Swim Slow in the Off Season

The Triathlon racing season is over.  As Coach Joe mentioned in the last newsletter, this is the time of the year when many athletes tend to take a significant amount of time off from training.  Coach Joe wants to discourage this hiatus and instead advocates maintaining a steady lifestyle of daily fitness.  Since your training levels are not as high as they were during the racing season, this affords an excellent opportunity to make time for technical improvements, especially in the swim.  Now is the time to get to that Masters Class or weekend swim clinic!

With this in mind, here is a review of a few key points from my recent articles on developing sound swim technique.  As you work through these, I recommend incorporating only one of these points into your swimming session at a time, progressing to the next only when you feel that you have a good command of the first.  Progressing in this way will allow for the full benefit of the progression.

Balance

Balance is the first crucial step in developing sound swim technique.  It is like the foundation upon which to build your house: if the foundation is shaky, then everything that follows will be jeopardized.  Achieve a balanced body by doing balancing drills on your stomach and back.  I covered these drills in Article 1.  Work on balance while kicking with your arms at your sides and then with your hand leading.  Once you begin to swim, strive for the feeling of swimming downhill which you achieve by pressing into your chest - although you should not drop your head so low as to actually swim downhill, which is quite difficult to do.  Although you feel as if you are swimming downhill, you will actually be in line with the surface of the water, which is the ideal - i.e. most efficient and fastest - position for your body to assume.   

When the body is not well-balanced, the back end sinks.  To fight this sinking, it is common to press into the water with arms and legs in an attempt to gain support.  But this is highly counterproductive!  Using your appendages for support may work on land, but in the water it is draining and inefficient, wasting the energy that could be devoted to propulsion on fighting the effects of gravity in the pool.  Do not fight gravity; rather, learn how to work with it.  Pressing downward into the water with your chest will raise your back end and achieve balance with little effort.  And a well-balanced body decreases considerably the amount of energy you spend fighting gravity, thereby allowing you to focus that energy on going forward. 

Posture (body alignment) and Breathing

The shape your body takes is the next important step in decreasing the amount of resistance you encounter in swimming.  In particular, head position affects everything that you do in the water.  When swimming freestyle, the body should be held straight while stretching forward as long as possible.  (Remember, all things being equal, the longer the vessel, the faster.)  Achieve your fullest length by extending the arm as far forward as possible before beginning the pull phase of the stroke.  It is important to stay relaxed while doing this.

When turning your head to breathe, make sure to turn it 90 degrees to the side. Many swimmers make the mistake of turning their head about 100 degrees so that their entire face (with both eyes) is above the water's surface.  While this may be more comfortable, it upsets balance by raising the head too much and disrupts in-line body position.  You should aim for keeping your head's lengthwise axis in line with the water's surface, leaving one eye above and one eye submerged. Turning your head any more is unnecessary, requiring more effort and resulting in increased resistance.

The previous paragraph describes ideal head rotation in pool conditions.  The demands of open water swimming, by contrast, often require that you rotate your head more than 90 degrees in order to keep from swallowing sea or lake water - yuck!  In such cases, you must learn to rotate your head no more than necessary.  

Finally, bilateral breathing - i.e., breathing on both the left and right sides - is best because it evens out your stroke and keeps your body balanced in the water.  Breathing on only one side can lead to uneven muscle development, can make the stroke uneven and can create the tendency to swim in an arc rather than a straight line.  The latter can be a real problem when there are no lane lines to keep you straight.  So if you do not breathe bilaterally, this off-season is the perfect time to develop the habit!

Rotation and Timing

Power in the stroke is generated not by the arms but instead by the switching from one side-balanced-position to the other.  Remember that you do not swim freestyle on your stomach; rather, you swim it on your sides.  When your hand enters the water to begin the stroke, the corresponding hip should simultaneously move downward so that the pelvis and lower trunk form a 60 degree angle to the water's surface.  As the hand achieves full extension, the recovering hand moves back to begin its pull phase and the cycle repeats itself.  The key point here is to think of the hand and the corresponding hip as connected together in one fluid motion.

To help you visualize this, imagine a rope tied lengthwise down the lane and submerged approximately one foot.  Your job is to swim down the lane reaching down into the water and grabbing this rope.  Visualize yourself grabbing with one hand at a time, keeping the other hand above your head.  So, as one hand extends, grabs the rope and begins to pull your body over it, the opposite hand is moving through the recovery phase and returning back around to grab the rope.  The strength of your pull will be increased by rotating your hips and lower-trunk to the side of the hand about to grab the rope. 

Swim Slow

Think of this off-season as an opportunity to develop good habits.  Spend some time working on swimming slowly and methodically.  Don't worry about speed.  Instead, concentrate on one skill at a time and focus on form.  And remember Coach Joe's advice to strive for consistency.  This will reap substantial benefits when it is again time to swim fast!  

Craig Strong is a certified USA Triathlon Level II, ASCA Swimming Level IV and USA Cycling Level II Coach with EXPERIENCETriathlon.  He has over eighteen years of experience helping athletes of all abilities to become fitter and faster, improve their skills, remain injury free and achieve and even surpass their goals.  Click here to read more about Craig or schedule a private coaching session.