Simple Grace: How To Swim Better in Four Easy Steps
The reason our TI methods work as fast as they do is simple: They've had to. By teaching hundreds of workshops that last just a weekend, rather than giving lessons that go on for weeks — that is, by having hours to teach fluency, not months or even years as most coaches have — we've been forced to develop a teaching approach that virtually eliminates wasted time or effort. And since so many of our students are relatively inexperienced, we've done away with all of the technical mumbo-jumbo that sometimes seems to be the pride of other coaches. Our instruction is uniformly simple and understandable. In the process of all this, we've found it doesn't have to take a long time to learn the basics of good swimming. In fact, the key to learning to swim with almost ridiculous ease comes down to just four basic steps:
1. Learn to be in harmony with the water. Water is an unnatural and, for many of us, a threatening environment. Our bodies were not designed to travel easily through it (how well we know!), and our basic swimming instincts cause us to fight it, not work with it. We naturally become models of inefficiency, filled with tension and so inhibited we can't possibly move freely. Bad all around. For when we don't move freely we certainly don't flow, and since water is a fluid, flowing freely through it is the very definition of efficiency.
Happily, one skill pretty much automatically puts you in harmony with the water: balance. When you learn balance first, you not only stop fighting the water and wasting energy, but also learn comfort and ease, which allows you to master every other swimming skill much faster.
2. Learn to rotate your core body rhythmically, flu idly, and effortlessly. Lacking arms and legs, fish propel themselves through the water by oscillating or undulating their bodies — economical, incredibly powerful, and utterly effortless. Whether cruising lazily or darting with blinding speed, fish never seem to be trying. In fact they're not trying, at least not by our standards, because that effortlessness is produced by core-based propulsion, and core-based propulsion is enormously efficient.
In "human swimming," propulsion instinctively comes from churning the arms and legs. To speed up, you churn them harder and faster. What that does best is make waves and create turbulence. It's also exhausting. What churning and a fast turnover don't do is produce effective propulsion. For your swimming to be powerful and effortless, your movements should originate in the core (trunk) of the body, not in the arms and legs. Your movements should also be rhythmic. Fishlike swimmers learn rhythmic, coordinated core-body movement: body rolling or rotation for freestyle and backstroke, undulation for breaststroke and butterfly. Those core-body rhythms release the energy, power, and movement rhythms that subsequently become a strong, comfortable swimming stroke.
3. Learn the most slippery body positions. Water is thick. Drag is what makes you slow, and tired. There is no workout or training program that can ever help you win the battle with drag. But you can learn to avoid it. Torpedoes, submarines, and racing boats are all sleekly shaped for the same reason fish and aquatic mammals are: so they can be slippery, moving through the water as fast as possible with the least waste in effort or power. Because drag increases exponentially as speed goes up (twice the speed, four times the drag), drag reduction pays off exponentially as speed increases. That's why humans who learn to maintain shapes and positions that are far more slippery than their old way of swimming see such a rapid and dramatic improvement. Slippery swimmers — like torpedoes and boats — need far less power or effort to swim at any speed.
4. Link the propulsive actions of your arms and legs to your core-body rhythms. Learning to pull and kick happens very early in the "Human Swimming" lesson plan. That's OK, as in Red Cross instruction, when the objective is to keep people safe by teaching them how to simply stay afloat and move toward safety. But it's not OK when the goal is efficient swimming, and it's an unfortunately common strategy. Even swim coaches, teaching technique to more advanced students, define "technique" as "how to use your hands to push water toward your feet."
In the TI approach, focus on the propelling actions comes at the end. First you learn to have a long, balanced, and effortlessly rotating core body. Only then do you link arm and leg movements to the body's rhythms. This provides effortless power and ensures that your swimming will be fluent and graceful.
But again, none of these shapes or positions is natural or instinctive, nor are the skills of balance or body roll. They must be learned. And with the help of the clear and logical course of instruction in the chapters that follow, they can be learned by anyone.
Chapter 2
Stroke Length: The Secret to Becoming a Better Swimmer
Good swimmers have one thing in common: They make it look easy. Genuinely great swimmers - and there may be only a handful of them in the entire world — are so fishlike that they look downright elegant, in the same way that Michael Jordan looked elegant playing basketball. Genuinely great swimmers look so graceful and controlled that you'd never suspect they were going all out.
What has that to do with the rest of us? Everything. I have found it is possible — with a lot of coaching experience and with my eyes wide open — to understand what great form is all about, and then to pass along the secrets to other swimmers. Certainly I've learned more about what to teach and how to teach it by watching truly gifted swimmers than I've learned from reading books about swimming.
But the revelations didn't come overnight. Even in high school and college, when I was definitely not the kind of swimmer anyone would describe as "gifted," I was fascinated by teammates who could swim faster than I could while looking as if they were loafing along at half speed. So I made it my business to understand how they did what they did. Now, after more than 30 years of swimming and coaching — and watching — I can well understand the excitement of Ted Isbell, a TI disciple who coaches the Channel Islands Aquatic Club in Ventura, CA. After observing the fastest teenage backstroker in the world, Aaron Peirsol of the Irvine (CA) Novas Swim Team, Ted wrote to me about what he'd witnessed:
"My older son competes against Aaron so I've had many opportunities to watch him swim. I've counted Aaron's strokes per lap many times and although he's always the fastest swimmer in his age group, he consistently takes 25 percent fewer strokes than other swimmers. In fact, if you cup your hands around your eyes to isolate Aaron during a race, you'd think he'd be in last place because he appears to be swimming in a leisurely fashion. If you shift your 'tunnel' view to the second swimmer (usually 10 to 15 yards behind Aaron), he appears to be swimming hard enough to break a world record. As you remove your hands from your eyes, you are stunned by the lead that Aaron has gained, swimming so effortlessly."
And that's the key. Peirsol, as is often true of the world's best swimmers, has the rare ability to swim at top speed on far fewer strokes per lap than his peers, making fast swimming look effortless. Most of the rest of us, on the other hand, can make even slow swimming look like struggle. The better the swimmer, the less struggle you'll see as they move through the water.. .and the more they'll look like Aaron Peirsol.
Among recent world-class swimmers, Alexander Popov is my favorite example. Popov has admittedly been blessed with great athletic talent, but his coach, Gennady Touretsky, has also made a very conscious effort to teach and reinforce fluidity and relaxation and make them habitual in Popov's swimming.
The impression I get from Aaron Peirsol, from world-class champions such as Alexander Popov, and from virtually all exceptionally "fishlike" swimmers, is that they always seem to be o/the water, not just in it. The word that best captures the quality of their swimming is "flow."
And what is the secret to flow? For years I was convinced it was pure talent. Great swimmers, I believed, somehow knew in their bones how to remain fluid and relaxed when they were swimming fast. The rest of us could just watch in envy. But after 10 years of intensive teaching, I now realize that fluid and relaxed swimming is possible for anyone who pursues it logically and analytically. Using simple information, you
can understand exactly how flow is achieved and then, to a surprising degree, go on to actually achieve it for yourself.
Once you've "broken the code" of fluid, relaxed swimming, you can consciously practice, just as Alex Popov does, the movements and qualities that produce it, and that all but guarantee you'll swim your best. Not that you'll swim as well or as fast as an Aaron Peirsol, but you will swim as well and as fast as you are capable of swimming.
And the secret is precisely what Ted Isbell noticed when watching Peirsol: a longer stroke. The technical term is stroke length (SL). This secret is actually widely known, but for some reason that I can't comprehend, nearly all coaches and swimmers ignore it. Makes as much sense as knowing a simple shortcut to solving a tough math problem, and stubbornly insisting on solving it via the long, involved method — then getting the wrong answer anyway! Coaches and swimmers alike are conditioned to pursue success mainly through sheer sweat. More and harder laps are how they assume they'll get faster, even though more and harder laps actually tend to make your stroke shorter, not longer. Hard work, done without sufficient care and thought, can actually slow a swimmer's progress.
An even more powerful impediment than habit is instinct. Most every swimmer in the world who wants to go faster automatically thinks first of churning the arms faster. And a faster stroke (i.e., higher stroke rate, or SR) results in a shorter stroke —again, just the ticket for swimming slower, instead.
Stroke Length: The Mark of Champions
How do we know stroke length is so important? It's a fair question, and easily answered. Over the last 20 years, curious scientists with time on their hands have attempted to discover if the secret to fast swimming could be reduced to some identifiable common factor. In several independent studies, these researchers analyzed the results of important swim meets and, aided by videotape or direct, personal observation, tried to figure out what made the faster swimmers faster. Each study produced the same result: Winners took fewer strokes. In general, the fewer strokes each subject took, the faster he or she swam. And that proved true not just for the champions, but all through the ranks.
More compelling still, when researchers cast a wider net to analyze the results of several Olympics, and of every US Olympic Trials from 1976 to 1996, and even of lesser meets such as the 1998 Iowa State High School Championships, this increasingly open "secret" was consistently evident in nearly all events. In fact, you can test it yourself at any local meet. Count strokes per length for swimmers in the slower heats of nearly any event, and compare their counts with the swimmers in the faster heats. The faster swimmers will almost certainly take fewer strokes.
This simple insight has incredible potential to transform your own swimming, if you'll just use it. But, as I said, few swimmers or their coaches do use it. Most continue to train as if the pace clock and the yardage total were all that mattered. If these studies had identified aerobic power as the key to better swimming, that intense focus on distance, time, and effort would logically seem to be the most effective training tool. Yet not one of the studies concluded that.
None of this is to suggest that fitness is unimportant. But at the Olympic Trials and at the Olympics themselves, everyone has worked hard; everyone is at peak fitness. Yet certain swimmers still have an edge over all the others. And that edge, it turns out, is a longer stroke. Plenty of athletes pump iron or muscle their way through endless laps with huge paddles and/or drag suits, as if sheer strength was the surest way to swim faster. Yet when scientists study the impact of strength on swimming, they usually find that the best swimmers in the world are less powerful than any number of mediocre swimmers. So weight-room visits and power-training swim sets aren't the answer.
Meanwhile, Ted Isbell and a growing number of "evolving-paradigm" coaches (as TI advocates like to call themselves) across the US have made SL the central focus of their training. With what results? All of these coaches report dramatic, even unprecedented, improvements. The proof, to paraphrase, is obviously in the pool.
What, Exactly, Is Stroke Length?
To work effectively on your SL, you'll need to understand what it is. Stroke Length, in fact, is one of the least understood terms in swimming (for simplicity, I'll refer to it as SL, and to stroke count per length of the pool as s/1). Even though swimmers are beginning to catch on that a long stroke is advantageous, most are still unsure of exactly what stroke length means or how to make a stroke longer. Do you do it by reaching farther before your hand goes in? Or by pushing the water farther toward your feet?
Most swimmers do, in fact, think of SL as "how far you reach forward and push back with your hand." Coaches, on the other hand, understand that there's more to SL than just "the length of your reach and your push," but they seldom know how to directly and significantly improve it. When I eavesdrop as a visitor during practices, I hear directives from the deck such as, "You've got to make your stroke longer!" which the swimmer naturally interprets as "Reach farther forward and push back more." This will result in a small increase in SL, but in most cases (the 98% of us who are not intuitive swimming geniuses), that increase will not last for very long. It will, in fact, be lost the moment the swimmer tries to go faster. Nor will it bring the swimmer anywhere near his or her best possible SL. So the swimmer remains unconvinced and goes back to relying on SR (stroke rate) for speed.
Just as trying to reach farther forward and push farther back has little effect on SL, a swimmer's limb length isn't the critical factor either — though you'd never know it from the staff at the Olympic Training Center. At the OTC, I've watched coaches and researchers measure a swimmer's reach (touch as high as possible on the wall, mark the spot; let the hand hang down at the side, mark the spot; measure the distance between the two marks) in an attempt to predict optimal SL. Yes, a swimmer's reach will have some influence on the SL he or she can achieve, but not as much as you'd think.
How do I know? Because I've worked for years on my own SL, not to mention the SLs of thousands of students who have attended TI workshops. I've seen countless swimmers of below-average height (and modest reach) who have looked much "taller" in the water than swimmers who were, in fact, tall on land (with much greater reach). These shorter swimmers turned out to have a much greater SL as measured by their s/1 (strokes per length of the pool).
This discrepancy baffled me for years, as I struggled to increase my SL without much success. So long as I worked on it in the ordinary way, by trying to reach more and push back more, I managed to increase it by a puny 5% each year or two. Then my teaching experiences began showing me the importance of being balanced and slippery, and all at once I was able to boost my SL by astonishing amounts — 20% in just a few weeks — and to help other swimmers score SL improvements of 10% to 50% literally overnight. Often, these were people who knew the value of SL and had been trying for years to improve theirs by doing a better job of pushing water toward their feet. It hadn't worked.
The reason stroke length doesn't have a lot to do with arm length, or with how far you reach forward and push back, is because SL is how far your body travels each time you take a stroke. So it's mostly your body position - not your height or strength or the length of your arms - that affects the distance you will travel on each stroke. The best way to measure your SL is simply to make a habit of counting strokes — at all speeds, and on virtually every length you swim. You'll soon find there's not a single number that represents your "best" stroke count. Rather, you'll discover you have a strokecount range—fewer on shorter repeats and/or when you're swimming slower; more when you're going farther or faster. Your primary goal during much of your swim training should be twofold: Gradually lower that entire range; and reduce the difference between its upper and lower end. At other times, you'll just maintain a consistent stroke count and work at developing more speed at that count.
But be warned: Not everyone agrees on which strokes count for "stroke count," and which don't. Purist coaches and researchers insist on measuring SL only between the fl
ags, to factor out the glide (ie., non-stroking time) that occurs on turns and pushoffs. For reasons I'll explain later, 1 prefer the far simpler measure of counting all strokes (hand hits). If you take fewer strokes to swim a given distance, you've improved your SL. Period. All that really matters is whether you're spending your precious pool time concentrating on things that will help you swim faster or more easily, and counting strokes does exactly that. A "pure" SL number is important only to researchers who may need exact SLs in order to compare one swimmer to another. The swimmer you most need to compare yourself to is you. If your range was 17 to 24 s/1 last year and 14 to 20 this year (or if you can swim faster at each point in that 17-to-24 range), stay the course; you're doing something right.
What, Precisely, Can Better SL Do for Me?
The key to becoming a better swimmer can be found in a simple equation:
V = SL x SR
or Velocity equals Stroke Length multiplied by Stroke Rate. How fast you swim (V) is a product of how far you travel on each stroke (SL), multiplied by how fast you take those strokes (SR). In that way, at least, swimming is no different from running or in-line skating or cross-country skiing, where the equivalent terms would be Stride Length and Stride Rate.
Throughout most of the animal kingdom, the really fast creatures — race horses, greyhounds, cheetahs — use about the same stride rate at all galloping speeds. So do most really fast humans, such as Marion Jones and Michael Johnson. They run faster by taking longer strides, not by taking them faster. It's only when humans get into the water that we suffer a form of momentary biomechanical derangement, resorting to churning our arms madly when we want more speed.
Swimming made easy Page 2