Lesson 10: Four to the floor

So FINALLY i managed to get what Luis has been trying to tell me about the 4-beat kick all this time. Being a mathematician, I just couldn't understand how a 4-beat kick could make sense. If you have to coordinate the arms and the legs such that the pulling arm is on the same side as the kicking leg to facilitate rotation, then the only way to achieve a symmetrical 4-beat kick is to kick right-left-left-right, which doesn't make much sense. Luis showed me an incredible video of Sun Yang breaking the 1500m freestyle World Record, in which you can clearly see a 4-beat kick:

What is clear from the video is that it is NOT symmetrical. It is a combination of a half a cycle of a 6-beat kick on the side which he breathes to and half a cycle of a 2-beat ("Total Immersion style") kick to the other side. It means that there is a slight pause between each cycle of 4 kicks. It seems like it could be a good compromise for these kind of distances. According to a book I have on swimming, it says that studies show that taller swimmers tend to prefer a 2-beat kick as their longer legs would lead them to have too low a cadence if they were to employ a 6-beat kick, while more powerful swimmers with floatability issues tend to prefer a 6-beat kick in order to keep their legs up.

I think the point here is to have a kind of "toolbox" of different kicking patterns which you can reach into and use as appropriate depending on how tired you are or how fast you need to go to catch the feet of the guy in front. Even in a supposedly optimal performance like the one by Sun Yang in the video, you can see him seamlessly switching from one type of kick to another. He makes it look like second nature.

Lesson 9: Putting it all together

I had a great lesson today, even though it was straight after doing a mega weights session (300 kg leg press!!). We worked again on all of the aspects from the last few weeks (high elbows, the roll, the kick). Now I am using my legs more it doesn't feel such a hard slog through the water and, perhaps more importantly, I feel I have a more stable "platform" so I don't end up losing balance, compensating, compensating for the compensation etc.

At one point we did a quick test to see how fast I would swim 100m at what I perceived to be a "Half Ironman effort". Even with my crappy way of changing direction in the 20m pool, I did 100m in 1:32 which is not bad. Imagine if I were able to maintain that for 1,900m! Of course, as I keep saying, in the sea everything will be a different kettle of fish altogether. Probably the single most important thing I can focus on is simply looking where I am going.

Lesson 8: Can I kick it?

Yes I can.

In the end we built up the 6 beat kick by going through a 4 beat kick, although it wasn't a "real" 4 beat kick. The exercise we did was to immobilize one leg (with a fin) and to kick twice with the other leg on the catch of the hand on the same side and on the "push". There are three phases in the underwater stroke: the catch, the pull and the push - the idea is to synchronize a kick with each of these, the most important one being the catch (this is the Total Immersion kick which initiates the rotation of the hips). Then we moved to doing the same with the other leg and then with both legs (right right left left). The last stage was to insert an extra kick from the opposite leg in between these two:

1 .right arm catch: right leg kick
2. right arm pull: left leg kick
3. right arm push: right leg kick
4. left arm catch: left leg kick
5. left arm pull: left leg kick
6. left arm push: left leg kick

At first I was a bit wooden and my legs started to get tense and tired but, after relaxing into it, it became almost second nature. It reminded me a bit of learning to juggle where you start combining sequences of coordinated movements and then there is suddenly an "aha moment" when it all begins to flow of its own accord. Another thing altogether is whether I can do this in open water with hundreds of other people in race conditions!

Luis still reckons that my kick is much less propulsive than it can be. The next step is to try to kick from the hips.

Lesson 7: The kick

Finally we moved on to working on the kick today. From TotalImmersion I have a very pronounced 2 beat kick – that is to say, I kick onceper arm stroke, primarily to rotate the body. The idea is to squeeze a few moresmaller kicks in between, so that I will be doing what is called a 6 beat kick.You may wonder why I am talking about going straight from a 2 to a 6 beat kickwithout passing through 4. The reason is that a 4 beat kick means that everyother stroke your kicking leg is exactly the wrong one to help you rotate. Imight as well try to benefit from all that hard work to coordinate my kick withmy rotation that is the backbone of the Total Immersion technique. It's a bit like dancing a Waltz...

Lesson 6: Speed with technique

Today was the first time that I was able to get tired swimming while still swimming reasonably well. I've often said that I swim at the same speed whether it is for 100m or 3,800m...

I swam for a couple of lengths with a cadence that felt on the high side while Luis counted how many strokes per minute I was doing. Then he set the metronome to beat out the same rhythm and I swam 4 lengths timing the entry of each hand with a beep. Even though I was swimming with the same stroke rate, it felt more comfortable because my rhythm was less rushed. We then repeated this several times, aiming to increase the cadence each time. By the 4th set,we had got up to 63 strokes per minute but, at this pace, I was starting to struggle and getting quite tired. Still, at 60 strokes per minute which, for me is quite fast, I was able to swim quite effectively.

We again worked on my left arm, particularly the rotation and high elbow recovery.

I hope we can work on the legs at last, because this will definitely help with my propulsion. For long distances and especially with a wet suit it is arguable that the legs are better conserved for the bike. Even so, I'm quite sure that I am currently at the other extreme of barely using my legs at all - I move forward in surges which cannot be the most efficient

Lesson 5: Rhythm

We started training with my little beeping device to help me control my stroke rate. It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought it would be to keep in time with it. For the time being we are keeping the stroke rate down low (45 spm!) to give me time to get the technique right. The good thing about marking the strokes is that it helps me not feel rushed. In particular, Luis pointed out something which I was vaguely aware of myself: I tend to rush my right arm through the water.

Rhythm is something that I have written about before, in the context of rowing and running. In swimming, I expect it is the same: for a given stroke rate, if you can work more quickly then you have more time to recover. At one point Luis told me to stop "using my brain so much and to use my intuition more". That's the thing about rhythm, it's something you feel. Just like a bunch of robots playing the drums sounds terrible, you can't be too mechanical about it. There were certainly times in the session today when I felt like I had a good, un-rushed rhythm. I felt like I was moving myself forward more effectively by not snatching at the water.

We also worked on my hand entry. Total Immersion has drilled into me entering my hand into the water close to my head. According to Luis I should be entering at about halfway between my wrist and my elbow of my other arm. You know me, I have to investigate this further... I never take anything as given!

Lesson 4: Fuhgeddaboudit

A combination of energy draining meetings and having to switch my training around so that I ended up doing my heavy weights circuit before the swim meant that I was not in the best frame of mind for a lesson. I suppose that there is always going to be a bit of "two steps (strokes?) forward and one step back". We did some drills to emphasize the body roll (hands crossed over chest, rolling from side to side while keeping the head looking down) as well as breaking the stroke at the point where the recovery hand is just by the goggles before initiating the catch with the other hand. The results weren't great so we wrote today's lesson off. To be continued...

Lesson 3: Cadence

Another of the leftovers from having learnt the Total Immersion method is that I have a very low cadence (stroke rate). Obviously, speed can be thought of as the product of cadence and stroke length: Total Immersion puts the emphasis on eeking out the maximum glide from every stroke which is good, to a point. It is all very well being ultra efficient (which, by the way, is hardly the case for me) but when you are competing you have to get speed from both length and cadence. Add to that the fact that Triathlon swims generally take place in open water with thousands of other people thrashing about and it quickly becomes apparent that you are not going to get much out of

The idea is to coordinate the entry of the hand with the pull phase of the arm already in the water. The "pull phase" follows immediately on from the catch that we worked on last week. We practised this doing drills where we broke the swim cycle (with a "dead spot") just at the point after the catch, timing the start of the next stroke to coincide with the entry of the recovering arm. My cadence certainly increased but it started to spiral a little out of control.

I've bought a gadget to help swim with a more appropriate cadence. Actually, this time it was coach Luis' idea, not mine, even though any excuse to buy another gadget is a good one. It hasn't arrived yet but it is a small device you place in your swimming cap that beeps every so often, like a metronome.

I've found precious little information on the internet regarding swim cadence or stroke rates suitable for an Ironman or a Half Ironman but, judging from videos on Youtube, the faster swimmers are going like the clappers. Recently, I read an interesting article in Triathlon Plus magazine with a rough guide which I found very useful:

30-45 strokes per minute: extremely slow stroke rate, certainly over-gliding with a long pause.

46-54 spm: low stroke rate, probably due to dead spot at front of stroke.

55-64 spm: moderate stroke rate that should probably be higher in open water swims

65-74 spm: good rhythm for open water

75-94 spm: very fast stroke rate. Most elite triathletes swim at 90 spm

95-120 spm: extremely fast stroke rate for 1:05 /100m pace

The article also makes the point that you should increase your cadence for open water swimming to account for the chop and wake from other swimmers, otherwise you are likely to come to a complete halt in between strokes.

As I have been saying lately, I think Total Immersion has helped me instil some good habits but I have gone too far the other way. Now it is time to put some speed back into the equation and, while doing so, hopefully not lose too much of the efficiency and length.

Lesson 2: High elbows

This time the focus was on keeping my elbows high during the recovery, with my forearm hanging down vertically towards the surface of the water. I tend to have more problems with my left arm - probably because it is the weakest and perhaps also because I breathe to the right. I found that I had to really think about rotating the shoulders (and hips) and almost doing a "monkey"gesture to ensure my hand cleared the water. We focussed on making sure that I was pulling my arm from the water using the elbow - otherwise I tended to drag it out of the water making a bit of a splash - and also on finishing the stroke completely.

We also went over the Early Vertical Forearm from lesson one. Rather than tilting the hand downwards, the idea was to think of "reaching over a barrel" - this rotation causes the elbow to rise up and you end up moving your body past your hand rather than scooting water backwards. A drill to get this point home was to lie in the water in the "superman" position and make little figures of eight with my hands: this little movement (the catch) was enough to move me forward, albeit very slowly.

Next week we will work on turning the 2 beat Total Immersion kick into more of a 6 beat kick.

Lesson 1: High elbow during the catch (Early Vertical Forearm)

I promised I would write some more about swimming, so here goes.

I had my first swimming lesson in a long while today. According to Luis, my swimming coach, I've improved a lot in the last couple of years which is always nice to hear. I keep my body in a nice straight line and don't scissor kick (so much) any more. So today we worked on some other aspects, namely the pull.

I normally pull myself through the water by reaching down to the bottom of the pool in a circular movement, much like a water turbine. What I should be doing is keeping my elbows up, anchoring my hand always in the same horizontal plane and lifting my body past my hand. The exercises we did were based on accentuating the "catch" by tilting the hand downwards at the wrist and then pulling directly backwards; hand paddles helped to make it even more explicit. I definitely noticed that I was more effective at transmitting my work into forward movement which is, I suppose, what it is all about. When I was doing it right, my forearms were vertical during the pull. This way, the forearm as well as the hand act together as a bigger paddle.

I always have troubles keeping my elbows up both in the water as well as during the recovery. I guess that it feels more natural or even efficient to be lazy about it. If one imagines being a soldier hauling himself through a tunnel just wide enough for his head and shoulders to fit through then it seems obvious why the position of the elbows is important (I expect this is why the style is called "crawl"... doh!). Swimming is all about making your profile as small as possible (with the added difficulty that you haven't got a floor to grab or to support you).

Of course, you should know by now that I have a gizmo to help me with keeping the elbows up. I actually bought it ages ago thinking that it would help keep my elbows up during the recovery, but I think the idea is actually to keep your elbows up during the pull. You wrap these weird looking things (mine are in Japanese to add to the weirdness factor) around your arms and find that, if you don't keep your elbows up, they fall off. Maybe I will dig them out again.

I remember this whole subject coming up in my Total Immersion class, just under two years ago. We were encouraged instead to put the arm in the water already pointing down at about 30 degrees so that it was already primed to "catch" the water and to help keep the hips up. We were told that keeping the elbow high during the catch (the Early Vertical Forearm or EVF) was something only elite swimmers could do effectively without getting injured... I found a whole discussion of the Total Immersion take on the Early Vertical Forearm here.

I get the feeling that there is no one single school of swimming technique that gets it all right: I think I am going to have to mix and match. If I can just get that feeling of working together with the water rather than against it, I might actually end up liking swimming...

What now?

I sort of feel as though another chapter has been closed: first there was the Ironman and then there was "breaking 3 hours in the Marathon". So much so, that I sent my second volume of blog posts off to Blog2Print to be converted into another book.

I was thinking about what I said the other day about tending to chip away at what I am worst at and I realized that it wasn't completely true. What I am worst at is swimming. There is a kind of barrier for me, below which I am just not even interested in trying to get better, I am so bad. You can only do so many things in life so you have to draw the line somewhere. I'd love to be able to play the drums, for example, but I've never got above that barrier to entry. In the Marathon I very nearly got stuck there, at one Marathon at just under 4 hours. It was the challenge of the Ironman that contextualized the Marathon and made it seem an attainable goal.

Swimming, on the other hand, is just above learning to ski on my scale of things to master. I can see that it must be great fun to be able to ski well, but I can't be bothered to go through the "being crap at it" bit, during which it really doesn't seem so much fun to me: I liked it more when I was completely out of control. I should be good at swimming because I have good aerobic fitness, I am tall and I have big hands and feet. I can even learn good technique if I put my mind to it (as I did in rowing). I just have to want to.

A friend of mine commented that I rarely, if ever, post anything about swimming. It is a third of a triathlon, after all. On the one hand, the benefit of swimming faster in the scheme of an Ironman or even a Half Ironman is marginal at best but, it has to be noted that almost all of the best triathletes started off as swimmers. Perhaps that answers to some extent the original question that prompted the creation of the Ironman event: who is fitter - the best runner, the best cyclist or the best swimmer?

So I'm thinking that I might try to make swimming faster my next goal. The next competition I have lined up is ICAN Marbella Half Ironman in April. I'd like to turn up in good enough shape to comfortably finish it and to put my new bike through its paces, but I don't care about beating my best Half Ironman time (which I did on a much flatter course). Rather than plough up and down the swimming pool on my own, doing exercises the point of which I don't appreciate and no doubt am doing incorrectly, I thought I would focus on technique and do all my swimming sessions with a swimming coach present. I'm lucky enough that my work has a gym with a swimming pool and good coaches available, so I should really take advantage. I've long been jealous of those people who seem to effortlessly glide up and down the pool so why not try to be one of those people?

I promise to post more on swimming as I find out more...

Nada he nadado

I went swimming for the first time since I clambered out of the sea in Florianópolis, after the 3.8km swim of the Ironman I did back in May. Unsurprisingly, my swimming hasn't magically got any better since then but, equally, it doesn't seem to have got much worse, either. And it is still just a boring as it ever was.

Totally Immersed

I'm starting to get back into swimming after months of neglect. As a friend of mine once said, my style is more Total Submersion than Total Immersion. But its gradually feeling better. I am so lazy though, I just can't be bothered to do the drills. Is it laziness or is it fear? I suspect it is the latter: fear of failure. I'm going to start to get some one-on-one lessons which I think are fundamental. I'm pretty tall (1m89 or 6"2.5) so I should be able to swim well, but I've never had much of a built up upper body or at least, this is why I always think I can never swim as fast as other people. Still, in 5 months you can work wonders. This is how I would love to look in the water - only 9 strokes(!!!) to cover a 25m pool:

Books

If you only buy one book on running, then buy this one. It should really have been called "The Bible of Running", although it's true that I most probably would not have considered buying it had that been the case. It is a pretty hefty tome and goes into a lot of technical detail but it is not meant to be read from cover to cover; rather it is a reference book. It has chapters that go into great depth on heat evacuation - if you are a regular on this blog then you'll know that this is one of my pet subjects - on energy systems, on technique and on injury prevention and recovery. What sets the book apart for me is the section on training: it has case studies from some of the most famous and successful athletes and coaches, including excerpts from their training programmes. The book is orientated towards running but it is of interest to anyone involved in endurance sports.

Tim Noakes is one of the most respected researchers in the field of Sports Science. From the same stable comes "The Runner's body", two of the authors of which hail from the same University in Cape Town. In fact, these two - Ross Tucker and Jonathan Dugas - are those responsible for the excellent Sports Science Blog.

What is most surprising about the book is that, in spite of being endorsed by Runner's World - a magazine which appears to make a living out of trotting out the same old hackneyed populist articles year in, year out - is that it proceeds to debunk pretty much every myth about running there is. I was already familiar with the myths about drinking to replace lost body weight, about lactate acid causing fatigue, about pronation and motion control shoes, about cramps and electrolyte imbalance but there were a couple of new ones for me too: namely, the myth that VO2max is an unalterable determinant of your running potential and the myth that you can never do too much stretching. On this last point, according to the popular thinking on stretching, the one single adaptation that the body makes in response to running that is detrimental is that the muscles shorten and become less flexible. It does seem strange that we should have evolved in this way if it were truly detrimental; however, the authors claim that the rigidity increases the energy return in the stretch-recoil response of the muscles and that too much flexibility actually slows you down. I'm quite pleased about that as I have always been rubbish at stretching. (This is a good example of how we choose to believe what suits us.)

This book is by no means a smart-arse attempt to be contrary or, indeed, to fuel conspiracy theories. It is, if you like, the equivalent in the field of Sports Science to books written by Steven Hawking for the layman (except that it is somewhat more credible). The sports science that filters through running circles and running magazines corresponds to research which was current a number of years ago; just as in any science, the paradigms are always shifting and human knowledge is becoming more profound.

"The Runner's Body" has a good section on nutrition which is clearly based on the same ideas as the latest offering from Matt Fitzgerald. If the above authors are the equivalent of Steven Hawking, then Matt Fitzgerald would be Simon Singh: that is to say, he is not himself a sports scientist but he is very good at doing the leg work and writing up his findings in a way that anyone can understand and appreciate. What I found particularly interesting was seeing what athletes actually ate (bearing in mind they may be contractually obliged by their sponsors to say they take certain products). There is also a chapter with some healthy recipes that looks worth me trying my hand at. I've already talked about my success in losing body fat in a previous post - that was all thanks to this book.


Matt Fitzgerald has also written a book called "Brain Training for Runners" which is also very good, if not a little bit spun out. In this book he expands on what is essentially Tim Noakes' "Central Governor" theory that fatigue in exercise is induced by the brain so as to avoid catastrophic damage (or death). Of course, just as anyone who has suffered from a mental illness will be too aware, this doesn't make it any less insurmountable. Still, there are a number of implications and this book studies what you can do to improve your performance.

It's difficult to choose between the two books on Pose Running by Nicholas Romanov but this is the more recent one and some of the ideas are a bit more polished. There's also a nice appendix where you can see the results of studies that were done on the ground impact forces during running. It is, as its name indicates, a book on triathlon - certainly the sections on cycling and swimming are interesting - but I can't help feeling that he is stretching the point by giving so much protagonism to gravity in the development of these techniques. It is reassuring to see that you come up with essentially the same ideas that have been already dealt with in other books that specialize in these sports but to insist on the subtle differences I think detracts from the overall aim. As I have mentioned before, it was strange to me that running was considered to be the only sport whose technique was magically bestowed upon us at birth, never to be lost, and so it should be no surprise that the community of sportsmen that really brought the Pose Method into the spotlight were the triathletes, all too aware of the importance of technique in swimming and cycling. This book goes some way to completing the circle.

I'm a pretty terrible swimmer so you'd be wise to take any recommendation of mine for anything to do with swimming with a pinch of salt. Bear in mind that beginners have learnt to swim (properly) more recently than experts and so remember the experience more clearly. I did a weekend of Total Immersion classes and went from covering a 25m pool in 22 strokes to covering that same distance in 15 strokes. In swimming, the number of strokes you take for a given distance is a good measure of your efficiency. I went back to 22 strokes the next day but at least I know what I am supposed to be doing - it is just a question of putting my mind to it.

Many people say that Total Immersion is nothing new - that all modern swimming techniques put emphasis on buoyancy (hydrodynamic body position), moving your body past your hand rather than ripping your hand through the water etc. The distinguishing features of Total Immersion seem to be that (a) it is aimed at long distance (and especially triathlon) swimming, encouraging a very economical two beat kick and (b) that, instead of separating the upper body from the lower body, you work on the whole kinetic chain from the ankle to the shoulder, rather like a golf swing. You are positively deterred from using kick boards, fins and pullbuoys. The technique made a lot of sense to me as I could see the parallels with rowing.

I haven't yet found any really  good cycling books for triathlon. I think this is because the cycling leg of the triathlon (especially the Ironman) is so different from most other types of cycling - with the exception, perhaps, of time trialling - that it tends to get covered in triathlon books which cover the other two sports as well. These three are all good (I even bought the Joe Friel book in spite of it proclaiming itself a "bible") especially if you are new to triathlon, as I was this year. There are so many details you need to know, much more than just three sports but also the two "extra sports": the transitions T1 (from swim to bike) and T2 (from bike to run).