Triathlon swimming made easy

by Terry Laughlin

  The lesson: The Total Immersion approach is not just a set of stroke drills; it's a holistic discipline for practicing flowstate training that can benefit all your physical activities. Learn the habit of focus in your practice of swimming, then apply it to every form of training you do.

  Part 4

  Smart Swimming for the Rest of Your Life

  The first three sections of this book explained why swimming well is universally frustrating, but utterly essential, for triathletes. They also showed how easy it can be to become Fishlike, and took your stroke to school. Part 4 provides a plan for becoming your own best coach. If you train as suggested, I can promise all of the following:

  1. You will see steady improvement in your efficiency and fluency...even if you continue swimming for another 30 years.

  2. You will develop exactly the right kind of "swimming fitness" for triathlon success. Not the kind competitive swimmers need. The kind you need.

  3. Swimming will become an increasingly satisfying way to exercise, very likely to the point where it becomes your favorite way to stay in shape, providing more physical and mental benefits with each passing year.

  So let's dive right into your plan for using every minute of pool time effectively for continual improvement today and for as long as you swim.

  Chapter 11

  First Step: Use Your Existing Fitness More Effectively

  It didn't take long after I swam my first race in 1966, for me to learn my place: I'm a pretty average athlete. Through high school, college, and Masters swimming I've recognized that other swimmers were born with a gift to swim faster than me: They could just dive in the pool and go fast while I always had to work long and hard to come even close to them. For a time, I believed that if I was willing to outwork them, I could close the gap. And, through sheer effort, I did narrow it, but I never became the equal of the really good athletes. So I gradually accepted my status — always a bit behind the best swimmers, but proud of having worked hard to get close.

  But as I moved through my 40s and, now, past 50,1 have renewed hope: I look more closely at those who are faster than me and — particularly in longer events — can see many opportunities to gain on them by working tirelessly to eliminate inefficiency. They may still have physical advantages but, as we age, physical capabilities diminish, while skill and efficiency may continue to increase. If I use my energy better as we all gradually lose the capacity to generate it I expect to become steadily more competitive. That prospect keeps my interest high.

  As a triathlete, you probably have similar goals of improving your standing. Thus you probably do as I do—gauge your competitors and ask how you can improve your performance relative to theirs. In two of your sports, it will mainly be pure hard work that makes the difference. But in swimming, I guarantee it will be your cleverness in training that moves you ahead. Our training plan will show you how to make the absolute best use of every lap and hour of training, at whatever stage you may be in your development as a swimmer.

  Training Happens

  In developing a training plan for triathletes, I can't ignore the importance of fitness and conditioning. As an endurance athlete, I've come to view every physical thing I do as "training" and am always alert for opportunities to squeeze a bit more athletic value from it, whether it's swimming, biking, hiking with my family.. .even yard work.

  This is also true of Total Immersion swim training. Conventional swim training focuses on building an aerobic base, raising the anaerobic threshold, developing lactate tolerance...through work, work, and more work. TI training puts your primary focus on learning to move efficiently and then expanding the range of distances and speeds at which you can do that. It shifts the focus from how much and how hard to how right. And the physiological stuff? Well, we define conditioning as "something that happens to you while you practice efficient swimming movements." And be assured that essential conditioning does happen, even while doing the gentlest of drills. For each type of TI training, I'll explain how it helps improve your fitness and why that form of training is important.

  Functional, Not Generic, Training

  Because endurance is the primary goal of triathlon training, we all know what it is — the capacity to do work without fatigue. The process of building endurance is like a chemistry experiment using your own body. You train your body to do a better job of storing food energy, converting it into muscle fuel, transporting it to your muscles (along with the oxygen needed to metabolize it) and remove waste products so your muscles can keep working at a high level. You improve those functions by.. .work.

  When you do more work than your body is accustomed to — longer duration or higher intensity — your muscles and circulatory system develop the ability to circulate more blood with every heartbeat, to pack more beats into each minute, and to transport more oxygen and fuel in each blood cell. Because it seems so straightforward, we see the equation as pretty simple: More miles done harder and with less rest, produce all those desired adaptations.

  And they do.. .when we're running or cycling. But the problem we face in swimming is that the "fuel tank" we're working so diligently to fill has a catastrophic leak. It's like this: As a runner you may be about 90 percent mechanically efficient. The fuel in your tank goes 90 percent into moving you down the road; 10 percent is lost to air resistance, road friction, and heat (sweat). But as a relatively new swimmer, you're more likely to be about three percent mechanically efficient; even Ian Thorpe is only 10 percent efficient — but he takes about 7 strokes for 25 yards while you may take three times that number. In that case, three calories of every 100 go directly into propulsion, while 97 are spent making waves and turbulence.

  The reason for the huge disparity between swimming and running efficiency is the difference between propelling by pushing off solid ground and moving against air resistance, compared to propelling by pushing on water with your hand and moving through a medium that's 800 times thicker than air. And then there's the matter of mechanics. You learned to run reasonably well from a very young age; as a serious athlete, by concentrating on simple aspects of carriage and stride, you can approach the mechanical efficiency of elite runners. On your bike, your feet are strapped to the pedals, which can move in only one direction. If you learn a decent aero position, once again the efficiency puzzle is highly amenable to solution.

  But in swimming, the range of possible movement choices is enormous and the room for error is vast. Only a tiny fraction of those choices are correct, and, because you're traveling through a fluid, the penalty for making the wrong choice is huge. Conventional swim training, with its focus on more and harder, is virtually guaranteed to force you into the wrong movement choices. Thus, the smart swimmer will adopt a more accurate definition tor swimming endurance.

  Instead of the capacity to push yourself through lap after lap without pause, your new definition is this: Swimming endurance is the ability to repeat effective swimming movements (Stroke Length, economy, and fluency) for any duration, speed, and stroke rate that you choose. It takes a specific kind of endurance to stay efficient and fluent for 20 to 60 seconds at a Stroke Rate of 100 strokes/minute and a very different sor t to maintain good SL for 20 minutes to 2 hours at a SR of 50 to 60 strokes/minute.

  Adopting this definition should motivate you toward the following training progression:

  1. Eradicate your struggling skills and replace them with fluent movement skills.

  2. Patiently turn those Fishlike movements into indelible habits.

  3. Train yourself to systematically expand the range of distances, speeds, stroke rates and heart rates at which you can swim fluently.

  As you spend hours doing this, conditioning happens—the right kind of conditioning. Neuromuscular training that ensures your muscles develop the right habits, and physiological training that ensures the muscles that produce efficient movement receive the benefit of the adaptations your training produces (rather than the ragged-movement muscles that are conditioned when you
train by simple more-and-harder).

  The Total Immersion training categories that correspond to the three goals stated above are 1) Learning, 2) Practice, and 3) Effective Swimming. Let's move straight to your plan for an effective Learning Stage.

  Chapter 12

  Learning to Move Efficiently

  You've undoubtedly succumbed to the temptation to get in the pool and start churning out laps; after all it's what everyone does. But until you learn balance — or unlearn your struggling skills — almost any whole-stroke swimming is likely to reinforce bad habits and delay progress toward fluency and efficiency. So your first step is to replace whole-stroke laps with whatever allows you to practice fluent movement and to avoid practicing struggle. For most of you, that means drills.

  Your primary goal during the Learning Stage is to learn to do your drills impeccably. Part 3 provided exhaustive guidance on how to learn and practice drills. This chapter organizes that information into a training-and-development program. First a couple of rules for success in the Learning Stage:

  1. When practicing drills, 100% right is 100% right; 95% right is 100% wrong. As you progress through the four lessons — and particularly during the first two — you'll experience moments where you feel uncomfortable or lack coordination. Often it takes only a tiny adjustment, say in your body or head position, to make you feel dramatically better. Anytime you feel even a little bit uncomfortable, your natural reaction will be for some kind of compensation — craning your neck, using an arm as an "outrigger" for support, kicking too hard. The problem with these seemingly innocent reactions is that they imprint energy-wasting movements on your nervous system. So your constant goal is effortlessness and flow.

  2. 100% right takes time and attention. Patience in mastering subtle movement skills may be natural to martial artists and dancers, but is an odd notion to most endurance athletes. I only came to appreciate its value after beginning yoga practice (see page 113). So here is your one goal for the next 10 to 20 hours of pool time: Simply learn to make mindful, examined movement a habit. Don't count laps or watch the pace clock; focus purely on reducing effort and increasing flow.

  3. 95% of the 100% right will be determined by how well you master balance drills. Prioritize Lessons One and Two until balance becomes nearly effortless.

  Organizing Your Practice

  Successful drilling is your sole goal. Do whatever it takes to practice controlled, fluent movement and avoid struggle. Everything else is secondary. These practice-design tips will help.

  Short repeats. At TI workshops, we teach Lessons I and II crosspool, not lengthwise. Because you move more slowly in static balance drills, even a trip of 10 to 12 yards can take time and be fatiguing, especially if you have a weak kick. Experience tells us that longer repeats mean 10 yards of reasonably good form followed by 15 yards of progressive struggle. We don't want that part imprinted on the nervous system so we stop at 10 yards. Your Learning Stage repeats should mainly be 25s and 50s. Your rule for how far is: Every lap should feel as good or better than the first. If it doesn't, stop and rest — even mid-lap.

  Short sets. Once you've gotten past learning the drills and have begun assembling a number of 25s or 50s into sets, limit yourself mainly to sets that last about 10 minutes. Beyond that, mental acuity is usually not as good, so take a break or work on something that requires a bit less concentration or simply shift to another drill or focal point to renew your attention.

  Super-slow movement. Crawl before walking and walk before running. Do all swimming movements well slowly before trying to do them faster. Go no faster at any time than your ability to maintain complete control of the movement. If you find yourself, because of better balance or sleeker body positions, seeming to move a little faster, you should mainly be marveling at how little effort it takes to do so.

  Do one thing well. Avoid paralysis by analysis. Use the focal points listed for each drill in Lessons One to Four. Give all of your attention to just one point on each pool length. On the next length, either focus on the same point again, or shift to a new one, but think about doing just one thing well and trust your body to use the imprinting you've done at other times of other focal points. Over time, they will all harmonize and integrate smoothly.

  Super Silent. Quieter drilling is always better. Once you've mastered the mechanics of a drill, one of the simplest things you can do to improve your drill quality is to do it more quietly.

  Give yourself enough rest. When you take a break at the wall, you're not on a "schedule" to push off again. Listen to your body. It has a pretty good sense of the difficulty of what you're asking it to do. Just ask: "Am I ready to do that a little better than last time?" Begin again when you feel prepared to do the drill well. And use 'Yoga breaths" or bobs to set your intervals.

  Training Happens

  You can make training as complicated or as simple as you like. I have all the "authoritative" swimming tomes that describe aerobic training effects in terms like "concentrates muscle enzymes such as succinate dehydrogenase," but I can't recall an instance when one of my swimmers approached a race more confidently because their enzymes were concentrated. On the other hand, when they master a balance drill and can feel that their hips and legs are lighter than ever before, they know something has happened that will help them swim faster.

  But be assured that, as you practice things that make you feel lighter in the water, training does happen. Your physiology receives essential benefits in the Learning Stage and in every form of Total Immersion training, both drills and whole-stroke swimming. I prefer to use terms such as "super-slow, cruise, brisk, and race-effort" to describe the physiological goal of a set because they are more easily grasped than a term like "anaerobic threshold." But aerobic capacity will be increased in specific ways by each efficiency-building exercise I prescribe. The main difference between TI training and conventional training is that we make the goal of building and imprinting efficiency the central focus, while physiologic gains happen in the background. Conventional training makes "concentration of enzymes" the central goal while "technique practice" becomes an afterthought — something you do for 10 minutes at the end of your workout. Because you can add speed by subtracting drag or energy cost far more quickly than you can do it by adding fitness or strength, it makes far more sense to put efficiency-training at the heart of what you do in the pool while the physiology becomes incidental.

  The TI/RPE Scale

  Swedish physiologist Dr. Gunnar Borg developed a scale of training intensities to help cardiac-rehab patients monitor the intensity of their exercise. This scale, known as Rate of Perceived Exertion (RPE), has proven effective for athletes as well. Though various versions of his scale have 10 to 20 levels, I find that for most athletes, six divisions allow you to cut it as finely as you need. Here is the Total Immersion RPE Scale, which assigns a number between one and six to your perception of how hard you are working, as well as what your Tl-training emphasis will be:

  1. Literally effortless. Super slow. Very examined. Best for learning new skills. Approximately 50% of Maximum Heart Rate.

  2. Warmup/warmdown speed. Easy and slow. Good for recovery/restoration... and for imprinting good stroke habits. 60% of MHR.

  3. Cruise speed. A level of effort you could maintain for a set of 20 to 30 minutes in training or perhaps up to 2.4 miles in an Ironman race if your stroke efficiency is well developed. If you were running, this would be called "conversational pace".. .though your sentences might be brief. Only a moderate challenge to maintain SL and fluency. A good level for swim-leg race rehearsal. 70% of MHR.

  4. Brisk. Moderately hard. You could maintain this effort level for repeats of 100 to 200 yards in training, for a sprint distance swim leg, or for occasional bursts — say, to pass someone — in a 1-kilometer or longer swim leg. But you need to concentrate to avoid struggle. A more important training pace for swim-only races than for tri-swim races. 80% of MHR.

  5. Fast. Working hard enough to become breathless
and to experience a degree of discomfort. Requires intense concentration to maintain good form. An advanced swimmer might work this hard while swimming 25s or 50s or well-rested 100s in training, but few triathletes would ever swim this hard in a race. On the other hand, if you do Masters swimming (200 to 500 yards), you could find yourself racing at this level. 90% of MHR.

  6. Absolute Maximum. Triathletes have no need to ever swim at this level, unless you plan to race short sprints (100 or shorter) in Masters swimming. 100% of MHR.

  While in the Learning Stage, you'll do all of your training in Levels 1 and 2 of TI/RPE. Your efforts will be more mental than physical as your drill practice will benefit most from keen concentration and complete comfort. You are trying to become effortless in your movements.

  The purely physiological benefits in this stage will be twofold:

  1. Aerobic Base Building. If you're a budding triathlete, you probably aim to train five to 10 hours a week. If you're a serious one, you probably train 10 to 20 hours a week. Simply being able to sustain a weekly volume like that takes a foundation of aerobic fitness. That kind of foundation is developed through exercise that's extensive, not intensive — gentle enough to be sustained, without fatigue, for an hour or more. If you are a beginning athlete, that means really, really easy. If you are an experienced athlete, but an inexperienced swimmer, that means swimming really, really easily. Even if you are an experienced swimmer, but inexperienced in these new techniques, the same thing applies as you learn them. If you're not making yourself tired, you can stay in the pool for longer periods, giving yourself more time to imprint good skills. The extensive, low-effort exercise prescribed in the learning Stage helps develop the cardiovascular foundation for efforts of greater duration — the 10-hour training week, the 2- to 3-hour race — and eventually for efforts of higher intensity.