquid it is holding. I cut the straw so that it just extends out the front of the bottle and into the elbow joint. I left the balance of the straw to provide some flexibility if I decided to change the orientation of the bottle.

I kept the top of the bottle forward and used the velcro strap to hold the bottle at its dimple between the narrow section of the aerobars. To provide additional stability, I weaved the bottle through some rubber bands (6). The issue I faced last year is moot because the velcro provided a solid, rigid base and the rubber bands kept it in place but allowed some give. Rubber bands also work with this arrangement because the bottle will be static, I won't have to remove it to drink and then worry about threading it back through the rubber bands to keep it in place. Other people have mounted bottle cages to the bike but if I don't have to, I'm not going to. I'll post pictures soon. It sits a bit more forward on the bike than I'd like but still permits me to use my Garmin 310xt mounted on the stem.

On the road results
I have been able to use it twice during multiple hour rides (here and here) and I must say, it works marvelously with my favorite endurance beverage (Hammer Perpetuem). The connection to the bike and natural bumps in the road keep my Perpetuem mixed and the A2 doesn't flinch. It rattles a little in chunky parts of the road but never leaked and performed flawlessly. The only issue I have is tucking the straw into a rubber band when not taking a drink; sometimes it gets wedged a little too tightly and takes more effort than desired to become free. I have yet to try and refill it while on the bike but will try that during my next long ride (whenever that is).

The A2 retails for $59.95, not cheap and more expensive than many of the Profile Design options but is more aerodynamic and doesn't have the mounting issues I've heard many others lament when dealing with aerobar-mounted hydration system.

tl;dr: highly recommended!