Key #2: Limit your stroke count.
It can't be repeated too often: It's to be expected that your stroke count will go up a bit as you go faster. But a dramatic increase in your stroke count as you go faster usually means that you're giving up too much efficiency (i.e., stroke length) for your increased speed. As your stroke efficiency improves, as we said in Chapter 2, you'll see two changes in stroke count. First, your stroke-count range (the span from the lowest count you can possibly achieve at "super-slow" swimming speeds to the count it takes to swim at your fastest speed) will move lower. Second, that same range will get narrower.
I speak from experience. The lowest 25-yard stroke count I could manage 30 years ago in college was about 14 strokes per length. At racing speeds, as I fatigued, that might balloon up to 26. Today, even though I'm no longer within hailing distance of college age, my lowest stroke count (at super-slow practice speeds) is 8 strokes per length and at race speed, 16 or 17. That's because, over the past three decades, I've worked tirelessly and intensively on stroke efficiency. My stroke-count range has dropped at both ends, with the "floor" falling by six strokes and the "ceiling" falling by nine. And the range has narrowed from 12, to 8 or 9.
Your range in short-axis strokes should be much narrower than in longaxis strokes. The best male sprinter I coached at West Point had a freestyle range of 7 strokes — from 6 s/1 when he was practicing super-slow swimming, to a racing maximum of 13 s/1. As a butterflyer his range was only 3 strokes — from 5 s/1 at maximum efficiency and minimum speed, to a maximum of 8 s/1 when racing 100 yards.
Your own ability to stay fluent at your full range of speeds from super slow to racing can be measured the same way: finding how close you can bring your "floor" and your "ceiling" together. Check that now by swimming a pool length at your slowest speed with your longest possible stroke. After resting a bit, swim another at your absolute maximum speed. Don't try to swim in any special way: Just go fast. How much difference is there between the two counts? Good. Now start reducing the gap between the two. Both skill work and simply making it a habit to count every length you swim will help you reach your goal.
Key #3: Know when to slow down.
Knowing when to slow down is more important than almost anything else when it comes to learning to swim fast fluently. I can relate endless stories about great sprinters who spent an astonishing amount of time swimming slowly. In 1981-82, for example, I coached a University of Virginia grad named Phil Perdue who had continued training and competing after college. Despite having to fit in training around a full-time job, he achieved a world ranking of 10* and 11th in the 50-meter free for the two years I worked with him. Phil would arrive late to practice each day after work. He would then swim with incredible ease, beauty, and precision for 15 minutes before gradually increasing his speed but losing none of the silky quality of his super-slow swimming. There was a seamless connection between the way he looked when swimming slowly and how he looked at full speed. Phil instinctively knew how to use "slow" to improve "fast." It's a skill the rest of us can develop.
While coaching the sprinters at West Point, I spent far more time admonishing them to slow down than to swim faster. The non-negotiable rule was, "You can swim only as fast as you can swim with fluency and control; the instant you feel your stroke becoming rough or you feel yourself 'practicing struggle,' you're to slow down."
I paid much more attention to the flow of their strokes than to the pace clock or my stopwatch. One day in the fall of 1998,1 had the sprint group practicing a series of 50-meter repeats on which they were to swim the first 6 stroke cycles (approximately 20 meters) at maximum speed and SR, then swim slowly the rest of the length. The two best sprinters, Joe Novak and Heidi Borden, were swimming with impeccable flow. Even at maximum speed, there was total coordination between their limbs and torso. But a plebe named Scott Edwards was choppy and ineffective. In trying to maximize his SR, he shortened his stroke and flattened his body roll.
I called Scott up on deck to watch Joe and Heidi for several minutes, to observe how they kept a long stroke and ideal body roll in a nearly seamless manner even at high SR. I then explained that he shouldn't be surprised if it took him his entire first season to learn that kind of coordination, and that the way to learn it was to//rs/ establish the desired SL and core-body action, then raise his SR as high as he could while still maintaining fluency, and no higher. The exciting thing was that practically as soon as he slowed down, Scott's core body integration with arms and legs became nearly perfect, and all at once each stroke expressed grace and power — far more power, in fact.
Of course, the difficulty of maintaining fluency at faster speeds is far greater for sprinters, who must prepare themselves to race at much higher stroke rates. But the challenge is the same for all of us. Whatever speed and stroke rate you will use when racing, you must first learn how to maintain control, fluency, and a long stroke at every point on the speed/stroke-rate curve between super slow and maximum.
And that means being smart enough to realize that to go really fast, you first have to know when to slow down.
Chapter 10
Drills: How Theory Becomes Practice (And How You Become a Better Swimmer)
Enough talk. Having read this far, you could probably give a convincing chalkboard lecture of your own on how to become a more fishlike swimmer. So it's time to roll up our sleeves (if swimmers had any) and get into the pool. It's time to learn how to learn the skills you need to master.
But first a caveat: The skills that will make you more of a fish won't come naturally. You'll need to make a conscious, diligent, and attentive effort to begin "imprinting" them and, over time, to make them as instinctive as the wasteful and tiring habits they'll replace. The good news is that "diligent" doesn't mean "difficult." In fact, the steps you'll be following are so simple that virtually anyone can do them. And the process will be far more rewarding and enjoyable than any conventional lap or training routine you have ever experienced.
Most everything you need to master is contained in the series of TI Lessons that begin on page 98. These lessons are designed to help you build each stroke from the ground up, using easily mastered drills. We'll help you break each stroke into bite-sized bits that you master individually, then gradually assemble into a whole new way of moving. Each step is easy to work on, so you're practicing success, not failure. It's a virtually guaranteed process that is:
1. Flexible. You can choose just the right degree of drill difficulty and continually adjust it to provide an appropriate challenge.
2. Sequential. Each step provides precisely the skill or awareness you'll need to tackle the step that follows.
3. Incremental. Each step is slightly more advanced than the previous one. And there are no wasted moves. Every drill teaches you an ingredient
essential to the fluency and skill that will make you fishlike in the whole stroke. When that finally happens, you'll not only swim better, but also enjoy it more. In fact, you will feel good every time you swim. And the ongoing challenge of becoming increasingly fluent will make swimming just as satisfying mentally as it is physically. On top of that, you will be prepared to take over as your own coach, to continue refining your efficiency more and more and more — practically forever.
For us to help you succeed in all this, however, we need to do more than teach efficient stroking. We need to teach you how to create and sustain what we like to call a swimming "flow state," an almost euphoric condition similar to the famous runner's high in which you virtually lose yourself in the satisfaction of an activity. What gets you into that flow state? Doing something that you value, that brings you pleasure, that requires concentration, and that provides a feeling of competency and mastery. And it's the "drill pieces," pieces that will gradually come together as your new stroke, that can best put you on the "flow state" path.
Learning vs. Just Training
Total Immersion has outperformed all other swim-improvement methods because it teaches s
kills the way we learn them best — in small, logically organized pieces. Learning any new motor skill is a problem-solving, trial-and-error exercise. But too much error can be so discouraging that enthusiasm goes right down the drain, and with it the chance to improve.
The secret is to practice something you can do, not something you can't. That means first breaking a complex or advanced skill into simple tasks that can easily and quickly be mastered, then recombining those tasks gradually, seamlessly, and effortlessly into an integrated whole. Each basic task becomes the springboard for a more advanced one, and that is exactly what our TI swim lessons do.
Makes perfect sense, don't you think? Well then, why do so few swimming coaches teach this way? Because they spend so much time training athletes, and so little time teaching, that few have thought about how to break down the complex skills of swimming into a series of simpler mini tasks. Because they coach in the "whole-stroke" world, their advice typically comes in scattershot bursts as they spot something wrong and try to tell you how to fix that one thing... and then the next thing... and then the next thing, kind of like putting a bunch of Band-Aids on a gaping wound. Instead, we offer a logical series of "success lessons" that are mastered quickly, and that lay the groundwork for higher-level skills that gradually crystallize into a well-formed stroke that doesn't need "spot fixing."
The swimmer's instinctive conviction that whole-stroke swimming is the path to better whole-stroke swimming is also to blame for this wrong-headed approach. Far too many of us, coached and uncoached, hamper our own learning by spending too much time swimming the whole stroke without first achieving real fluency in its fundamental parts. Whole-stroke swimming, for most people, is time spent "practicing how to struggle." To learn a better way of swimming you have to actively unlearn the style you're stuck with, which means never doing it again. Every length you swim with poor form makes it that much harder to change to a smoother form.
In a sense, TI drills will help you reach your goal in a more direct way than the route taken by some of the world's best swimmers — the ones whose fluency and effortlessness make it all look so natural. While these human fish have had coaches who helped them to where they are today, they have also had to rely even more heavily on their exceptional "body intuition" to know when they had it right. They've experienced countless breakthrough moments when their stroke has felt just right, moments that the kinesthetically gifted swimmer can immediately seize and store in a catalogue of similar "how-to- move" experiences. Eventually, an elite swimmer's skill library becomes comprehensive enough to produce an extremely smooth and highly efficient way of swimming.
But this process takes too long and, unless you are kinesthetically gifted and have unlimited time, it's a process that won't happen for you anyway. So TI steps in, takes this somewhat haphazard and slow process, and organizes it for you. With our step-by-step drill system, any swimmer can create his or her own flashes of insight, store them in muscle memory, and recapture them in an organized, convenient, and reliable way, instead of stumbling onto them now and again by accident. And by practicing them repeatedly, the right movements become more natural, automatic, and integrated.
Eventually, when you do go back to swimming after polishing the pieces of it in your drills, your body re-assembles the stroke naturally into a muchimproved whole. Your nervous system has taken so many "snapshots" of sensations similar to the ones the elite swimmers instinctively feel, that it becomes easy for you to assemble them into a complete "movie." And because our natural efficiency in water is so limited to start with, bettering it is a process that never really ends. One of the most exciting things about swimming is that there's virtually no "improvement ceiling" when it comes to good technique. Whether you're a beginner learning basics or an elite looking to medal at a national meet, there's always something new to work on.
Natural Learning: Experience Is the Best Teacher
As children, each of us learned essential land-based life skills such as how to move, balance, lift, climb, and carry, without any formal instruction. But as adults, natural learning rarely happens for us in water because we seldom feel truly comfortable there, and because swimming instruction is usually presented in ways that actually hinder natural learning. Our TI drill progressions fix that, taking you back in a way to the easy naturalness of childhood experience. They guide you through a series of exercises that let you discover how your body behaves in the water and reveal how to use that awareness to fullest advantage. The process is systematic, as we've said, but it's not rigid; think of these drills as a liberating opportunity to discover fluency on your own.
The drill process transforms your swimming most completely when you free yourself from the pressure to swim "right" or to go fast. Experiment with each exercise for as long as you want, repeating it as many times as you want. Your goal is not some sort of strict perfection, but relaxation and fluidity; to gradually turn each exercise from unfamiliar and possibly a little awkward, into smooth and easy.
Understand that, once you begin, the toughest thing to overcome will no longer be your stroke but your impatience. We've learned through teaching freestyle skills to thousands of swimmers that after a few days of practicing drills, they start to worry that they're not doing enough work to stay in shape. Or they expect the drills to be a quick fix that lets them get back to their ailing stroke overnight, rather than a completely new way to practice swimming.
Don't let impatience stand in your way. Know what every smart athlete knows: Reducing energy waste always pays greater dividends than increasing energy supply. In the end, you'll become a much better swimmer if you allow yourself the freedom to swim with a sense of exploration and discovery, rather than with your usual sense of determination or obligation. If you are to master swimming as an art, you can't treat the water as just another piece of exercise equipment. As your skill improves, you'll be able to do more swimming and more "training," but every stroke and lap will be far more productive and effective.
A Dose Of Drills
They're the best medicine for your stroke because ...
1. Your swimming muscles need a shot of amnesia. If you've been struggling with your stroke for months or even years, your muscles have become very good at moving inefficiently. And they will happily keep it up for as long as you keep swimming. Stroke drills can break that cycle because they're so different from your normal motion that your muscles don't "recognize" the movement. Result: You can finally practice new movement patterns on a neuromuscular "blank slate."
2. Small pieces are easier to swallow. Because the swimming stroke is made up of so many finely coordinated parts, it's virtually impossible to digest the whole thing. So our Total Immersion drills break down the stroke into a series of easily mastered mini skills, presented in logical order. Each drill teaches a key skill, and mastery of each step gives you the key to mastering the next one. You simply assemble these "building blocks" into a new, more efficient stroke.
3. "Trial and success" outperforms trial and error. "Mini skills" can be mastered quickly and easily. So from the very first lap you begin programming yourself for smooth movements, and erasing your "struggling skills." The more you practice fluency and control, and the more they become your new movement habit, the faster you learn to swim better. That string of successes boosts your motivation and self-confidence — and studies have shown that learning happens faster when you feel good about what you're doing.
4. Skill drills are self-adjusting. The more you need them, the more drills help you. Beginners learn basic skills in big chunks, and rough edges get smoothed off quickly. Experienced swimmers, doing the same drills, tune in naturally to far more subtle refinements, bringing a higher degree of polish to skills they already have. And the more you have to learn, the more you should drill - up to four times as much as your "normal" swimming if you're a novice. (In butterfly, it's actually better not to do any whole-stroke swimming early in the learning process.)
Bottom line? Less swimming and
more drills will make you a better swimmer, faster, than any other training program — even though it means you'll log less distance per hour of swimming.
This goes double, by the way, for anyone who swims competitively. Learning is about change, and the competitive attitude often resists that. Yes there is risk in shifting your focus away from speed and effort, but the reward is proportionate to the risk. If you fail to change, if you continue to do everything just as you always have, how can you expect to improve any faster than before? Where will anything but the usual fractional performance improvements come from?
For this learning experience to be successful, there must be not just change, but big change — not only in the way you swim, but also in your very thinking about swimming and the importance you give to the component parts of the experience. This is nothing less than what's now commonly called a "paradigm shift." Where previously it might have seemed vital to test your capacity for hard work, you might now consider it equally important to sometimes explore how easily you can do something. Where previously you might have felt it important to kick as hard as possible when swimming fast, now you might strive to make sure your legs are integrating naturally and easily with what your entire body is doing. Swimming is no longer about brute strength but about sheer smarts.
Swimming made easy Page 10