Triathlon swimming made easy

by Terry Laughlin

  2. Restoration. Because you're a triathlete, you'll train in at least three sports and possibly weightlifting or other cross-training. At times, you'll be over-trained — tired, sore, or heavy-legged. Only one form of training has the potential for truly assisting in your recovery. That's swimming, because of the absence of gravity, the massaging effect of moving gently in water, and because maintaining blood flow through sore, tired limbs helps to flush them out. Thus, recovery often happens more quickly and completely with gentle swimming than with simple inactivity. Learning Stage practice thus affords three benefits at the same time: recovery for sore or tired muscles, maintenance of the aerobic base, and skill improvement. That's a lot of value to pack into an hour.

  Advancing to Practice

  There's no hard and fast rule for earning promotion from Learning to Practice Stage nor any firewall between one stage and another. Common sense is the only rule. Focus on activities you do well and easily. Minimize or avoid those you find difficult until you learn to do them with more ease. You may advance from Learning to Practice fairly quickly in basic skills, such as balance, while finding yourself in Learning mode two or three years down the road for advanced skills such as maintaining impeccable balance while breathing or staying fluent while swimming briskly. Most likely you'll be doing 85% Learning, 10% Practice, and 5% Effective Swimming over the first few months on the TI program. Six months later, that mix may shift to 60% Learning, 25% Practice and 15% Effective Swimming. My own program, after many years of teaching and practice, is about 5% Learning (there will always be some aspect of technique that requires intense concentration), 45% Practice, and 50% Effective Swimming.

  You can do whole-stroke swimming at the Practice Stage, but use the same guidelines as for drills: short repeats (25 to 50 yards), slow speeds, and focus purely on ease and control. Think about doing just one thing really well when you swim. Refer to the menu of Sensory Skill Practice focal points in the next chapter for suggestions.

  Effort and Surrender

  It was the poster that got my attention. The one that appeared in New Paltz store windows announcing a new yoga center. It pictured an 85-year old woman in the Warrior position, showing more grace, strength, and suppleness than all but the most athletic teenager. It said that she had not begun practicing yoga until age 65.1 thought of myself as rather athletic for age 48, but there was no way I could have done that position that impressively. In fact, for a month or two I had been feeling almost crippled by a recurring back problem. Swimming is supposed to be good for your back but it was doing nothing for mine.

  So I purchased a membership that allowed me three months of unlimited classes and began attending classes almost daily. Within a month my back problem — which, for five years had resisted every high-tech solution short of surgery — was history. Within three months I felt taller and straighter than I had in 25 years. And, when I recently turned 50,1 was more supple than at any time I can recall.

  Two years of yoga practice have also yielded several dividends I never expected. Though I signed on for the physical benefits, yoga practice has taught me countless lessons about how to teach and practice swimming skills more effectively. The penetrating attention that one learns in practicing the asanas is an incredibly valuable habit for practicing stroke drills. As I gradually realized, the point of doing asanas is not to touch your toes more easily, but to learn concentration, self-awareness, self discipline and how to "balance effort and surrender." Though I realize I have only scratched the surface, I still have learned more than I expected about how to use my body more intelligently.

  I also continue to discover opportunity for refining movements that I had thought were pretty good already. Though I've done the triangle pose nearly a thousand times, I still manage to improve a bit each time I twist into it. Perhaps pressing the outer heel of my back foot into the floor a bit more firmly.. .or holding my upstretched arm just a bit straighter above my nose.. .or rotating back my upper shoulder ever so slightly. And because my body resists each of those fine adjustments — to "breathe away" tension and allow straining muscles to work with, not against, one another. Gradually, I learn to maintain the pose in a calm — almost detached — way, without fatigue, for as long as I wish.

  Whatever you may do that helps you understand your body better, to be more aware of positioning and alignment, to reduce the energy cost of movements and positions, will serve you well no matter how advanced your swimming may become. Am I saying you need to begin attending yoga classes? Well, it wouldn't hurt if you did — I've found yoga to be far superior to any "swimming stretches" for developing the kind of strength and range of motion that I feel when swimming fluently. But if your schedule is already too packed for one more activity, you can adopt a "yoga mentality" in your drill practice. By now you may already be yoga-breathing. But you can achieve more mastery in your drill practice by adopting certain attitudes about your drill practice.

  Zen Drilling

  The lyengar style of yoga I've been studying is noted for the slow, precise, and concentrated way in which it is practiced. This experience has given me a greater understanding and appreciation for the following qualities:

  Awareness. Moving slowly and with great control and concentration allows me to more fully inventory how my body reacts, particularly when I attempt something unfamiliar. In order to swim with the sort of flow and economy that I describe as "Fishlike," swimmers must master a whole range of new skills, none of which is intuitive or instinctive. In order to learn them smoothly, you must first develop self-awareness as a habit, which will in turn reveal the importance of:

  Stillness. In yoga, you prepare yourself to do the new or difficult by first becoming still, composed and balanced, then retaining those qualities as you explore the new or difficult. I have learned to emphasize that quality in the execution of skill drills in my teaching. Learn stillness in Lessons One and Two and cultivate it in Sweet Spot in the advanced drills.

  Economy. Doing something new or difficult usually involves a certain degree of strain. When moving to a more advanced yoga position, I've noticed that, at first, I tend to over-react to its difficulty. I "try" too hard. But by backing off a bit and approaching it more gently, I can pare down my reaction. With more practice I can gradually execute the new skill with greater economy. When prescribing a series of repeats of a new drill to triathletes in a workshop, I strongly emphasize the importance of doing "less" on each successive repetition — to execute it with increasing economy of motion.

  Relaxed precision: We are more powerful when relaxed. We are less effective when tense. Relaxed precision and effortless ease are the key to transforming forcing into flowing. At the very highest level of mastery are those swimmers who can maintain relaxed precision in the heat of a race — particularly a sprint race. In yoga, when trying to perfect a difficult (and possibly uncomfortable) pose, we work on "balancing effort and surrender." Do the same when you find a drill difficult. When doing whole-stroke swimming, avoid "struggling" to swim fast.

  Drill like an artist, not an athlete. Seek easier and less, rather than harder and more. In a fluid medium, what could be more important than flow?

  Chapter 13

  Practice: Making Fluent Movement a Habit

  People usually have no idea what they look like while swimming. They may vaguely sense that their stroke is choppy or uncoordinated, but they don't really know until they see themselves on video. Which is why the underwater video we shoot at TI workshops and view in slow motion is such an eye-opener.

  We videotape each class on Saturday morning, before we begin teaching. After lunch, we show it to a rapt audience, who understand immediately why their swimming has been so frustrating or exhausting. Upon viewing their awkward and angular positions, our students leave the state of unconscious incompetence (being unaware or unclear what they're doing wrong) and achieve conscious incompetence. They know exactly what they have to fix and why. They may not yet know how to fix it, but the video is a powerfu
l motivator for change.

  The following afternoon, after six to seven hours of teaching, we videotape again. The image moving far more smoothly across the TV monitor offers vivid confirmation of how much they have improved. But they also recognize that the painstaking concentration that went into swimming 25 yards with a longer and more coordinated stroke is just a starting point, called conscious competence. They've learned to do some things right, but if asked to swim just a little farther — say, 100 yards — or a bit faster, they'd have a hard time maintaining their hard-won skills. Their longer-term goal is to reach the stage of unconscious competence where they can swim efficiently and fluently for nearly any distance and at moderately fast speeds.

  The difference isn't simply in distance or speed; it's also in your ability to move with effortless grace. Consider the simple act of brushing your teeth. Having done this perhaps 30,000 times over the years, your "brushing practice" has produced "brushing skill" that lets you do it expertly without even thinking. But what if you brushed with your other hand? It would take a lot more conscious control simply to avoid injury. That's the difference between conscious competence and unconscious competence. Only when a skill becomes autonomic can it acquire effortless flow.

  The only way to take a skill from conscious to unconscious competence is by performing thousands of correct repetitions. Anything else just confuses your nervous system. So our goal as we begin Practice Stage activities is to practice your developing skills often enough to allow them to become automatic — and to avoid doing things that cause you to revert to "struggling skills."

  An important part of this process, after you develop balance and begin to erase your struggling habits in the Learning Stage, is to gradually "take off the training wheels" by replacing drilling with whole-stroke swimming. You can avoid being pulled back toward "human swimming" and imprint only correct repetitions in your "skill bank" by being scrupulous about swimming with as much fluency and ease as in your basic drills. Here's the progression:

  1. Mix some whole-stroke swimming into your drill sets

  2. Introduce simple, narrowly focused, swimming-only sets, designed to make it easy to begin swimming with good SL, control, and coordination.

  3. Practice enough correct reps to make fluency and SL a habit and by making choices to avoid struggle.

  1. From Drills to Swimming

  Your drill practice has begun to build good movement habits, good practice habits and a keen awareness of the difference between flow and struggle. That awareness is at the heart of how to use drills to become a better swimmer. Drills transform largely by providing powerful insights into how fluent swimming feels, as if you were able to do a "virtual lap" inside the skin of a skilled swimmer. In drill-swim sets, simply ask yourself "What feels different and better about this drill, compared to how swimming usually feels?" Then maintain that feeling for as long as you can while swimming whole stroke. The moment you lose it, stop swimming.

  How many laps of drill and how many of swim? Drill until it feels just right; at first that may take 100 yards (4 x 25) or more. Then continue swimming for as long as your stroke feels as good as the drill, which, initially, may be only 25 yards. So, your first drill-swim sets may be 3 or 4 lengths of drill to every length of swim. As you get better at both, it may take only 50 yards of drill to feel just right and you may be able to swim feeling that good for the same distance. Ultimately, you'll find that it takes only a brief reminder, perhaps 25 yards of drill, to nail that feeling and you can sustain it while swimming for 3 to 5 lengths.

  Keep Your Focus

  In Chapter 12,1 suggested that you think about doing only one thing really well during the Learning Stage. That's still the rule here. If you alternate 25 yards of Skating with 25 of swimming, and are focused mainly on keeping your head hidden during the drill, then think only about your head position as you swim. Here are some other suggested combinations of drill and focal point for drill and swim:

  UnderSkate. Roll like a needle to breathe; roll all the way to the air.

  ZipperSkate. "Lean on your lungs" with light hips and legs; being completely supported by the water.

  UnderSwitch Roll freely as you swim.

  ZipperSwitch "Pierce" the water; fit your body through the smallest hole as you swim.

  OverSwitch Stay "connected" (close the gap between shoulder and head) as you swim; swim with your whole body.

  Triple UnderSwitch Extend a weightless arm on each stroke.

  Triple ZipperSwitch Have a soft, gentle, compact recovery; your hand barely clears the water and re-enters immediately.

  Triple OverSwitch Cut a hole with your fingertips and slip your arm cleanly through that hole as you swim.

  You're certainly not limited to these. In Chapters 4 through 9 I gave many focal points for improving your stroke and, during the Lessons, I gave multiple focal points for every drill. Use any of them during drill-swim sets and eventually you'll develop some favorites.

  When you first do Drill-Swim sets, start with Block practice — maintaining one focus or sensation for at least 5 to 10 minutes. Later, as the sensation becomes second nature, shift gradually to random practice, sequencing different drills and different focal points every minute or two. If you feel confusion, make it less random, but random practice, by making your brain process new skill info more frequently, can help accelerate your progress toward unconscious competence.

  Go Easy on Yourself

  Follow the same practice techniques you adopted in the Learning stage. Go as slowly as necessary' to move with flow and ease. Take enough rest to ensure that every repeat is as good as the first — or as good as the best. Ignore the pace clock and focus purely on how you feel. Use yoga breathing for your rest interval — and rest frequently; 50 to 100 yards is far enough to drill/swim without pause. Limit your sets to 10 to 15 minutes. In fact, don't begin a set with the intent to do a particular number of reps or yards. Instead, check the minute hand on the pace clock and plan to simply practice a particular skill with blissful ease and flow until a set amount of time has elapsed. When the minute hand has advanced 10 or 15 minutes, the set is complete and you have just had an incredibly valuable period of imprinting.

  2. Super-Slow Swimming (SSS)

  Over the years I have steadily increased my Stroke Length and steadily reduced the number of strokes it takes me to swim 25 or 100 or 1000 yards. My lowest count for swimming 100 yards was about 60 strokes in 1970 as a college swimmer. By the early 90s my stroke count for a leisurely 100 was down to 50, but the thought of doing it in 45 or 46 strokes was unimaginable. But in April 2001,1 swam 100 yards in 39 effortless, fluid, and rhythmic strokes.

  The key was Super-Slow Swimming: In order to travel 100 yards in 39 strokes, I swam as slowly as I could.. .without losing my balance or rhythm or turning it into a drill. SSS offers two primary benefits: It allows maximum concentration and "purposeful exaggeration." To experience the concentration possible, try doing a single pushup.. .as.. .slowly.. .as.. .possible. Doing a pushup super-slowly will incredibly heighten your awareness of all the muscular interaction required for a pushup. You'll not only feel every chest, shoulder, arm, and back muscle that provides leverage but also realize how much abdominal muscle you use to stabilize your torso as you lower and lift it. SSS gives you greater awareness of all the forces that resist you and the counter-forces you use to overcome that resistance. Such slow movement allows you to minimize and maximize those forces as never before.

  The second benefit is the opportunity to bring "purposeful exaggeration" (see Chapter 10) to whole-stroke swimming. The Fishlike Swimming techniques that make you far more efficient and effective are almost completely counter-intuitive. We make them feel more natural, in part, by exaggerating them slightly in our practice. The leisurely tempo of SSS leaves a lot more "room" in each stroke cycle for that exaggeration.

  I've been able to achieve super-low stroke counts while doing SSS because I had the time to keep extending my hand a bit longer...to rot
ate my body just a bit farther.. .to "skate" past another couple of lane markers during my recovery.. .and to achieve more front-quadrant overlap on my switches. Having practiced and imprinted all those efficiency builders to an extra degree while swimming super slowly gives me something to "trade" as I increase my Stroke Rate and swim faster. The result is that I retain more of a hydrodynamic advantage — which reduces my energy cost — at any higher speed than swimmers who do not practice SSS and purposeful exaggeration.

  What's the benefit of the super-low stroke count I can achieve at slow speeds? When my lowest count for 100 yards was 50 strokes (about 13 strokes/length) my time for 100@50 was only about 1:24. Now that I can do 100@39, my time for 100@50 is about 1:14. When 100@50 was the best I could do, I could sustain that count of 13 spl for only a few lengths. Now I can maintain 13 spl for nearly any distance, which means my SL and economy for distance swimming have improved markedly.

  One more thought on SSS: Those low counts must be effortless. If you make yourself tired and breathless at a low stroke count, you're simply practicing a less-frantic form of struggle. You must have impeccable balance to make SSS fully beneficial. You need to feel that it's the complete support of the water that gives you the freedom to float your hand forward a bit farther.. .to rotate your body a bit more.. .to "skate" past another few lane markers in each stroke cycle. Remember that your "best" SL is always one you can achieve with a minimum of effort.