Triathlon swimming made easy

by Terry Laughlin

  Before the workshop I could do only three pool lengths before I had to stop. Sunday, as soon as I could feel the balance, I did 40 lengths without stopping and felt great afterward. After a few laps, John stopped swimming and sat on the wall to watch me because he could tell something had changed We've also noticed that other people actually stop their swimming to watch us practice; they seem intrigued by how quietly and smoothly we drill Everyone else is splashing all around us and we are just flowing down the pool!

  I was convinced the 77 approach was right after reading the book but I was a little scared coming to the workshop since I was such a weak swimmer. However, I knew I had to learn the right way. I learned so much that weekend and received so much support and encouragement from the coaches. I never thought I would enjoy swimming so much; what I felt on Sunday was an experience of a lifetime. And I realize it is just the beginning. I'm going again tonight and can't wait to get into the pool!

  We will think of you all when we get out of the water during our triathlons refreshed, not tired Thank you again for your caring and knowledge; we are both so much better for it. Sincerely, Dottie (and John) O'Connor

  The lesson: Stop just swimming and start LEARNING. And once you begin working on the drills, be patient in your practice. They WILL work if you give them time. And once they do, your new skills will take you far beyond where you might have gotten by just continuing to swim laps.

  Part 3

  The School for Fishlike Swimming

  Up to this point, our focus has been conceptual: building a knowledge foundation that allows you to understand what constitutes good swimming and how you can swim better just by changing the shape of your "vessel." Now that you're "book-smart" about swimming, it's time to move our classroom to the pool and begin teaching your muscles. Over the course of four Total Immersion "swim lessons" and other guidance on how to teach yourself successfully, you will learn to swim in a completely new way that will be faster, easier, and more enjoyable. We will do this as if every person who picks up this book knows nothing at all about swimming. We've found that all of our students, no matter how much swimming they may already have done, progress much faster by starting with the most elementary skill and progressing logically through the whole sequence of TI drills. So let's get right to it.

  BUT FIRST: The four lessons to follow contain detailed instructions on how to do each drill in the TI freestyle learning sequence, and the text instructions are complemented by dozens of photos of the key positions. Still, as one of our students said, "If a picture is worth a thousand words, video must be worth 10,000 words." Short of being taught face-to-face by a TI Coach, the surest way to master 100% of the essential skills is to use the companion DVD, Freestyle Made Easy, as your primary guide to the fine points and desired movement quality. FME was produced expressly to complement this book and is unconditionally guaranteed to be the best learning aid you've ever owned. If you did not purchase the DVD in a package with the book, please refer to the Resources section in the back for order info.

  Chapter 10

  Swimming As a Martial Art

  Start with a "beginner's mind"

  Next time you visit the pool, spend 10 minutes watching other swimmers. What you'll see - even if you watch for an hour - is that every stroke looks exactly the same. Which is just how you'd look to someone watching you. Your stroke is a habit pattern, deeply embedded in your nervous system by thousands or millions of previous strokes. The phrase "practice makes perfect" gets it only partly right. "Practice makes permanent" is far truer.

  As we switch from theory to practice, you're about to become your own coach and teacher. And your success will depend on practicing only the movements you'd like in your "muscle memory" and on scrupulously avoiding whatever you don't want imprinted there. "Tweaking" your present stroke will limit your progress, because the imprint of millions of previous strokes is so resistant to change. Fortunately you now have a proven alternative.

  Each year we teach about 1500 students in TI workshops. Their average stroke count at the beginning of the workshop is 21 to 22 for 25 yards. A day later that average has improved to 16 to 17 strokes, or an average efficiency gain nearly 25 percent. This degree of improvement, following several hours of instruction, is stunning for people who may have swum 5 or 10 years with little noticeable change. The two primary reasons for such transcendent improvement are "muscle amnesia" and "martial-arts swimming." You can also create transformation by observing these two principles in your self-coaching.

  Avoiding Struggle

  After we videotape our students doing a length of freestyle on Saturday morning, they don't swim another length of whole-stroke freestyle until the final 10 to 15 minutes on Sunday afternoon - by which time they've spent about six hours practicing efficient swimming movements without a single "old" freestyle stroke. By then, most have replaced their old stroke with a new, improved stroke. By teaching with movements their nervous systems don't recognize as swimming, we've given them "muscle amnesia," a blank slate for learning new skills and bypassing old habits.

  The second key to success is the "martial-arts swimming" part. Formal swimming instruction has existed for only 50 years or so, while martial arts have been taught and practiced for thousands of years, giving martial-arts masters considerably more opportunity to learn the best way to teach movement skills. Their non-negotiable rule is: "Avoid practicing movements you cannot perform correctly." We've added our own nonnegotiable rule which is: "Never practice struggle." Martial-arts students always start with positions and movements that seem ridiculously simple and progress through more challenging movements by small steps.

  As they soon discover, movements that seem the simplest soon reveal great complexity and can be mastered on many levels. The more patiently and mindfully they practice each step, the more flowing and effortless they become at advanced skills. We'll guide you through the same kind of progression on the way to being Fishlike.

  Taking a Break with Yoga Breathing

  For years, I've seen swimmers trying to do drills faster or with less rest. While grudgingly acknowledging that drills probably have value, they're still locked into "staying in shape." So let me clarify: Increasing efficiency always produces greater improvement, faster, than training to improve fitness. And, until you've thoroughly polished your skills, it's difficult to work on both fitness and efficiency at the same time. Later, as I'll explain, you can integrate efficiency practice with forms of conditioning. But if you push yourself while drilling, you'll defeat their purpose.

  To reap all the benefits drills can provide, you must practice them in a calm, controlled state. One proven way is to ignore the pace clock. When I'm most focused on efficiency, I have no interest in how fast I may be going. I'm solely interested in how easily I slip through the water, how fluent and coordinated my movements feel, and how silently and splash-free I can move along.

  But though I make no use of the pace clock, I still want some way to ensure that my students get enough rest to ensure attentive, meticulous movement. We do that by using deep, relaxing "yoga breaths" for rest and recovery. They bring two restorative advantages: They normalize breathing, which helps keep your heart rate down. They also "center" you mentally and psychologically, reducing distraction and improving concentration.

  Recover During Each Lap

  The technique is simple: Inhale deeply and slowly, then let your breath fall out, relaxing as you do. Adjust your rest by increasing or decreasing the number of yoga breaths before your next exercise or repeat. While teaching, I recommend that students take at least three breaths while pausing in Sweet Spot, between cycles, as they are learning the drills. Later, they can take only one or two breaths in Sweet Spot to make their drill rhythm more "swimming-like." But, if you take fewer breaths be careful not to reduce to the point where you feel rushed. Increasing the Sweet-Spot pause to five to seven breaths will turn any drill into more of a kicking exercise. This will be a far more valuable way to practice kicking t
han kicking with a Styrofoam board.

  Recover at the Wall

  We also use yoga breaths to regulate rest at the wall between repeats or pool lengths. When teaching, I also recommend at least three yoga breaths at the wall, so long as you are in the learning phase for any drill. Again, you can easily adjust your rest by increasing or decreasing the number of breaths. Are you feeling slightly breathless or fatigued? Take more breaths. Or take fewer, if you can drill impeccably with less rest. When shifting to 50 repeats from 25s, you might increase your rest interval from 3 breaths to 5. Once you've had a chance to experiment with the yoga-breathing interval, you'll find it the simplest way to adjust your rest period as finely as you want.. .while bringing the additional dividend of improved concentration to a style of swimming that always benefits from more acute attention.

  Recover Anytime

  Yoga breathing in Sweet Spot has proven effective as a way of restoring control in many circumstances. Some TI triathletes have used it as a way of resting in the middle of an open-water or triathlon swim. They stroke and breathe rhythmically for as long as they feel comfortable. If they feel themselves getting ragged or inefficient or simply want a moment to collect their wits, they just roll to Sweet Spot and take a few extra breaths. This effectively gives them a "pool wall" in the middle of open water. Once they feel restored, they just roll nose-down to the Skating position and resume smooth, controlled stroking. (See more on this in Chapter 21.)

  If you're like me, you'll soon find yourself using yoga breaths for recovery in other activities. I first learned the technique when taking yoga classes and quickly realized its value for swimming. Now I use them in all manner of exercise - from governing how long I hold a stretching position (10 or more breaths) to varying my yoga practice from more meditative (more breaths in each position) to more dynamic (one breath in each position) to setting rest intervals between 1000meter repeats on my rowing machine.

  The TI Buddy System

  In 2002, we made an exciting discovery at our workshops. By having our students partner to teach balance to each other, following guidance from our coaches, everyone learned faster. The Buddy System had the greatest impact on students who struggled with their kick or tended to sink. But accomplished swimmers benefited as well, probably because they were also teaching as they learned. And following the workshop, quite a few of our alumni told us of exciting successes in teaching friends and family members to swim better. In Buddy System learning, swimmers take turns in two roles: The swimmer, who learns the correct position for that drill with help from the coach. The coach, who positions and supports the swimmer's head, and assists with momentum by towing or launching, then releases and continues observing the swimmer to assist as needed. Over time, we've applied the Buddy System to virtually every stage in the learning process, in every instance with exciting results.

  Advantages of the Buddy System

  Learning to control our bodies in a horizontal position in the water presents some unique challenges: (1) We lack visual feedback on our own position. (2) We're not accustomed to horizontal balance. On land we stand on our balance; in the water we bang from it. (3) We aren't yet tuned in to sensations that we must learn to recognize over time in the water - for example: Is our head aligned? Is the lead hand as deep as it should be? Are our shoulders stacked? Using the Buddy System, students:

  • Experience perfect balance without struggling to achieve it,

  • Learn better by helping and observing others solve the same problems,

  • Develop a cooperative, we're all in this together attitude, and

  • Can focus on what good balance position feels like, and how little effort it takes to maintain it.

  Assisting "sinkers" and poor kickers

  If your partner struggles with balance, your assistance can be invaluable. Every swimmer's instinctive reaction to sinking or loss of momentum is to kick harder, which just increases turbulence and fatigue. Towing allows them to master balance and ease without worrying about sinking or loss of momentum.

  When decent kickers are towed, then released, they can maintain momentum on their own. But poor kickers lose headway quickly. When you observe this happening to your partner, resume towing for a moment, then watch to see how long they maintain it. Repeat several times, as needed. Gradually, you should be able to tow less frequently and more briefly, and see your partner learn to maintain momentum for longer stretches. The best response to a loss of momentum is to reduce drag - including drag from a big splashy kick. (Vertical kicking is also effective in making the kick more effective.)

  When playing a coaching role, it's sometimes appreciated if you tell your swimmer exactly what you are going to do, before you do it. For example, "I'm going to support your feet now," or "I'm going to move your arms closer to your sides." This minimizes distraction, and helps to keep the swimmer relaxed. Finally, if you have any doubts about your qualifications to "coach" your partner, simply report exactly what you observe. Pay particular attention to head position and alignment. Minor misalignment of the head will be multiplied by a factor of 5 or 10 in the legs.

  THE TOTAL IMMERSION SCHOOL FOR FISHLIKE SWIMMING

  Lesson One: Finding Balance and Slippery Positions

  If you consider yourself a pretty fair swimmer already, if you've done countless hard training repeats, or finished the swim leg of several races in fairly good position, you may be tempted to skip the balance drills. Don't! If you have human DNA - even if you've already swum in the Olympics - you can still improve your balance, and as it improves you'll use less energy at any speed.

  If, on the other hand, every stroke you've ever taken has been a frustrating struggle, if you're "toast" after two laps, if you always feel as if your toenails are in danger of scraping the pool bottom, Lesson One can be transforming - giving you an unprecedented feeling of being supported by the water, of basically being able to just lie there, kicking gently, while tension and discomfort melt away. Once you have that, you'll immediately swim with far more ease, and the rest of the lessons will go much more smoothly.

  Smart Practice for Sinkers

  Athletes who are lean, densely muscled or long-legged (and particularly those with two or more of these traits) commonly find that no amount of position-adjusting allows them to achieve real comfort in the nose-up balance drills (#s 1 through 3). These drills are important in teaching the "recovery position" you'll use between cycles of the "Switch" drills in Lessons Two, Three, and Four, but you'll learn the sense of balance you'll use while swimming the whole stroke in nose-down positions, in Drill 4 and beyond.

  Rather than struggle to float those "heavy" legs, I recommend that you ask a friend or swim partner to help out as you learn balance drills initially. As described above, your partner can tow gently from your head or shoulders in Drills 1 and 2, and from your extended hand in Drill 3. As they tow, put your focus entirely on relaxing; using a gentle, compact kick; slipping through the smallest "hole" in the water; and memorizing the sense of easy support you gain.

  After providing some momentum, your partner can release you and continue walking backward in front, ready to resume towing if they see you begin to struggle. Their "draft" should make it a bit easier for you to continue independently. You focus on feeling - and kicking - the same as when you were being towed. Repeat tow-and-release several times, trying to sustain independent momentum, after release, for just a bit longer each time. (The "buddy system" for learning balance and other skills is illustrated in detail in the Freestyle Made Easy DVD described in the appendix.)

  In general, "sinkers" struggle more with the first three drills, so my advice is not to endure frustration while trying endlessly to master them. Do them expeditiously and with a degree of patience to learn as much as a reasonable effort will allow, then move on to Drill 4, Fish, where sinkers begin to understand how balance should feel. You can also use fins for solo practice, as detailed at the end of this lesson.

  Secrets to Success

  1.
Practice ease. Move as quietly and economically as you can, trying not to disturb the water. Strive for an almost Zen-like sensation of stillness.

  2. Kick silently and gently with a long, straight, supple leg. Keep your feet inside your body's wake or "shadow." If you feel slow, don't kick harder; instead, try to reduce resistance by improving your balance and alignment.

  3. When practicing Lesson One for the first time, use a short, shallow pool section, where you can stand up at any time. You move slowly when doing balance drills, and with a weak kick even 25 yards can be tiring. Until you can do just 10 yards effortlessly, don't go farther. (Backyard and motel pools are often perfect for Lesson One practice!) If you feel tired or are working too hard, don't push on. Instead, stand up, take a few deep breaths, and relax before resuming.

  4. Limit practice repeats to 25 yards or less. Rest whenever you lose a sense of ease and relaxation. Focus mainly on the sense of comfort produced when you can just lie there, kicking gently, and let the water do the work. Imagine being so stable that you could carry a champagne glass on your forehead.

  Drill #1: Balance on Your Back

  Why we do it: This is the easiest way to relax and enjoy the support of the water. You don't have to worry about breathing, so you can just lie there and experience balance. Effortlessness and stability are the key sensations of balance; learn them here then maintain in other positions.

  Follow this sequence (kicking gently at each step):

  1. Hide your head. Ask a partner to compare your head position with the picture. Your face should be parallel to the surface, with water wetting your chin, and the corners of your goggles. Tuck your chin slightly to keep your head aligned. Minimize distraction from waves in your face by wearing nose-clips. This is your head position whenever you're nose-up.