Triathlon swimming made easy (24 page)

Chapter 18

Pool Tools: Less Is More

As I mention adding "tools" to your skill set, you may be wondering where does all that seemingly essential stuff — kickboards, pull buoys, and hand paddles — fit in the Total Immersion program? They don't, actually, except in specialized cases. It's true that virtually everyone uses them, but this is one of those cases where most folks just have the wrong idea about what these training aids really do. So let's take a critical look at training tools.

Of all the elements that make up the inexact gift known as "swimming talent," the most considerable is extraordinary kinesthetic awareness — gifted swimmers just know how to work
with
the water better than anyone else to achieve less resistance and fluid movement. But, as I've tried to make clear, a surprising amount of what coaches call "talent" is
learnable.
"Average" swimmers can unquestionably heighten their own kinesthetic awareness (with drills, SSPs, stroke counting, fistgloves®, etc.) and doing so will always produce more improvement, more quickly, than anything under the heading of "
work." Most training tools have two d
rawbacks: (1) they encourage you to focus on effort, rather tha
n efficiency; or (2) they actively interfere with your ability to improve your kinesthetic awareness. Finally, for developing swimmers and triathletes (athletes who have a large set of skills to acquire and a limited amount of pool time to

do so), there is also the issue of prioritizing precious time for activities that have the largest value. TI methods help you swim better
immediately.
Buoys, boards, and paddles simply don't.

Just Say No to Kickboards

Let's cover the shortcomings of each, starting with kickboards. Earlier, I wrote that the ideal kick for a triathlete, or anyone swimming longer distances, is one that is non-overt and nearly effortless. But the main idea of kickboard training is to get your legs in shape for working
harder.
And they don't even do that. The flutter used on a kickboard — with arms, torso and hips rigidly locked in place — is so different from the kick swimmers use when swimming that kickboard sets have zero value for developing a synergistic, non-overt kick. Ditto for "conditioning your legs."

Because your legs move so differently when kicking on a board than while swimming, the only thing a kickboard really trains you for is pushing a kickboard. If someone held a bizarre triathlon that required the swim leg to be done on a kickboard, then training with one would make sense; otherwise,
it's a total waste of time!
If you want your legs to be "in shape" for swimming, the relaxed kicking you do while practicing TI drills conditions your legs to do exactly what they need to do when you race: stay relaxed. You are dispensed from using a kickboard ever again.

Lose the Buoy

Pull buoys have one central drawback: They fool you into thinking you've solved balance. They're so popular with triathletes—and thousands of other swimmers — because poor balance is such a common problem. So long as you have a buoy on, it supports your hips and legs. You feel better and swim faster. Naturally you want to use it more and more. The problem is that using it never seems to teach you how to stay balanced
after
you take the buoy off. As soon as you remove the buoy, that sinking feeling is right back and you're no better off than you were before. Want to feel better
without
the buoy — permanently? Balance drills, SSPs such as Hiding Your Head and Swimming Downhill, and swimming with fistgloves® produce lasting lessons in how to stay balanced while you swim.

And forget the idea that training with a buoy strengthens your pull by overloading and isolating your arms. In fact, if anything, it does just the opposite. Because the artificial buoyancy of the buoy raises your body in the water, it
underloads
your arms — no training benefit at all. That would be bad enough, but using a buoy can actually hurt your stroking power. That's because power doesn't come from the arms; it comes from core-body rotation. Buoys can easily inhibit your body roll, interfering with your rhythm and power. Fortunately, once you do learn balance, putting on a buoy
should feel all wrong, which will soon discourage you from using one.

The sole circumstance in which there might be some value in using a buoy is this: If you are one of those extremely lean and/or densely muscled athletes who seems permanently balance-challenged.. .if you experience what feels like terminal struggle while doing balance drills.. .if you have a "frantic" kick.. .you may be able to selectively use a buoy as an alternate way to learn balance. Using a fairly small, light buoy, swim a relaxed 25. Keep your head hidden and swim as silently as you can. As you do, tune in to how it feels to be supported, to be able to float an unhurried
arm forward and swim a little "taller," to be able to
let go of your kick.
Can't feel it after one length? Do a few more 25s that way. When those sensations come, just capture and imprint them. Then remove the buoy and swim 2 x 25s without it. Hide your head and swim downhill. Swim as gently and quietly as possible. You have just one goal: to get your no-buoy laps to feel as much like the buoy lap as possible. Patiently repeat this pattern for 10 or 15 minutes. As your no-buoy laps begin to feel as relaxed as the buoyed laps, add more unbuoyed 25s.

Smart Hands Are Better than Dumb Plastic

The rap on hand paddles is pretty simple. You put them on and suddenly feel as if you can really grab and hold the water and move it where you want to. If only they'd let you wear them while racing. But.. .they don't, so at some point you have to figure out how to feel that way without them. Unfortunately, after you do take them off, you feel like you're trying to row with popsicle sticks. What could be good about that?

Now consider what happens when you wear fistgloves®. You feel, at first, as if you can't do
anything
with the water, but you gradually regain a good deal of your control. Then, when you take them off, your own hands suddenly feel like
dinner plates
and they magically know how to work
with
the water. So which tool produces the more desirable learning effect? I rest my case.

As with pull buoys, however, there is one small exception. Paddles are usually emphasized as a power tool (and the bigger the paddle, the better — or so the theory goes). You use the extra surface area to muscle the water. Unless you have
a perfect
stroke, muscling the water with paddles is mainly a good way to
improve your chances of shoulder injury. Instead, you might occasionally don small paddles for a few superslow laps with a narrow focus on how they may help your hand learn
to pierce
the water.. .or slide weightlessly forward a looong way.. .or anchor for the catch. Then remove them and, as suggested above for buoy use, try to recreate that sensation without the paddles. Unless you can subtract at least two strokes with the paddles on, they're not helping you at all.

Fins as a Learning Aid, Not for Temporary Speed

The most common use of fins among triathletes, it seems, is by those who have been stuck in the 1:40 lane on 100-yard repeats at Masters practice and just know they'd swim much better if they could only join the party in the 1:30 lane. So they put on Zoomers and instantly can swim much faster repeats. But those race directors stubbornly refuse to let you wear them when it counts. And, as with buoys and paddles, that's just the problem with the way most people use fins. They are a temporary and artificial aid that helps you swim easier or faster while you have them on — but the effect disap
pears as soon as you take them off. No learning happens.
None.
Wearing fins to be faster is like wearing platform shoes to be taller.

What fins might do, when used this way, is interfere with your ability to develop a fluent, relaxed, efficient stroke into a reliable habit. Cut-off fins, in particular, are
specifically
designed to help you kick faster than you could with full-blade fins. And the faster your legs move, the faster
your arms have to move to keep up. Isn't faster turnover (i.e., higher SR) precisely what we're trying to
avoid?
Short fins were designed originally to help sprint swimmers achieve high stroke rates while swimming with fin-aided speed — and to condition a swimmer's legs for the
bard
kicking that is typical when sprinting. Again, that's precisely the kind of thing a smart triathlete wants to avoid.

There are exceptions with fins as well. I've already described the ways in which they can be useful as an aid to mastering drills, if you have a nonpropulsive kick. And they can also be useful in helping you expand your range of swimming skills, by working on Short Axis skills from the
Four Strokes Made Easy
DVD.

So, besides helping you avoid wasted time and energy by using useless tools, we've also helped you lighten your swim bag considerably.

Chapter 19

Taking Care of Your Body

This book is not intended to be the last word on all aspects of swimming, so I won't attempt exhaustive detail on what coaches call "dryland training." But as a relatively new swimmer, you deserve at least a "quick-start guide" of the sort that comes with a new computer. The essentials include "prehab" exercises to keep your shoulders healthy and pain-free, plus basic guidance on sensible strength training that will help your body perform optimally. Let's begin with shoulder exercises.

Preventing Shoulder Injury: A Quick and Simple Plan .

Swimming deserves its reputation for being both vigorous and gentle. But "gentle" doesn't guarantee "injury-free," particularly when it comes to your shoulder, which is almost ideally built for trouble. Shoulder anatomy looks like a racquetball (the head of your upper arm bone) balanced on a bottle cap (the socket of the scapula.) The ball is held on the bottle cap by a network of 17 muscles. This is great for mobility, but terrible for accelerating your arm rearwards against resistance. "Swimmer's shoulder" is common among swimmers because "human swimmers" instinctively try to mu
scle the water — rather than anchor the hand and let the kinetic chain do the work. The resulting over-stretched rotator-cuff muscles allow the arm bone (a.k.a. the humerus) to wobble in its socket. This pinches the muscles and tendons that stabilize your shoulder, causing inflammation and pain.

Because a swimmer's shoulder rotates 1,200 to 1,500 times every mile, a prevention plan is clearly in order. The most important muscles to strengthen are the rotator cuff muscles, which anchor and stabilize the head of the humerus, allowing the other shoulder muscles to perform effectively, and the scapular (shoulder blade) stabilizers, which protect against pinched tendons and rotator cuff stress. The primary virtue of this routine is that it requires little time (10 minutes, three times per week) and little equipment. All you need for those exercises specifying the use of resi
stance is StrechCordz
^TM
(www.nzmfg.com), a theraband, or light weights — keep it light enough to do at least 10 to 15 repetitions of each exercise. Work until you feel fatigue; rest and do a second set, for at least 20 to 30 reps of each. Try to build to 30 or more repetitions in a single set (no second set necessary when you do) before fatigue.

Strengthen Your Rotator Cuff Muscles

Exercise #1. Stand with arms at your sides, a dumbbell in each hand. Roll your shoulders forward, up toward your ears, back, then down again, moving through the greatest possible range of movement. Alternate one front-to-back rotation, with one in the opposite direction.