Triathlon swimming made easy (9 page)

Effortless power for fishlike swimming is produced in much the same way. Energy for the most powerful movements ripples through our bodies like a cracked whip until it finally arrives at its release point. In freestyle and backstroke, body rotation provides a big chunk of the power — as it does when we throw a rock, a javelin, or a karate blow. In all these cases, the legs and hips power the torso, which in turn drives the arm. In the body undulation of butterfly and breaststroke, the arms are powered simultaneously by a "force coupler" in which core muscles link hips and shoulders in t
he same way as when you're doing a pullup, double-poling on skis...or soaring on a playground swing.

And linking your effort to the force of gravity, as you do on a playground swing, also works extremely well when swimming freestyle. The rhythmic body rolling, which sends power to your stroke, is aided by the same kind of gravity-assisted weight shifts you use in cross-country skiing and in-line skating. These weight shifts, triggered by the timing of Front-Quadrant Swimming, are fairly easy to learn by diligently practicing the "Switch" drills in the TI learning sequence. Here are the steps you can follow to link the engine of the Kinetic Chain to your stroke:

1. Learn side lying balance. Until you are completely comfortable being on your side and rolling freely from one side to the other, you'll probably swim too flat, which disables the kinetic chain. Practice the Fish and Skating drills to become completely comfortable on your side and reinforce this with UnderSkate and ZipperSkate.

2. Improve your dynamic balance. Stay slippery by maintaining a needle shape. Breathe by rolling that needle shape to where the air is. Propel by rolling that needle shape rhythmically back and forth. You begin to set this dynamic process in motion by practicing the Skating, UnderSkate and UnderSwitch drills.

3. Learn to use gravity to trigger the kinetic chain. The timing of Front-Quadrant Swimming will teach you how to use gravity and stroke timing to your advantage. You learn this by practicing the ZipperSwitch, Multi-Zipper and OverSwitch drills - and reinforce this with "Ear Hops."

4. Keep the core body central to your swimming with purposeful whole-stroke practice. Once you've learned the basic skills with drills as suggested, it's still important to reinforce the principles of the drills in your whole-stroke sets. You need to fight the instincts that can take you back to too much reliance on arms and legs. Some helpful focal points that can be helpful include:

• Swim with your whole body. Any time you feel your stroke breaking down into an unconnected mess, or just becoming a bit sloppy, concentrate on the feeling of swimming with your whole body, with your arms connected to the action of the torso.

• Put your weight on your armpit. As you enter and extend each hand — as if down a sleeve — through the water, complete your extension by leaning into your armpit. This will help ensure that you finish the weight shift.

• Think about your third eye. You can also accentuate your body rotation by thinking of your belly button as a third eye and imagine looking at each side wall with it on every stroke cycle.

5. Accentuate your use of the kinetic chai
n with LA Combo. "Purposeful exaggeration" can help imprint any skill more deeply. You can exaggerate body roll by rolling 360 degrees from time to time while swimming. Doing Long-Axis Combinations, alternating cycles of freestyle and backstroke, either drilling or swimming, is guaranteed to make any swimmer roll more. See the section for Freestyle and Backstroke on the
Four Strokes Made Easy
DVD for more information on how to do this.

One of the things most likely to interfere with your use of the kinetic chain for propulsion is overeager use of your arms to muscle through the water. Since we've already provided another power source for propulsion, freeing the arms and shoulders of that job, let's see how you can use your arms simply to deliver the power your body provides.

Chapter 9

A New Role for Your Hands: Standing Still

Most swimmers believe that stroke technique means "how you push water back with your hands," and give that motion most of their attention. Working on "technique" therefore means tweaking the armstroke, and "power" means putting more force and acceleration into it. Between what instinct suggests, and traditional instruction reinforces, the hands do seem to be 90% of swimming.

Most swimming books also share a keen fascination with hand movements, reporting in staggering detail on angle of attack, sweeps, pitches, vectors, lift forces, etc. The hands of gifted swimmers unquestionably
do
move in highly nuanced ways. But while that information may have academic interest, its practical value is nil. The movements described happen so quickly that no swimmer can consciously control the adjustments needed to get them just right. And elite swimmers don't get their wonderful technique from reading those books; they just do what feels best. You can acquire a lot
of that advantageous feel by following the advice in this chapter.

But understand this: Even if swimmers did have the concentration and precise muscular control to make the fine adjustments to get the hand pattern just right, at the end of the day it's still just a little hand pushing against
water...
trying to propel a big body through a resistant medium. Always minimize drag first.

Learn to "Anchor" Your Hands

My mentor, Coach Bill Boomer, once said: "Your hips are the engine for swimming; your hands are just the propellers." And one of the surest ways to disconnect your propeller from its engine is overly aggressive stroking. A "controlled" stroke, one that stays connected to its power source through its full length, is one that begins with an "anchored" hand.

On land, the power-producing kinetic chain starts from a fixed (or "anchored") point — feet planted on the ground. You begin by twisting the body away from the intended direction of the movement — e.g., rearing back to throw a baseball or taking a backswing in golf. With the feet fixed in place, you get an effect known as elastic loading, similar to stretching a rubber band. The cocked hip then acts like a whip handle, throwing energy upward through torso, shoulders, and arms, with increasing speed and power.

With no foot-to-ground anchor, a swimmer's hips cannot act as a whip handle. But they can deliver power by working as a unit with the torso and arms. Still, the process must start with an anchoring point to create that fingers-to-toes band of engaged muscle we used to such dynamic effect on the playground swing. In fishlike swimming that power-linkage starts with an "anchored hand." While your instincts tell you to grab water and push it back
bard,
you can actually tap far more effortless power by extending your hand fully, and then just
holding on to your place
in the water —
as if grasping a rung on a ladder — rather than hurriedly pushing back. Try to make your hand stand still, then let the kinetic chain roll you past the spot where your hand is anchored.

This was first observed in 1970, when famed Indiana University coach Doc Counsilman filmed swimming legend Mark Spitz, the world's greatest swimmer at the time, with an underwater camera. Attaching tiny lights to Spitz's hands to highlight their movements, Counsilman shot him from the side, against a gridlike backdrop. When he viewed the film at slow motion, Counsilman was startled to see that Spitz's hands exited the water
forward
of where they had entered. Spitz could not possibly be pushing his hands back, if they came out ahead of their entry point.

Nor could Jackie Hatherly, a 35-year-old Ironman qualifier from Toronto, who attended a TI workshop in April, 2000 and who quickly developed one of the most fishlike strokes we've ever seen. Watching from the side on underwater video on the second day, it was obvious that her hands entered and exited at the same place, while her body slid sleekly past their anchoring point on each stroke. Small wonder that she swam 25 meters freestyle in 11 strokes, after taking 17 strokes to swim the same distance just a day earlier.

Learn to "Feel the Water"

Training yourself to make your hand stand still rather than pushing it back does seem odd. How can your body go in one direction unless your hand goes the other? Admittedly, the water doesn't offer a convenient grip. But when you develop an acute "feel of the water," you can use your grip on the water to move yourself forward very nearly as a rock climber uses his hold on the rock to move upward. Coaches often describe "feel of the water" as a prize with a staggering price. They can't define it
exactly,
but suggest you must have been born with a gift for controlling elusive water molecu
les...or must spend millions of yards patiently acquiring this special knack.

There is no doubt that most elite swimmers have a variety of gifts that help them perform on a higher plane, and "feel of the water" is among the most important. But it's not difficult to explain. It's simply a heightened ability to sense minute differences in water pressure, and maximize that pressure with the body's propelling surfaces while minimizing it with the rest of the body. There is also no doubt that feel of the water
can
be an acquired skill. And it needn't take years to acquire. Here's how you can get a better grip on the ability to hold the water:

1. Get the catch righ
t. Swimmers usually give about 90 percent of their technique focus to the armstroke, and by now you know I think that's a poor use of your brainpower, preferring you pay more attention to drag because that brings faster, better results. But, when you do focus on propelling actions (mainly after you are balanced, tall, slippery, and moving fluently), give 90% of that attention to the "catch." Focus on your hands while they're in front of your head (see below for guidance), and once they've
passed your shoulders, just let them fall off your mental radar screen. Once properly initiated, a stroke doesn't benefit from further guidance.

2. Start each stroke by making your hands stand still. Your instincts tell you to grab the water and push back. Ignore them. Instead, teach yourself to make your hand stay in front while you bring your body over it. Yes, this is a difficult goal, but work at it patiently and mindfully anyway. Such efforts will help you resist the urge to muscle the water back.

3. Drill, drill, drill. Learning a skill as elusive and refined as this takes a lot of concentration, the kind you get in drills, where you repeat simple movements with full attention instead of trying to tweak something that happens in a millisecond in whole-stroke swimming. The "Switch" drills in Lessons Two, Three and Four teach you to connect your hands to your core body, and move them in perfect coordination. They also help you learn to anchor your hands and bring your body over them. To multiply the effect of any drills — but particularly drills used to teach anchoring — do them
with the fistglove® stroke trainer (see pages 60 to 63).

4. Swim super slowly. Drills teach you how things will feel when they're "right." When you begin to apply what you've learned in drills, you'll retain far more of that feeling if you swim verrry slowly. The more slowly you swim, the more "concentration space" you give yourself to cultivate a finer sense of water pressure on the catch. Just be patient. Leave your hand out in front of you. S-t-r-e-t-c-h that moment, pressing gently on the water until you feel the water return some of that pressure to your hands (another awareness hugely heightened by fistgloves®). And while you're swi
mming slowly...

5. Count your strokes. A reduced stroke count is a simple, reliable indicator that you're
not
pulling back. If you've whittled your count for a single 25-yard pool length down to, say, 13 or fewer strokes, one of the things you're likely to be doing well is holding on to the water. As you go faster (and your stroke count increases) stay hyper-alert to any sense of water slippage, like a car spinning its wheels.

6. Try to have slow hands. Compare the speed at which you sense your hands moving back, with how fast you feel your body moving forward. Try to have "slow hands and a faster body" or, at the very least,
match the speed of your hands to the speed of your body. This is a great corrective any time you feel your stroke getting rough and ragged.