Swim form and technique (or lack of it)
In an effort to ease my frustration with swimming I picked back up my copy of Total Immersion Swimming by Terry Laughlin and actually read more than the workouts this time. I spent some time pondering balance points, gliding and rotating and then decided to give some of it a try at the pool. One of his first suggestions is to attempt to float on your back and find your galance point. He likens it to balancing on a ball, where the ball is your chest. Finding a balance point allows your legs to float more. So I got in and attempted to simply float on my back so that my legs came up. I tried pushing my back into the water, rotating over the imaginary ball so that my back was arched, leaning my head back into the water, arms over my head, etc. I seemed to float fine... except for the part where my feet never left the pool bottom...
Undeterred by the fact that most 6 year olds can float better than I can, I then rolled over on my stomach and started working on body position. TI recommends a "quadrant" approach where you divide yourself using the water line as the X axis and your shoulders as the Y axis. The theory is the more you keep your arms forward of your Y axis and at to just below the X axis (out front and below the surface) the easier it will be for you to get up on plane. This is also coupled with keeping your head in line with your back and not lifting, but rather rotating, to breathe. These concepts did seem to work for me and I found myself quite a bit flatter and closer to the surface (although not at the surface by any means).
Encouraged by this I then added more reach and glide to each stroke. Extending my arm out a bit more and leaving it there for a bit longer. This slowed down my stroke, but once I timed it I realized that it didn't actually slow me down. Hmm... less effort, same efficiency... kewl! It almost felt like I was doing hitch drills so I tried to relax and slow down my recovery stroke.
Then I went through a workout that had a warmup set of 200 swim/100 kick/400 pull, followed by 16 X 50 with a 300 warm down swim. During the 400 pull I really worked on breathing every 4 and reaching/extending every stroke. During the 50s I did several sets (I think 8 of the 16) at about 90% effort, giving me 10% to concentrate on form. My 50 times dropped from 54 seconds to 48 seconds and then consistently stayed there for the entire set. Again, all with seemingly less effort and recovery between. I also tried another suggestion, since I was essentially doing intervals, that I got from an Active Triathlete article. I took my 50 split and added 30% to the time. This became my recovery period between intervals. Even though I WANTED more time, this was just about right.
I ended up with a fastest split of 47:12 for the session. Shaving almost 7 seconds off of my normal split by slowing down, extending my reach, gliding more and pulling only a bit harder. I also focused on really driving my chest into the water and feeling my body on plane. I did not have to kick hard at all, although the logic seemed to say otherwise. I had to make myself NOT kick as much and only to help me stay on plane or rotate.
This is all still so new to me that the concept of technique over power seemed ludicrous. I thought I needed to be stronger. Although this is true to a point, what I'm finding is that form and technique seem to be far more important (remember, I'm self taught with only a couple of group lessons) than pure power. If my technique is off, then all of my power just goes to keep me on plane and away from moving me forward. If I present too much of a profile to the water (not streamlined) then all of my power goes to fight through the water because I'm the one blocking it.
But with just a few adjustments to form I am slipping through the water with less effort and more efficiency. I didn't feel nearly as tired at the end of the session. And I cut my stroke count down from 24 to 19 in just the first session. Granted, that's not the 13-16 that elite swimmers can do, but it's MUCH better. Especially since I have only been swimming for 8 months.
I think I'm on to something here. Yeah, OK... So I'll never float like a cork or be an elite swimmer. But I can be an effective swimmer with better form and technique. I don't want to come out of the water first. Mid pack is fine. As long as I'm not tired or falling off the back, I give myself a much better chance on the bike and run. That's good enough for me.
I felt kind of rough at the Traknight workout last night and was only able to finish a portion of it. I could tell I was tired and pretty sore so I decided to cut it short. That was good enough.
This morning at the group run I was a little stiff and sore but started off easy and then picked it up on the way back. I decided to run the shortest route to give myself a break. I averaged around a 7:50 mile without much effort and I wasn't tired when I got done. My aches and pains went away after my warm up mile which lets me know its just effort pain and muscle soreness, nothing serious. I give my legs a running break until Saturday and even then I only run 3 miles.
For the next two weeks I want to focus more on the bike and swim, so I may only run three days a week. My run will be fine at Nationals. As always, it's the swim and bike I need to really work on. Should be interesting.
