Swimming insights

I have recently learned a lot about swimming so thought I'd post some of it.

1. Swim speed = form + effort

Many people put in an amazing amount of effort but have crappy form: they flail like a crazy monkey in the water, their legs weighting them down like anchors. Others have beautiful form but want to use the swim portion of the race to ease into things, relax, and coast through so they are strong for the bike. They also won't come in first. To be competitive in swimming takes form plus effort.

I tend to be of the lazy "good" swimmer variety. I say that knowing I have a ton of things to work on in my form, so I'm not saying I have perfect form either :) But once I did learn reasonable form, swimming became almost effortless and easy, so it was easy to just coast.

When I took the Powerstroke seminar a few weeks ago, he told us that if you want to coast that is fine, but if you want to be at the front of the pack instead of the back, you will need to put in some exertion too.

Right on!

2. I can breath better finally!
At the Powerstroke seminar he took video of me swimming and gave comments. Before I went I warned him, "I tend to slow down, almost sink, when I breath to the left, so keep an eye on that." In the video it is just obvious: I have ridiculously exhaggerated body roll to the left, so I am almost on my back when I turn to my left! My head comes too far out of the water too.

Yesterday at the pool I worked on this over and over, and then realized the problem was the coordination of my stroke and breath on the left--I would wait until the recovery phase of the stroke before breathing, when I was pretty much slowing down and I had already powered through the body roll. So since I am already in the body rolle I would twist my body even more using my upper back muscles instead of my hips. So I was basically becoming a dead weight spinning around in the water.

When I fixed this and really started breathing earlier in the stroke as part of the body roll instead of at the end of the stroke, the breathing became quite natural and fluid just like with my right.

First time, so I may not have all the details right and will talk about this more. But it was awesome. It is amazing how the entry, the catch and pull, the body roll, and breathing all coordinate toether to create a beautiful stroke. Mine is far from perfect, but every now and then I get into the zone where I'm just swimming right.