Lesson Series May 2018

[Mat Hudson]

Pool Session – May 2

In our session this evening I had you work your way through a systematic list of focal points to isolate features of the stroke and breathing action that might be causing some problem for breathing on your left, or might make it better once you kept your attention upon it during the breathing action.

You swam about 8 to 10 stroke repeats, with breathing every 4 strokes. This would allow you to take several non-breathing strokes before the breathing stroke. Your objective is to have the breathing stroke be identical to the non-breathing strokes, where the turn/return of the head affects nothing in the stroke. So you were to keep your attention in each stroke of the non-breathing strokes to keep them tuned with the assigned focal point and then try to carry that exact same quality into the breathing stroke, or to notice how the turn/return affected your ability to maintain that focal point.

The first repeat away from the wall you were generally breathing on the right, the strong side, and on the way back, breathing on the left. This way you could observe the effect of the focal point on your strong side and then compare the quality of that focal point on the weak side next.

Here is the list of features we worked our way through:

• Fully extend the lead arm in Skate Position
• Keep lead arm on a wide track (like a XC ski stays in its rut)
• Keep consistent overlap of arms (arm switch timing) the same on both sides
• Keep head neutral on non-breathing stroke, and start from neutral when you turn the head
  • Keep eyes looking straight down at the blue line
  • ‘over-tilt’ the head, to feel almost downhill, when turned toward air
• Keep the thrust of the catch action the same amount on both sides and during breathing stroke
• Let spearing entry arm trigger the turn of the head (aggressive, not delayed)
• Let set of the catch trigger the turn of the head
• Keep the thrust of the catch in the exact same direction on both sides and during the breathing stroke (the resulting trajectory of the head tells you something about where your catch thrust was aimed)
• Keep the catch and the extending arm and head on parallel tracks. The arms moving away from each other in exact opposite directions, on their tracks (like XC skis in their ruts)
• Keep exhale volume symmetrical on before right side breathing and left side breathing
• Check that the amount of face touching the air (angle of the head turn) is the same on both breathing sides
• Check that the angle of torso rotation is the same on both breathing sides

The items in bold seemed to be the ones I observed making a better effect on the left side breathing, or that you noted gave you a sense of improved breathing ease.

I noted that your turn of the head to the left seemed to be a bit delayed on that side and so we used the connection of the spearing entry arm to trigger the turn and the connection of the catch to trigger the turn to see if we could provoke the head to turn sooner and a bit more aggressively on that side.

 

[Douglas Norseth]

That was a great lesson last evening, Mat. I went to the pool this morning and actually swam laps for the first time as you suggested. I didn’t swim as many as I used to, but I did swim quite a few with less break-time than I have been utilizing since I started TI. I also noticed quite a bit of improvement on my left side today! Especially in the air exchange and the reduction of my “pool drinking” on that side. The water was somewhat choppy as the pool was populated, but I did much better than I expected. I think your advice to increase my laps was timely and insightful. My technique wasn’t always perfect, but I got my first sense of swimming some distance with TI. Anyway, I wanted to pass  my experience on to you!

Doug

[Mat Hudson]

Very good!

What particular focal points seemed to make the breathing on left over laps go better?

[Douglas Norseth]

I can’t remember from the first practice session since, but last night it seemed like I was most successful when I:

1. Kept my eyes down

2. Increased my angle of rotation just slightly

3. Kept my eyes down

4. Paid attention to a consistent wide track

5. Kept  my eyes down

6. Connected my head rotation to the  entry arm as it entered the water

7. Kept my eyes down

8. Tried to angle my neck/head “down” slightly when going for a breath

and finally

9. Kept my eyes down.

I actually exchanged air for the vast majority of breaths I took on the left last night! Not as much, and not as well as on the right, but it definitely allowed me to swim longer stretches than I have been doing heretofore (we aren’t up to 300 meters at once yet, however!). I even drank some water once from the right side, which I thought was ironic since it’s always the left side where I seem to do that. Anyway, thanks for asking Mat!

Yours in skating,

Doug

[Mat Hudson]

Good work Doug. And that appears to be a good focal point pattern for you – making the ‘keep eyes down’ (neutral head position) the center piece and then alternate and cycle through other related focal points.

And, you results indicate that the body is adapting to the new movement patterns, building efficiency and ease practice by practice.

[Douglas Norseth]

Today I noticed the most improvement with the focal point of keeping my head “flat”. I was a little more successful looking downward for a longer period of time today and the combination of the two helped my breathing… until I started to tire, which is still way earlier than when I used to swim the traditional way. But my endurance is picking up.

I’m looking forward to our next meeting in two weeks!

Doug

[Mat Hudson]

Whenever you change a significant part of the choreography of the movement pattern, the muscles and neural circuits involved may need some time to come into a new very specific fitness for that new choreography. You might be generally fit to swim longer or faster, but not with that new movement pattern. So, by being patient to train that new choreography over several practices, the muscles involved will get stronger and eventually you’ll return to the same level of performance WITH the new choreography holding up. Because general fitness was already in place, it doesn’t take as long to develop the specific fitness for this choreography, as it would for someone with no general swimming fitness in place already.

[Mat Hudson]

Pool Session – May 23

You swam a few laps while I took some observations. You were wondering about how the arms and breathing were doing, and I felt those were wonderfully improved since last time. What caught my attention was the spread of the legs right at the entry moment of each stroke, which would like negate a good portion of the acceleration your stroke might achieve with the nicely timed arm switch you have going now in front. So I wanted to use this session to work on those legs and help you get a lot more streamline all along the body line, through the entire stroke cycle.

Activities we used

• Superman to Skate – focus on just one side
• Superman to Skate with one more arm switch
• Spear Switch – Skate on one side, the switch and Skate on other side

And, we focused primarily on putting your legs/feet into a very distinct Counter-Balanced Foot Position, to lock them into that position and keep the body line stable right up until the entry arm enters, and there is one smooth switch of the feet to the opposite CBFP – no stabilizing spread of the legs at entry.

Focal Points

• Pigeon Toe
• The reach of your entry/extending arm triggers the twist of your ankle
• Reach the heel toward the surface (turn it outward more)
• Stack the feet
• Twist the legs around each other (upper thighs should barely touch)
• Watch over-rotation of hips
• Lock CBF into place and do not move until switch moment

 

Using Fins

I have recommended using short swimmer fins for some of the tune up time. While using those, you can be training the muscles involved in our torque-activating kick style. To do this, keep the knees fairly straight – you may allow them to ‘flex’ slightly, but no bending/hinging. Instead, you press on the water by arcing the foot (or you may view this as twisting the ankle, with the foot pointed)  which you will then feel in the muscles around the hip joint doing the work. If you form the kick with a knee bend then you may feel the quads working.

Keep in mind that empowering a kick from hip torque like this is not primarily for linear propulsion, though, with fins, it will push you ahead. It is more about supporting hip/torso rotation, hence the torque you feel inside the hip joint and in the muscles in that region. If one is tempted to ‘kick faster’ then it may be inevitable that he would switch back to a knee-bend, thigh-driven kick with more linear thrust. But you are using fins and learning to kick in this torque way in order to train and condition the muscles to work in the 2 Beat Kick manner.

 

Recommendations For Practice Time

• 6x 25 torque style kick in Skate Position with fins.

When you need a breath just do a slow motion arm switch and take a breath as you slip into Skate on the other side.

• Superman, CBF with Reach, with fins – 2 minutes
• Superman, CBF with Reach, no fins – 2 minutes

Lay in Superman and rotate your ankles to slide feet into CBFP, which will rock your torso to one side, and the arm of that side will slide forward as if sliding into Skate Position. Wait for motion to stop and then gentle rotation ankles back the other way to slide feet into other CBFP as the torso rocks to the other side. Back and forth.

• 6x 25 Superman To Skate, no fins

Focus on one side for a full length.

• 6x 25 Spear Switch (underwater recovery), no fins

You may roll to Interrupted Breathing as needed, and continue down the lane.

• 4x 25 Swing Switches (over water recovery), no fins
• 4x 25 Whole Stroke, with fins

Use fins to give lift to the legs, but try to keep legs only in CBFP, no extra kicks or wiggles between!

You are aiming to have the legs stay streaming behind, no spreading, no extra wiggles during the entire recovery swing and entry. There will be only one smooth switch of the feet from one CBFP to the opposite CBFP

[Douglas Norseth]

It’s been a real challenge to successfully imitate the things you showed me at the last lesson. My spear switch is very rough and I don’t really have it down yet. I wish I had had the fins with me last time so you could have showed me how I should use them for the drills. Today though, I finally had what felt like my first good practice session since our last class. I awoke in the middle of the night thinking about the two-beat kick and trying to visualize it in my mind from my body’s perspective. When I got in the water today, I focused on a good reach, stacking my legs and keeping my thighs close enough so that I could feel them. I completely ignored trying to pigeon-toe my ankles and just concentrated on stacking my feet. I also tried to use my hips to drive when my arm entered the water and that seemed to keep my legs drafting behind me better. The left leg still wants to wander a little, but I felt like I was doing better. This may just be a halfway step to focusing on pigeon-toe-ing my ankles, but I was much more relaxed in the water and felt smoother. I am becoming more aware of where my feet are in relation to each other. I certainly am more aware of trying to drive with my hips than I am turning my ankles. Baby steps.

Doug

 

[Mat Hudson]

Pool Session – June 6

As you swam a few lengths I made some observations of your improvements and then picked out a few things to tune up.

 

Recovery and Entry

Focal Points

• Paint a line with fingertips in surface of the water
• Elbow gets higher as it rises to the peak above the head (don’t let it drop!)
• Steep entry arm angle
• Keep wrist straight at entry (like sliding a hand into sleeve of a jacket)

You may use the sound of splashing, waves, from your entry as feedback on how well you are shaping the entry – you are aiming for a quiet, smooth, splashless entry (I like to think of those sleek Chinese high divers diving into the water with no splash!)

The objective here is to compose a recovery and entry choreography that fluidly directs momentum forward above the surface and then smoothly down into the water and forward again.

 

Fully Extended Skate

Your goal is to fully extend into Skate, to feel the lengthening of the body line, from wrist to your foot. Coming into this fully extended position is what allows you to transfer force into forward motion. Imagine putting your weight on a long, stretched xc ski which sits down in a rut and slides forward. That ski is your body line.

The front (arm) looked fairly good, but I was not sure the leg was fully unified and extended in Skate.

Focal Points

• Point foot in plantar flexion (to a comfortable degree, not extreme)
• Feel stretch over top of foot
• Zoom out to hold in attention both the reach of the lead arm and the stretch of the foot along that whole side of the body

Come into a very distinct Skate position on every stroke, from wrist to foot. Even pause there in Skate for a moment to savor the feeling along the whole side of the body.

Sequence of Activities

• Slide in Skate (coach supporting legs)
• Skate to Skate (just one switch)
• Skate to Skate, 3 switches
• Skate to Skate, the length of the pool

In this drill sequence your brain does not think it is ‘swimming’ – you are just sliding into Skate for a moment to check that stretch from wrist to foot, and then switching to the other side and check again. If you nail the position on one side you are permitted to switch to the other. If you don’t nail it, you need to stop and reset. The goal is to switch the front and switch the feet at the same moment, coming into that plantar flexion foot as immediately as your arms switch and come into Skate. Initially there is a lag time between the switch in front and the switch in back, but eventually you will match the response timing for both.

The positioning of this Skate side foot will help stabilize the legs (prevent their swaying or spreading).

I had you keep fins on for all of this session until the very end. You may work through the recovery drills with fins to give the legs support and then you may use them for part of the time with the focus on the foot in Skate, then take them off to practice feeling the water without that surface area of the fin.

[Douglas Norseth]

Thanks for the feedback! That was a really good session last night. I felt like it gave me some tools. I appreciate your patience and your efforts, Mat!

Doug

[Mat Hudson]

You were doing well. You are patient to keep doing short drill repeats to imprint the changes. That persistence and patience will pay off, as it has done so far.

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