Triathlon swimming made easy (20 page)

One of the best ways to make speed happen is to avoid timing yourself. At least in the beginning. I've recommended that you ignore the pace clock in setting rest intervals. Well keep ignoring it — and that cherished sports watch on your wrist — as you aim to add a little speed to your repeats. Here's a radical idea: instead of checking your watch, just/ee/ your speed. As an athlete who has done a fair amount of various kinds of training, you should have a well-calibrated internal speedometer. You may not know the
exact
speed, but you can tell relative speed by feel.

On the SL-Builder sets and on other sets in Chapter 15, whenever I mention adding speed as one of your goals, see if you can do that strictly by feel, at least a few times, before you refer to pace clock or sports watch for confirmation, or an exact measure of how much faster you may have gotten. There are at least two benefits to doing so:

1. Better focus. For inexperienced swimmers, the pace clock can be a serious distraction, a source of pressure that can break down the focus and discipline needed to allow new habits of efficiency and fluency to develop.

2. Better self-knowledge. There are no pace clocks along the route — and it's pretty hard to check your watch — when you swim the races you're training for. Doing descending sets strictly by feel, on a regular basis, is a good way to help you develop your internal pace clock.

Later, after you've begun to use the pace clock a bit more regularly and have begun to add times to your stroke-count data base, make it a regular practice to "guess" your time for a repeat as you're finishing, before you look at the clock. A successful distance swimmer can predict his or her repeat time within a very close margin and then swim that time almost on command. Or.. .adjust her prediction as she swims, based on how she feels. Learning to swim without the clock and then to use it judiciously will help you develop the "clock-in-the-head" knack yourself.

Chapter 15

Gears: You Learn the Easiest Way to Swim Faster

If you took a track cycle out on a hilly road course — without a set of gears to help you go up and down economically — your thighs would be toast in no time. If you drove your car in only one gear, you'd burn out your engine in a hurry..
.and
limit your speed dramatically. And yet, virtually every swimmer has only one "gear" for swimming — mainly because they swim most of the time in such a narrow range of SI/SR combinations that their nervous system is not adaptable to anything else. This is true even for many competitive swimmers. Accomplished distance swimmers feel disorgani
zed if they try to sprint, because their nervous systems practice swimming movements only at a Stroke Rate between 60 and 80 strokes per minute, while sprinting happens at upwards of 100 strokes per minute. This chapter will guide you through practice that will give you a set of swimming gears good for any triathlon. They'll allow you to adjust a race plan, to discover the easiest way to swim at the speeds you choose, and to make training more interesting and fun as they give you an unusually complete skill set.

Up to this point, drills and mindful swimming, in the Learning and Practice modes, have given you the balance and coordination to find your optimal Stroke Length. SL Exercises and SL Builders have helped you to begin refining the best range of stroke counts (spl) for practice, and to
systematically increase your SL. The next level of Effective Training is similar to a piano student playing hours of simple notes, chords, and scales until he becomes so deft in striking the right keys that his playing moves from
conscious
to
unconscious
competence. These exercises will first teach you to "play" SL and stroke counts as easily as a pianist playing scales and then help you use your developing gears to learn how to build speed almost effortlessly.

Develop Your Swimming "Gears"

In all these set examples, I will use, for purpose of illustration, an N of 16 spl. You must find and choose your own N. Sometimes that may change from day to day, depending on how fatigued you may be from other training. Remember: your N is usually an average. On a 75-yard repeat, an N of 16 means you aim for 48 total strokes, which might be 15+16+17.

First Gear: Simple Gear Changing

Swim 4 rounds of 5 x 25. Rest for 3 to 5 yoga breaths or bobs between swims.

We did a set like this in the SL Exercises, but we'll repeat it as a tuneup, as a piano student might warm up by playing scales. Using an N of 16, we'll start at N-2 (14 spl), then swim at N-l (15 spl), then at N, then N+l (17 spl), then N+2 (18 spl) on the first round, reverse that order on the second round, then repeat those two rounds.

In other words, the set looks like this:

1st Round: @ 14-15-16-17-18

2nd Round: @ 18-17-16-15-14

3rd Round: @ 14-15-16-17-18

4th Round: @ 18-17-16-15-14

The first two rounds are a test of how well you can
calibrate
your SL. See how finely and accurately you can adjust your stroke and timing to hit the wall in exactly the prescribed count, with no end-of-lap adjusting. The puzzle of subtracting strokes (2nd Round) will turn out to be a completely different task than that of adding strokes (1st Round). The
second puzzle is how to be smooth and seamless at both ends of the scale. Can you swim the lowest stroke count without losing rhythm, without a looong pushoff? Can you swim the highest stroke count without getting choppy or rushed?

On the first two rounds, your learning curve may be steep. But the final two rounds are for applying what you learned solving those puzzles earlier in the set. Calibrate better and be more fluent from the lowest to the highest stroke count. If you pass both tests and want to add one more challenge, do the scale, up and down, one more time and see how fast you can swim at each stroke count. What's the fastest 25 you can swim @ 14 strokes — and at every other count as you move up the scale and back down again? When putting more emphasis on speed, do two things: (1) Just/ee/ it, don't time it a
nd (2) take as much rest as you want between swims. But most of all, have/im with these puzzles.

Second Gear: Intermediate Gear Changing

To continue our piano-playing analogy for "playing" Stroke Length, we'll take the SL just practiced with 25-yard repeats and put together some "chords" with 50s and 75s, to heighten our ability to calibrate SL and change it "on the fly." This will develop a capacity for adaptability that improves your skill set and also serves as a rehearsal for changing speeds efficiently in a race.

Swim 2 or more rounds of 4 x 50 with the following stroke counts (or your own chosen spl combinations):

1st 50: 14+15

2nd 50: 15+16

3rd 50: 16+17

4th 50: 17+18

Don't time your 50s when you first practice this set. You first task is to calibrate your SL, to get comfortable with hitting the prescribed count on each length. The second step is to stay smooth and fluent at every stroke count. Do as many rounds as you want, as long as it feels good and remains interesting to do it, until you have developed a keen feel for changing SL on the fly. For rest intervals, take as many yoga breaths as you need to feel
ready to nail the target stroke counts on the next swim. Allow a bit of extra recovery between rounds by doing 100 to 200 yards of your favorite drills. (When you become truly effortless on this, you won't need any extra rest between rounds.) Once you're in a "flow state" on these — and this may take a week or more of 50-yard practice — move up to 75-yard repeats as shown below.

Swim 2 or more rounds of 3 x 75 with stroke counts sequenced as
follows:

1st 75: 14+15+16
2nd 75: 15+16+17
3rd 75: 16+17+18

Solve this new puzzle in the same way you previously solved the 50yard puzzle. Your goal is to continue mindfully, patiently, purposefully repeating sets like these in practice until you can practically do them in your sleep and smoothly hit any stroke count in your range at will.. .and feel controlled and fluent at all combinations.

Finally, if you find all of this almost boringly easy to do, here's a challenge that is guaranteed to put your SL adaptability to a severe test. Do the 50s or 75s in reverse order. In other words, like this:

1st 75: 18+17+16

2nd 75:17+16+15

3rd 75: 16+15+14

Good luck on this one. You'll need it, but if you can do this successfully, you're ready for promotion to the Life Master level of using your swimming gears.

Third Gear: Advanced Gear Changing

The exercises above have given you an introductory course in how to use your gears, so you can move somewhat adeptly around your stroke-count range. If you've done these successfully, you're ready to use your gears on a "hilly course," by which I mean changing repeat distances and more frequent gear changes. These sets will help you maximize what you can do in combining SL and SR in all kinds of sets from silent and super slow to racing speeds, and will teach you to use lower counts at slower speeds
to "set you up" for greater efficiency at higher speeds. For races, this will specifically prepare you to start at a relaxed pace, to find your most efficient "groove" for a pace you can sustain effortlessly at any distance, and then, if you choose, to efficiently speed up, perhaps to leapfrog from a slower-moving pack to a faster one, or to accelerate briefly to pass another swimmer.

Begin this 1000-yard set by swimming 1 x 100 at a moderate effort (say, 75%). Count your total strokes then divide by 4 to calculate your average spl. In this example, we'll assume a total stroke count of 64, which will give us an N of 16 spl. Then use your N in the following way (stroke counts in parentheses are from the example of 16 spl)

Swim 4 rounds of (3X25)

Each round of 25s is N-2, N-l, N (14, 15, 16)

Swim 2 rounds of (3 X 50)

Each round of 50s is N-2, N-l, N (28, 30, 32)

Swim 1 round of (4 X 75)

Each 75 is N-2 + N-1 + N (14+15+16 or 45 total strokes)

Here's what you'll probably experience as you go through the set: On the first round of 25s you'll probably just be calibrating your stroke length. In each successive round, as you calibrate a bit more finely, you'll change gears with more of an effortless flow, and — just as would be the case if you change gears more adeptly on your bicycle — you'll probably swim a bit faster. This experience results in two key benefits: First, neuromuscular learning occurs as your brain processes new information on each of the 12 lengths in that set. Second, you learn to swim faster withou
t swimming any harder. You use efficiency rather than effort to accelerate, and that will be a priceless lesson.

The same learning experience will be repeated on the two rounds of 50s and the set of 75s, except with your motor-learning center being challenged at a slightly higher degree of complexity each time. Not only does the puzzle change even' length, but also you tackle a higher-order puzzle after each cycle of 300 yards.

Continue using yoga breaths or bobs for your rest interval, perhaps adding a breath or two to your rest period as you move from 25s to 50s to 75s for your repeat distance. If you like, insert 100 or 200 of your favorite drill (or swimming with an SSP focal point) as recovery between
rounds of 300; before long, you'll be able to move easily from round to round, changing gears and speeds as easily in the water as you do on your bike in the course of a 10-mile ride. Continue, at least initially, to ignore the pace clock. Simply/ee/ your speed develop naturally as you let yourself "rev it up" a bit by adding strokes from lap to lap.

Fourth Gear: Lance Armstrong in the Water

If you've gotten this far, you are already swimming with an assurance and mastery enjoyed by only a tiny fraction of all swimmers on earth. You're now ready for graduate-level gear changing.

In the examples below, start the set by swimming a moderate-effort 100 to find your N for the rest of the set. Take your total stroke count, divide by four, and use that as your N to calculate your target stroke counts for all the repeats that follow. Most important, in this set, the N is an
average
stroke count for each swim. There is no prescribed stroke count for each length within a swim. If your target count for the 75s is N-l (which is 15 spl or 45 total strokes in the examples I've chosen), you can take the 45 strokes as 15+15+15 or 14+15+16.. .or 16+15+14, for that matter. Wit
h repeated practice, you'll soon know the easiest and most efficient way to hit your stroke counts for any speed or effort.

Swim 2 rounds of 500 as follows

1st Round:

1 x 100 @ N (64 strokes)

2 x 75 @ N-l (45 strokes)

3 x 50 @ N-2 (28 strokes)

4 x 25 @ N (16 strokes)

Active Rest: 100 Drill or Silent Swim, then:

2nd Round

1 x 100 @ N-2 (56 strokes)

2 x 75 @ N-l (45 strokes)

3 x 50 @ N (32 strokes)

4 x 25 @ N-2 (14 strokes)