Triathlon has no shortage of gear, tech and gadgets. With three sports to train for, there will always be another product you feel you have to get, but there comes a point when you need to ask yourself, “Will this actually help me get better?” Every triathlete has a device or two that they bought in the hopes it would revolutionize their training, only to realize it really isn’t all that great. Every now and then, however, you stumble upon something that truly lives up to the hype. For me, that is the eo SwimBETTER handset — a swimming tool that will change your stroke for the better, no matter what level of swimmer you are.

Creating eo SwimBETTER

The eo SwimBETTER story started in Australia with the company’s founder, Jaimie Fuller. Fuller acquired the patent to a device that “sort of went around the hand that had a wire going up the arm under a sleeve to an external hard drive sitting strapped to your bicep.”

This device measured a swimmer’s hand path and movements in the water and saved it to the hard drive. Fuller says he knew this could be a big deal in the swimming world, but he had to find the right team to back it. He linked up with Kenneth Graham, who was then principal scientist for the New South Wales Institute of Sport, and former Adidas CFO Dean Hawkins, marking the start of eo SwimBETTER.

Graham introduced Fuller to Neil Baker, a former collegiate swimmer with a PhD in physics who also writes software and codes. For a company looking to develop a device that can track every move swimmers make, an elite swimmer with that kind of academic and professional resume is pretty much the perfect person to team up with for the project.

Fuller, Baker and the team got started on the handsets in 2020, and it didn’t take long to get a working model that they soon passed out to elite swimmers. Swimmers like Pan Zhanle of China, Australia’s Kyle Chalmers and American Paige Madden used the handsets in training leading up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, and they all left the Games with medals. (In addition to winning gold, Zhanle set the 100-metre freestyle world record in Paris, swimming 46.40).

While the first step was to work with the elite swimmers, Fuller says he always viewed triathlon as the key to making eo SwimBETTER a broader success.

“You will always find triathletes speaking to pure swimmers and asking for advice,” Fuller says. “We had to establish our credibility and validation with pure swimmers first.”

Fuller says they are seeing “unbelievable results” with triathletes who are “literally saving minutes” thanks to the eo handsets. And why?

“Triathletes’ technique is, 99 percent of the time, really, really shit,” Fuller says with a laugh.

That might sting to hear as a triathlete, but anyone in the sport knows it’s quite an accurate statement. So many new triathletes have no swimming background whatsoever, so it only makes sense that they will have poor technique. Now, with eo handsets, triathletes can see exactly what they’re doing wrong in the water and learn how to fix it.

Using the Sensors

I thought I was a good swimmer before using the eo handset. Not great, but solid. After one swim with eo SwimBETTER, I realized I’m actually not all that great. Sure, I’m clocking OK pace times, but one look at the eo data and I saw that my stroke was far from pretty. My high elbow is not so high, my left arm is way weaker than my right, I create significant drag in the glide phase of each stroke. In short, I’m a mess in the water.

This revelation bothered me for about five minutes, but the whole purpose of the handsets and the eo app and website (where you access all of your data) is to help you pinpoint every part of your stroke that needs tweaking. After locating areas that need improvement, the website’s AI data analysis system — which is called eo Intelligence, or eoi — will generate a report in less than 30 seconds, telling you how you can go about fixing those issues.

In addition to getting unlimited eoi reports, Fuller offers to talk all eo SwimBETTER users through their data hauls on video calls. I had a call with him after a week of swimming with the handset, and I found it very helpful to have him break down what all of the data and graphs meant.

Looking at the Data

The only negative I have experienced with the eo SwimBETTER system is the sheer amount of data that is thrown at you. When you first get the handsets and sign up in the system, you’ll receive a package that breaks down all of the different datasets and what they mean, but it can be tough to know which is the most important to pay attention to and how to analyze the data when it’s on your phone or computer screen.

That’s why the chat with Fuller is so helpful. The eoi reports are great, but everything became much clearer after he took me through several swims and pointed out the areas in which I need to improve and why a dip on a graph in one section is bad and a spike on another graph is good.

Fuller also acknowledged that there is a lot of data to comb through, so he pointed out the most important sections for triathletes: Stroke Rate and Power (SRP), Force Field and Consistency.

“Stroke Rate and Power is for balance,” he says. “Force Field is for direction. Consistency is for giving us an idea of what our hand’s path looks like.”

Let’s take a look at my data from two different swims. The first was my first day with the handsets, when I had no clue just how much I needed to fix.

Looking first at SRP, it’s clear that my left arm is significantly weaker than my right. In my first-ever eoi report, the system said a snorkel may come in handy to identify why there is an imbalance here and if it comes down to breathing patterns. The report also said to simply focus on putting the same effort and power into each stroke, which may seem obvious, but I never would have known of the discrepancy without the handset.

Next up is Force Field. The key numbers to focus on here are Propulsive, Downward and Hand Drag. Propulsive data is essentially your power reading. As shown here, that first swim had a propulsion rating of just under 45 percent. For distance swimmers, this is not great, as Fuller says the number triathletes should be shooting for is 70 to 75 percent.

When it comes to my hand drag, that 2.3 percent is also far from ideal. This datapoint refers to how much drag your hand creates when it first goes into the water at the top of your stroke. Many triathletes will be like me, as I consistently put my hand in the water at too weak of an angle, which causes it to tilt upward and cause drag in my glide phase. In a perfect world, that number would be at or close to zero percent.

Lastly in this section is my downward rating, which is at a very high 44.7 percent. Fuller says distance swimmers should aim to get that number between 17 and 22 percent. This number tracks how much you’re pulling down with each stroke rather than backward. The more downward force, the less propulsion. This is why the high elbow is so important, as it sets you up to pull more than you push down.

Finally, let’s look at Consistency. As shown above, you get three angles of your stroke. This shows all of my strokes from both arms for the 50-metre lap, but you can opt to look at only one arm and also individual strokes.

The big revelation with this section after my first swim was how deep my stroke was — especially with my left arm (which is another reason for my lower power in the left). This highlighted just how much I need to focus on a high elbow, which will fix the excessive downward motion (which is also illustrated in these charts).

Now let’s take a look at my fifth swim with the handsets (and my first after my one-on-one data analysis call with Fuller).

As shown in this screenshot, my left arm is still weaker than my right, but fixing this gap will take some time as I both focus on matching the power with my left and work on improving my breathing pattern to allow my left to pull just as hard.

The Force Field section is where the numbers really changed after just a few swims. Propulsive is up considerably from 45 percent to 52. My hand drag also dropped, getting very close to the zero percent every swimmer should be chasing. Finally, my time spent pushing downward dropped 16 points to 28.5 percent, which contributed to the overall propulsion.

I achieved these changes with a single tweak in my stroke. As mentioned earlier, I was putting my hand in the water at too weak of an angle, creating hand drag while also setting me up for a poor high elbow. Making this small change and starting my glide at a slightly sharper angle reduced the drag and made it so my hand was lower than my elbow in the water, which promoted better high elbow and a better pull overall.

Finally, looking at my consistency, you can see that I still have some work to do. Despite the better high elbow, my arms still dip too deep at times — especially when I get tired and sloppy — and my left arm (the orange lines) doesn’t deliver as straight of a stroke as my right. However, this is only five swims in with only one adjustment made, so there is definitely a lot of promise for future improvements.

The Cost

One thing some people may scoff at is the cost of the handsets. There are two versions available: the eo SwimBETTER15 and the eo SwimBETTER90. The first can record up to 15 minutes of swim time and retails for US$799. The second records up to 90 minutes and goes for US$999.

There is also a membership available for US$140 annually. A membership allows users to see all of their data and access their eoi reports. The handsets still work without a membership, but users will only be able to see SRP.

Fuller is quick to acknowledge that this is far from cheap (even if you opt to go without a membership), but he makes a valid point on that note.

“Triathletes will spend well over $1,000 on a power meter for their bike,” he says, pointing out that those devices only provide a single piece of data to users. It’s easy to say $1,000 is too much for a swimming tool, but when you consider the money spent on other gadgets and devices in the sport and how much info they give athletes compared to what the eo handsets offer, it’s really not that bad of a deal.

The Verdict

This is without a doubt the most game-changing piece of tech I’ve ever used in triathlon.

I have used power meters on the bike. I have used some of the best GPS watches available. I have tried goggles that show you your pace. Some of these gadgets were great, others not so much. None of them compare to the eo SwimBETTER handset and what they can do for you as a swimmer.

Triathletes are always looking for ways to improve. This is by no means a quick fix — you are going to have to work to make the appropriate changes in the pool — but the eo SwimBETTER is, in my opinion, the best way to, well, swim better.

The post Becoming the Best Swimmer You Can Be With eo SwimBETTER first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

When it comes to improving your swim times, for all but a precious few, there’s no substitute to spending more time in the water. Unless your technique is near perfect, spending crazy amounts of time in the weight room isn’t going to help you go faster. Intuitively we all know this. You know full well that you can likely bench press (or pick any other weight exercise) way more than those tiny kids you see in the pool swimming before your masters workout. They likely swim much faster than you can, though, which means that strength isn’t what’s holding you back from a faster swim split this summer.

That said, when it comes to swimming, there are definite benefits to improving your strength. Spending some time on a strength program can definitely help prevent injuries (by strengthening key muscle groups), counteract muscle imbalances and enhance joint stability. That strength program can also improve your times once your stroke is at the point where having more strength will improve your power and propulsion. A strong core will also improve your stroke mechanics and help keep you streamlined.

Resistance Training in the Water

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could work on increasing your strength doing the specific swim motion – in the same way that you can improve your strength and power on the run through hill training, or on the bike through intervals and intense trainer workouts? Well, you can. Using paddles can help on that front (I’ve seen swimmers drag buckets and parachutes through the water, too), and there are a number of swim devices that will get the job done, too. The goal is to use this resistance to reinforce correct swimming technique and stroke mechanics.

Back in the dark ages during my early years as a pro triathlete, to improve my swim times I worked with an age-group swim team. We used to do some training using surgical tubing. The tubing would be attached to a harness around our waists and we’d swim out as far as we could, then turn around and get accelerated back to the wall. It was a great way to work on your strength and power, but what I always found most helpful was how it forced me to really work on my “catch” – the point at which your hand and forearm transition from reaching forward to grabbing and pulling yourself through the water.

Taking that to the next level, you will sometimes see power rack (or power tower) systems at some pools – the tether remains the same, but now the swimmer is lifting a weight stack as they swim. One advantage of this is you work on your strength in the water with a constant resistance. The surgical tubing resistance gets harder as you go (variable). The huge disadvantage of this type of resistance training is the equipment takes up a lot of space, and you’re likely to only see it at high performance centres.

Cue the GMX7, a resistance training device developed by David McCagg, a former 100 m freestyle world champion. McCagg’s device provides constant resistance through the length of the pool rather than the incrementally tough resistance you get with surgical tubing. Since the entire device fits into a small bag and weighs less than four pounds, it’s a much more viable training tool for age-group swimmers and triathletes than a power tower.

Hitting the Pool

I can’t help but point out one of the biggest challenges of using the GMX7 at this point. I do my swimming during lane swim times at our local pools, so rolling in and commandeering a full lane to do a test wasn’t an option. So I reached out to Grey Fairley, the head swim coach at McMaster University (who I have known and coached with for years), to ask if I could put the GMX7 through its paces at one of his practices with some of his athletes. He was all in – he’d tried the device at a conference, but didn’t feel he’d had enough time to really test it out.

McCagg had sent me the X2 Pro model (50 m), so I chose an afternoon the team was swimming long course to give it a try. It’s incredibly easy to set up – carabiners attach in the lane-rope eyelets at either end of the pool, you attach the tether to the X2-Pro Shuttle and you are ready to roll. The shuttle has a dial that allows you to calibrate the resistance and it truly does range from zero to stop you in your tracks.

As you ramp up the resistance, you can really get a feel for how important a good catch is, which to me is the biggest benefit of this device. That’s just one of a few benefits, though. The smooth resistance means you don’t have the jerking motion you’ll feel with surgical tubing, and you’re not getting pulled backwards as you’re trying to swim. You are just having to work harder.

With some coaching, the swimmers we had try the GMX7 were able to really see how an improved roll (including through the hips) helped their strokes by enabling them to use more of their lat muscles to pull them through the water. A higher elbow during the catch phase also provided more power, which was easier to feel as the resistance increased, too.

While we focused on technique during our session, time crunched swimmers and triathletes could look to a device like this to streamline swim sessions. Using the GMX7 for a bunch of 25s or 50s will give you a very tough set in a short period of time.

Pros and Cons

McCagg really has developed a device that solves the problems of other resistance training devices like surgical tubing or power towers. The resistance is really easy to dial in, is truly smooth throughout the length (there’s no jerking at all), and allows athletes lots of variability and options for their workouts.

The big down side, though, is that for people who swim at public pools and can’t commandeer a lane for themselves, the GMX7 is a non-starter. The butterfly and breaststroke swimmers we had try the device also found their arms would sometimes snare on the line. That’s not likely to be a game breaker for most triathletes and open-water swimmers, though.

Having tried the device, it’s no surprise why so many of the world’s top swimmers and programs are jumping at the opportunity to use it. The cost of the X2-Pro version (US$799 for the 25 m, $899 for the 50 m) is likely prohibitive for many, but there is a 25 m X1-Entry option that goes for $249.

For those who are looking for every opportunity to improve their swim and/ or want to make their time in the water more efficient (and have the ability to use an entire lane when they are swimming!) the GMX7 is well worth a look.

The post Real-Time Resistance Training With the GMX7 Swim Device first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Swimming like a pro doesn’t just mean swimming like a pro. Granted, they have the extra time, but when a pro triathlete shows up to swim, there is a specific plan to execute, and it doesn’t just include laps. While you might not have the same amount of time as the pros, you can set up the appropriate support structures to ensure you’ll get the most out of your training.

1. Have a Plan

Having a specific plan, both short and long term, is essential. Knowing what you’re doing and why, and how that fits into the big picture, will help you stay focused and give you the best possible chance of improving. Planning needs to be specific in terms of technical details to work on and what set you’re swimming on any given day. You also need to think about how each set impacts long-term improvement over the training block, season and year.

2. Dry Land Warm Up

No doubt you’ve seen pros warming up on deck before a swim session, or before a race. Having a set dry land routine before you swim will get you mentally and physically ready to swim and, even more importantly, help keep you healthy – especially those shoulders! On race day you’ll also have a warm up ready to go that will signal to your body it’s time to swim. 

Ten to 15 minutes is all you need, but even a five-minute warm up is better than none. Perform a few key mobility movements (like arm rotations and swings), and then activate your core and shoulder muscles. Two great core activators are dynamic planks and glute bridges. For the shoulders, use a band for a few chest openers, lat activators and rotator cuff movements. You don’t need more training, and you aren’t looking for adaptations here, just two sets of 6 to 10 repetitions is enough. 

Here’s a quick warmup routine you can do with a band to get yourself primed for your next swim workout – the video below runs through each of the exercises:

• Straight arm “pull aparts” (short) or chest openers – low, shoulder height and above your head
• Band pull aparts (long)
• Standing chest press
• Lateral raise – single arm (straight)
• Front raise – single arm (straight)
• Biceps curls
• Triceps extensions
• Cross-body extensions

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A post shared by Amelia Rose Watkinson (@ameliarosewatkinson)

3. Fueling

Taking on nutrition while you’re swimming can feel pretty hard, but ensuring you’re swimming fueled is necessary for performance. No pro is going to the pool without some form of nutrition. Even if you feel like you don’t need it for an early morning short recovery swim, you’re always burning energy, and you need to be conscious of big-picture fueling. And another good rule of thumb: if you’re starving after a swim, you didn’t fuel enough. 

Choose the amount of energy you need based on the duration and intensity of your swim. A good place to start is with a 500 ml bottle with electrolytes and 25 to 60 g of carbohydrates that you can sip throughout the set. Make a conscious effort to take a mouthful or two whenever you have breaks throughout the main parts of the swim. Alternatively, or in addition, a gel as you’re diving in or before / during the main set will help achieve adequate intake.

4. Mental Game

Take a minute or two to really read your set: know where you need to work, what the technique drills are aiming to stimulate, what equipment you need and understand the purpose of the session. If you have a 10 x 100 m threshold set, really mentally prepare to push yourself during those 10 reps. Fuel for the set, know your time goal, the rest interval and how you’re going to adjust if things are going well or going poorly. Likewise, if you’re using equipment or doing drills, understand why ahead of time. Don’t use equipment as a crutch, and don’t not use it because you think it’s cheating. Don’t rush through drills because “they aren’t working” or you “can’t be bothered,” slow down and figure out what they trying to achieve. Taking time to understand the purpose of each part of the set will help you execute better. 

Swimming is a lot more fun when it’s going well, but, especially for most triathletes, that’s not the case every single day. If you have a bad swim, it’s just one swim. Listen to your body, make adjustments and then move on with the big picture in mind. If you always have a bad swim, work on changing your mindset through both action and thought. What the pros know more than everyone is that it’s all about consistency–and that doesn’t just apply to the physical training. 

Related: Improve Your Swim With a Masters Program

5. Recovery 

Recovery starts as soon as you hit the wall at the end of the workout. As soon as possible after your swim, take in some recovery nutrition — whether that’s a protein shake or a snack. Stretching is next on the list, but it’s not always easy to fit it in after a swim. A quick few minutes in the shower, or even at the end of the day when you’re brushing your teeth, will help maintain shoulder health. Still struggling? A few shoulder stretches during a pre- or post-run or bike warm up / cool down will help. 

The post Train Like a Pro – Swim Faster This Season first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Photo: James Mitchell

It was one of those insane ideas that makes you smile because you know you’re going to do it, but you’re not exactly sure how, or even if you can. The proposal was simple: spend as much time in the water as possible. 

“A swim camp?” I asked.

“Yes, we can call it that,” he replied. 

My swim coach went through the details of his six-week plan but, honestly, I could only focus on the total meters of each week. Thirty, forty, fifty … was he nuts? But I could feel my cheeks swell with a smile. Dammit. I was doing this. 

If you’ve ever asked, googled, or chatGPD’t “how to be a faster swimmer,” you’ve no doubt come across some form of “swim more.” Endurance athletes embrace the power of training volume but, as we all know too well, swimming is so technical that it’s a more complicated equation. Spend too much time on technique and you’ll never have the conditioning to race; spend too much time on conditioning and you’ll be working hard going nowhere fast. I was one of those searchers, constantly looking for answers and doubling-down on work in the hopes something would change, but it never did until I found a swim coach that clicked. 

It sounds over-dramatic, but he changed my life. The difference was having a swim coach that took the responsibility to figure out how best to communicate with me. Instead of leaving it up to me to translate “don’t drop your elbow”, he would try different words, drills and examples until something worked. That kept me motivated, engaged and improving. We spent one to two years really working on technique (in just 200 m per session chunks with lots of video analysis, since he was remote), but our big breakthrough came when we did a swim camp. It was – and still is – the best thing I ever did to improve my swimming. 

Back then, I had been swimming for about five years and my typical swim load hovered around 20 km a week. I spent two weeks preparing my shoulders for the camp, introducing double swim days, perfecting my pre and post swim shoulder care, and slightly bumping up the volume. Then, over the following four weeks, I swam 200 kilometers. (Admittedly, I had the time, pool access and incredible coaching support to accomplish such a feat.) Each week we gradually, and very carefully, increased the volume. My biggest swim was 9.6 km, my biggest day was 18 km, and I did almost every swim alone. I took four seconds off my 100 m time by the end of the camp and, one month later, I took another five seconds off to get down to 1:12. Realizing the changes I had always wanted to see came with a massive confidence boost, which felt just as good as my new PB. 

Now, before you go trying to swim an absurd amount of meters, as I already said, hammering out mass amounts of volume with no guidance or purpose is a very bad idea. It’s a pretty quick road to injury, fatigue and won’t yield the benefits you’re craving. However, a focused training block on swimming with the guidance of a coach truly changed my life, so why can’t it do the same for you?

PREPARATION 

A Plan is a Necessity. So is a Coach. 

Preparation is essential for a swim camp. If you’re going to commit to a swim camp, it is, again, not just about putting in the distance. With that in mind, you need guidance. That’s not negotiable. Talk to your coach about undergoing a swim camp so you can set appropriate goals and adequately build up to the mental and physical demands before the camp. They will also help you devise a plan (taking into consideration pool access if necessary), significantly reduce your cycling and run training, and monitor your load and feedback to avoid injury. 

Aim to commit one full training block to swimming — which is typically three to four weeks. You will be replacing most of your running and cycling with swimming, so be mentally prepared to let your performance in those two sports slide a little. Depending on your other commitments, you might need to just let them go during the camp. Start with frequency, and then build mileage – this will look different for everyone. You might be going from one to two swims per week to four to six, or you might be going from six to 10. Likewise, with mileage, you might be going from 5,000 meters per week to 8,000, or from 15 km to 25 km. Let your coach guide you.

Tip: Normal training rules apply here. A few hard sessions a week is enough. 

Injury Prevention

It’s not as sexy as trying to cut five seconds off your 100 m time, but maintaining health is always  the primary goal. A coach can help you incorporate more shoulder work in your gym training, nail down a pre- and post-swim routine of activations and stretching, and you may want to consider getting a weekly, or mid-camp, massage to aid recovery. 

Tip: “Finish over failure,” is a good mantra here. Aim to always finish healthy, even if it’s earlier than planned, rather than fail and risk injury.  

Invest in Technique 

Technique preparation is also fundamental to a successful swim camp. Investing in video analysis, or an on-deck coaching session before will tell you what you need to work on and direct the technical aspects of your training. And, even if you currently hate drills, you’ll be glad for the variety when you’re staring down a 9 km set. 

Identify two to three key areas you need to work on, and then incorporate drills into every swim, applying the sensations to the rest of the session. Pick just one technical aspect each day, or week, and focus on really feeling changes. A second analysis after the camp is a useful comparison. 

Nutrition 

Photo: James Mitchell

Pool side nutrition is often an afterthought, especially if you’re jumping in early, but for health, performance and consistency over the camp, it needs to be a forethought. You need to be swimming fueled at all times, so that means always having adequate hydration, energy and fuel for recovery on deck. Adjust your carbohydrate intake depending on the length and intensity of your session, but always, always take on some carbohydrates – remember how much swimming is ahead of you!

Tip: Take a minute to have a gel before the main set or, especially if it’s an afternoon session, have a gel right before you jump in. 

EXECUTE

Mental Game

Seeing so much swimming on your plan can be overwhelming. Just focus on one swim at a time. Inevitably, you’ll have a day when you’re tired, feel like you’re sinking and you’re sick of being wet. Don’t be afraid to make changes by adding toys, altering the rest interval, bringing a friend, wearing your wetsuit, hitting the open water or making it more fun with block starts. Also, there might be a day where you need to shut off your brain and let your watch count the laps. As long as you’re healthy, just keep swimming! 

Photo: James Mitchell

Using the Time in Water to Your Advantage

Maybe you’ve been avoiding the other strokes but, possibly out of desperation and definitely for shoulder health, you will want variety. Take the opportunity to practice the other strokes and improve your freestyle. (Backstroke, at the very least, is a great way to get some muscle compensation and a nice way to recover.)  The secret to a swim camp isn’t exactly the distance, it’s having so much time in the water that your body figures out how to become more efficient, and practicing the other strokes is a great way to vary the stimulus to that end. Take advantage of overall time in the water to pay attention to how different movements feel and move you in the water.

The Pay Off

Your performance will likely suffer during the camp under the high load, but as your body figures out how to be more efficient, you might be surprised. Still, be prepared to have some really bad swims – get them done and move on. The real benefits of a swim camp come after. Allow your body adequate time to recover, and then enjoy the super compensation from the high load, built up intensity and all that technique work. Put yourself to a 100 m test, and enjoy the physical and mental benefits – for years to come. At the very least, you should feel a big sense of pride and confidence from surviving a swim camp. 

The post 200 km in 4 Weeks: How a Swim Camp Changed My Swimming For Good  first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This is the 12th of 12 Weeks of Guppy. Many of you entered the Challenge formally on our Training Log; many have followed along informally. Thanks to you all. As you know, the Challenge was different this year because for the first time the workouts were available either by reading, downloading, using the workouts in the traditional way; or you could have them delivered to you in your FORM goggles.

As to that latter method, the biggest differences are that you don’t need a pool clock; and you get to use “prescribed rest” rather than “leave interval” as the interval workout platform.

But one thing happened between the beginning and the end of the Guppy Challenge: FORM delivered the game-changing feature much anticipated prior to now: the Workout Builder. This is the same feature that turned stationary cycling into a *thing*: the ability to build your own smart workout and deliver it to a smart trainer. For both users and their coaches, this is a must and FORM now has this.

In the case of the Guppy Challenge you didn’t need this feature, because your workouts were made. But this is the final week. Where do you go from here?

I’m like most of you. I didn’t come from a swim background; I have 2 other sports to wrangle; swimming is very important to me but my swim needs to improve inside athletic and lifestyle constraints I can’t escape. I’m going to just give you a snapshot of my own swim life and this might give you some small guidance.

I’m signed up for the Ho’ala Swim, which will take place in about 5 weeks, the week prior to the Hawaiian IRONMAN Triathlon in Kona. It’s held on the IRONMAN swim course. Of course I’m going to Kona because “this is the business we’ve chosen.” The Ho’ala swim is part of the fun I tweeze out of that week. But I took months off of swimming because I spent most of this past spring in constant atrial fibrillation; then recovery from an ablation to solve my afib; followed by catching COVID right after my swimming recommenced. So, I had to restart from zero, or less than zero, just a few weeks ago.

I write this not so you can cry me a river, but to tell you my strategy for recovery and, really, the battle plan in place every year since my pool closes for the winter and I face this almost annually. I don’t think you should necessarily do what I do, but if you know my plan there might be something in there for you.

The hallmarks of my return-to-swim plan are:

1. My target yardage, per workout, is from 2,000 to 3,000 per workout, and in the low 3,000s on occasion. My initial goal is to increase my yardage over the first few days so that I could comfortably swim 2,000+ yards per workout.

2. I have 3 goals for my workouts: increase fitness; increase my top speed, which eventually influences my speed during a distance swim; perfect my technique. I can’t, when unfit, swim very long before my technique breaks down. Early in my fitness my workouts consist of short distances with rest. A lot of 50s. It might be that the whole workout is just 50s, maybe 40 or 50 of them, because when I’m unfit 50 yards is as far as I can swim without my technique breaking down. If I want to swim 2,400 yards but all I can swim before my technique goes to heck is 50 yards, then I’m swimming a lot of 50s! As I get fitter, I increase my distances per repeat, and I’m swimming sets of 75 yards x however many, then I swim repeat 100s, 125s, 200s, 250s, and eventually repeat 400s.

3. I alternate between long and short rest sets. In the long rest sets I’m swimming 50s, 75s, 100s, not very many, and those swims are all-out. I do those no more than once a week. I can’t do an all-out (or near all-out) swim longer than 100yd.

4. The short rest sets are long in distance and duration and I’m just trying to comfortably make the interval. Let’s say my goal is to swim 3000 yards in something faster than 1:30 pace per each 100 yards. One workout that gives me a good indication I can do that if is I swim 6 x 400yd, leaving on the 6 minutes or maybe 6:10. But I need to get the point where I can swim that workout. The progression of workouts to get there goes something like this. Yesterday I swam 12 x 125yd leaving on the 2min. That’s a 1500 yard set in total, and the leave interval is 1min36sec (my swim plus my rest is done at a pace of 1:36 per 100 yards). Next I’ll do 8 x 250yd leaving on the 4min. That’s a 2000yd set on that same leave interval. Then it’s 12 x 200yd leaving on the 3:10. That’s a 2400yd set leaving on the 1:35 interval. As you see, I’m creeping up on that final set, the 6 x 400yd set on the 1:30 interval. This is as much for my brain as for my fitness. I know I’m getting closer to the goal with every successful completion of that workout, even if it’s touch-and-go near the end of the set.

As you see, the distances I swim in each of these longer sets grows. The total distance of might grow or might not, but the distance of the swims themselves grow. This is because, as I get fitter, I’m able to hold my technique longer. Ideal front crawl technique is not natural nor is it intuitive. I have to constantly think about technique. All the time. Regardless of how fit I am. Swimming freestyle is like marriage: Even when it’s going really well you’re a fool if you take that for granted.

I begin my swim sessions with a warm-up of perhaps 600 yards. I might swim a set of 50s, 6 of them, giving me 10 to 15 seconds rest between. Then I might throw a buoy between my legs for another set of 6 x 50, and think just about technique. That buoy makes me keep my body in line, and umasks my laziness if I’m not obeying the technical rules that keep my body linear along the major axis.

Here's the Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, the entire 12 weeks:

Guppy Challenge Week 1; Workouts for Week 1
Guppy Challenge Week 2; Workouts for Week 2
Guppy Challenge Week 3; Workouts for Week 3
The High Elbows of Good Swimmers; Workouts for Week 4
Swim Paraphernalia for Guppies; Workouts for Week 5
Swimming Isn’t Intuitive; Workouts for Week 6
Debunked Swim Mythology; Workouts for Week 7
Every Swim Workout is a Race… Not! Workouts for Week 8
Visualization, Relaxation, Emulation; Workouts for Week 9
What is Body Rotation in Freestyle? Workouts for Week 10
Lift as a Relevant Force in Swimming. Workouts for Week 11
Final Week! Guppy Week-12. Workouts for Week 12

The post Final Week! Guppy Week-12 first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Powerboat designers create hulls that allow the boat to plane in the water. Lift is the force responsible for this. Swimmers will never exhibit lift in the way powerboats do, but lift is still a component of freestyle. Lift is worth discussing once you’ve mastered everything else and this is what remains.

This is an advanced concept, and you won’t find too many discussions on the topic of lift in swimming. But we’re nearing the end of the Guppy Challenge and I thought the time is right.

When my swimming is going really well – a rare moment in time when I’m at my fittest – lift becomes a noticeable component of my extend phase (or glide, or whatever you want to call that part of the swim stroke immediately after the catch). My hand for sure, and to a degree my whole arm, is better able to remain parallel to the surface of the water and not far below it. My minor shoulder muscles have finally adapted to a high elbow posture during the pull. Only when I’m really ready to swim my most efficient freestyle am I in a position to generate, or participate in, lift during this phase.

That said, when I see lift written about it’s upon commencement of the pull phase. I emailed Gary Hall, Sr., about this. He’s the first on a very short list who I felt I could discuss this with who I’m confident knows what he’s talking about.

I asked him if, indeed, lift occurs during the extend phase of freestyle, or am I hallucinating? Again? “Is my body a fabulist,” I asked Gary, “telling me a story about lift that in fact isn’t true. Is there no lift occurring during this extend phase of freestyle?”

Gary replied by writing, “When the arm and hand are stretched out in front of the swimmer, and before any downward force is applied, they act like a wing. The lift generated by the Bernoulli effect is determined by the speed and shape of the moving arm/hand and body. For guys like Sun Yang with long levers, a 60 stroke rate, holding for about a second in front on each stroke, there is probably some significant Bernoulli effect of lift. It is not a coincidence that swimmers deliver their strong surge kick and often reach their highest velocity in the cycle right after the arm enters the water, causing more lift. The lift from the Bernoulli effect would be most pronounced in the hip driven or hybrid freestyle technique, not the shoulder driven technique.”

Gary replied by writing, “When the arm and hand are stretched out in front of the swimmer, and before any downward force is applied, they act like a wing. The lift generated by the Bernoulli effect is determined by the speed and shape of the moving arm/hand and body. For guys like Sun Yang with long levers, a 60 stroke rate, holding for about a second in front on each stroke, there is probably some significant Bernoulli effect of lift. It is not a coinci

There’s some controversy around the Bernoulli Effect in swimming. The revered swim coach Ernie Maglischo wrote in his 1982 book about the Bernoulli Effect, but in the context of the pull phase. Maglischo reportedly wrote in a subsequent edition that he was wrong about that. It’s strict Newtonian physics during the pull. Forget S patterns and pressure differentials. Grip and rip it, in other words.

This is consistent with what Gary wrote me above. He continued on: “However, I still believe that most of the lift from the front end of the swimmer is derived after the catch, from the swimmer pressing down at the beginning of the pulling motion…the Newtonian lift, not from the ‘wing’. The arm and hand are not really a great wing.”

If I understand Gary right, he’s limiting his Bernoulli Effect comments to the extend phase. After that, Newtonian. The change of motion of an object is proportional to the force impressed; and is made in the direction of the straight line in which the force is impressed. Newton’s Second Law of Motion.

Back to the extend phase, though. I’m not actively attempting to gain lift here. It’s not like my hand is an aileron. The posture of my hand in the water is subtle and the Bernoulli Effect isn’t about water hitting your louvre-like angled-up hand; it’s about the difference in pressure between the water above and below your hand. This whole thing is subtle and when I look at really good high elbow anchor specialists – when I look at a Grant Hackett video – it’s hard to see an attempt at lift during the extend phase. But I think it’s there. In fact, I think some subtle lift is what helps good swimmers keep their hands close to the surface during the extend phase.

Once the swimmer has exhausted the benefit of his or her arm extension and must commence the pull, this is where, according to Gary in the quote above, “most of the lift” occurs. But in this case, it’s not just “lift” that helps keep the arm and hand near the surface after the catch, but “lift” as a force that very slightly raises the “hull” of the body out of the water. Lift takes place because the very first action after the extend phase is a downward press on the water.

This would be the case regardless, because the hand and forearm must get from parallel to perpendicular in the water. The hand travels, like a spear, through the water, but then must translate to become a canoe paddle in the water. That moment of translation requires the hand to press down on the water, which means lift.

Here’s when you get zero lift: If your hand drifts down during the extend phase. In this case, you’re not getting lift during the extend phase, and you won’t get the benefit of lift from that press-down motion during that translation of the arm from spear to paddle. That drift-down is the rule, not the exception. This describes most swimmers… and me too, unless it’s one of those rare moments when I’m really swim fit and I’m paying attention to my technique.

Finally, did you notice that FORM Goggles now has a workout builder? This is a big deal and flips the switch, for me. I love the goggle; the instant feedback; real-time, all-the-time, clock knowledge; but I also love writing my own workouts.

The Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, thus far:

Guppy Challenge Week 1; Workouts for Week 1
Guppy Challenge Week 2; Workouts for Week 2
Guppy Challenge Week 3; Workouts for Week 3
The High Elbows of Good Swimmers; Workouts for Week 4
Swim Paraphernalia for Guppies; Workouts for Week 5
Swimming Isn’t Intuitive; Workouts for Week 6
Debunked Swim Mythology; Workouts for Week 7
Every Swim Workout is a Race… Not! Workouts for Week 8
Visualization, Relaxation, Emulation; Workouts for Week 9
What is Body Rotation in Freestyle? Workouts for Week 10
Lift as a Relevant Force in Swimming. Workouts for Week 11

The post Lift, as a Relevant Force in Swimming first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Search “freestyle body rotation” on the web and look for videos. You’ll see movie after movie of swimmers performing what look almost like catch-up stroke drills, with all the technical swim elements we’ve been talking about throughout the Guppy Challenge series.

These experts preach a 45° angle, that is to say, your body rotates around what swimming coaches call the “long axis,” which is the axis about which you spin if you shish-ka-bob yourself with a skewer passing right through your head and body. To keep with the analogy, imagine you’re getting roasted on the spit, body turning around so that all of you can evenly cook. The difference is, you’re not rotating in a circle, but back and forth, like a washing machine agitator, 45° in each direction.

When I watch videos of you-all swim I often don’t see 45° on each side; rather more than 45° on your breathing side, and no rotation at all on the other side. If you look at those videos you’ll see that body rotation is pretty symmetrical among good swimmers on both sides, even if you only breathe on one side. The image below is a pretty good example of that 45° rotation, which is occurring in the absence of a breath taken. If this swimmer was to swim several strokes on 1 breath the same body rotation would be there.

Teaching body rotation is relatively new. This, along with high elbow during the pull phase, was not taught when I began swimming in earnest as a triathlete 40-plus years ago. In fact, two things have changed in that time: the way freestyle is taught, and the way freestyle is taught to adult onset swimmers. The great revolution in adult swim instruction is almost wholly due to triathlon. During the 1980s triathletes discovered masters swimming and the best masters coaches realized that their methods for teaching were deficient. Triathletes really suffered through the inability of coaches to get the point across to triathletes learning to swim.

“Extend!” my masters coach would tell me. “Reach!” Only to be followed by, “You’re crossing over!” The more I reached the more I would cross over. Why? Because I wasn’t rotating about the long axis. I was bending at the waist, or curling my torso, every time I breathed, causing my legs to splay. The more I reached the greater the crossover. (Crossover is when your hand crosses the centerline of your body during the catch.) I never did understand what my coach was saying while she was my coach; and she never considered how she might explain herself better.

One more thing I'll mention and then I’ll let you be. I’m unsure about whether body rotation fully includes the legs. Imagine wringing the water out of a kitchen hand towel, twisting the ends of the towel in opposite directions. There is no bend in the body during freestyle. No bend at the waist. You remain linear along that long axis. But when you rotate from side to side, is there a twist at all, where the body from – say – the hips to the shoulders engage in that full 45° rotation to the left and then to the right, while the legs down to your feet don’t rotation quite that much? Do the legs remain a little more planar? Do the feet rotate across that full 90° span?

I don’t know. I never hear or read anything about this when I investigate what other coaches say about rotation. My personal discipline: I swim better when I try to both engage in that full rotation, but I also focus on keeping my toes pointed toward the bottom when I kick. I don’t know whether there is any twist in my body along my long axis or not. I will let the better swim coaches opine on this.

The Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, thus far:

Guppy Challenge Week 1; Workouts for Week 1
Guppy Challenge Week 2; Workouts for Week 2
Guppy Challenge Week 3; Workouts for Week 3
The High Elbows of Good Swimmers; Workouts for Week 4
Swim Paraphernalia for Guppies; Workouts for Week 5
Swimming Isn’t Intuitive; Workouts for Week 6
Debunked Swim Mythology; Workouts for Week 7
Every Swim Workout is a Race… Not! Workouts for Week 8
Visualization, Relaxation, Emulation; Workouts for Week 9
What is Body Rotation in Freestyle? Workouts for Week 10

The post What is Body Rotation in Freestyle? first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

This is Week-9 of the Guppy Challenge, in partnership with FORM goggles, and we're nearing the clubhouse turn! I have some hopes for you as we close out these final weeks.

My first hope is that you know what you need to look like when you swim, or that you want to know, or that you know that you need to know and you have a plan for this. This is visualization. Remember, we have a swim video thread on our Reader Forum, if you’re brave and shameless enough to post a video of your own swimming. Also in that thread is a video of Grant Hackett. You could do way worse than just watch this video over and over.

I remember the 8 months that I devoted to swimming, back in the 1980s. My measuring stick was a time trial I would perform from time to time, 1000 yards, starting from the wall. When I finally got fed up with the state of my swim my PR was 13:52. Eight months later my PR for this time trial was 12:26. A big part of what I did was watch good swimmers swim. I would get to a particular swim workout 30 minutes early, where a group of high caliber swimmers were finishing their workouts. I remember watching one of them swim 100 yard interals repeating on the 1:05, looking effortless. I just watched them swim, and absorbed what I saw.

That’s the first part: visualization. But that’s not enough. Emulation – the ability to copy, to mimic, to parrot – is a skill. Well, it’s at least a gift. Whether it’s a skill – whether the ability to mimic is learnable – I don’t know for sure. But I think it is. I believe it’s learnable because it’s how not just humans, but mammals, survive. But you can’t just assume that watching is enough. Emulation should be a discipline, I think. Imprint the important elements of the good swim stroke in your mind. You need to watch a lot of good swimmers and watch them a lot. I spent hours, in the aggregate, just watching good swimmers swim, with the goal of emulating them. As I lay my head on my pillow most nights, instead of counting sheep I would just watch, in my brain, good swimmers swim. The more I absorbed and internalized images of good swimmers the more I swam like a good swimmer.

This last point is a little divergent from the first two, and I’ve wanted to write about this here on Slowtwitch for many years but I never really knew how to convey the idea. When I was a runner in high school I vividly remember track workouts that were just over-the-top hard. As a 15 year-old the plan was to run 12 x 400 yard repeats and run them in 64 seconds. After the first 3 of them it was, like, no way! No way am I going to get through 12 of these, at least not at this effort level. Here is the thought that came to me – my mantra if you will: Figure out a way to do the last 9 of these 400s, at this pace. Jettison the effort that is not necessary. Find a way to relax, rather than to contract.

What I find in sport is that there are a lot of moments during an activity when relaxation is available to you, and I don’t mean 5 or 10 seconds prized out of a 15 minute race. I mean a fraction of a second – a tenth or two tenths – inside of every stroke or cadence cycle. Or, a moment heading into the wall of a flip turn.

Or, maybe there’s a part of your body that you can relax while the rest of your body is engaged in the work. Your arm carriage when you’re running fast, perhaps.

I find that relaxation is – ironically – an active endeavor. You have to work at relaxing. You must actively seek moments or ways to relax inside of a hard effort. You must focus your energy toward the job of propulsion at the pace that is required in order to win the race; and if you’re like like me you’re not talented enough to win the race based on what God and your parents gave you. Physically gave you. But they gave you another edge, perhaps, and that is the capacity to figure out how to strain less. How to think your way to straining less while going that required pace.

So, visualization, emulation, relaxation. Whether swim, bike or run.

What you’ll see in this week’s Guppy workouts is your first 3000 yard day. Bravo if you do it! Once you get to 3000 yards, those are pro yards. Not pro swimmer yards, but pro triathlete yards. You can do this workout knowing that a lot of pro triathletes are not going to swim any more than this in a workout or, if they do, a “3” is the first number in the yardage total.

If you want to swim a 4th workout this week, here you go. This is my typical nonstandard swim workout that I like to do and in fact I did this yesterday:

12 x 50yd, repeating on an interval giving you 10sec to 15sec rest
4 x 75yd, repeating on a tighter interval, giving you 5sec to 15sec rest
12 x 50yd, repeating on an interval giving you 10sec to 15sec rest
4 x 75yd, repeating on a tighter interval, giving you 5sec to 15sec rest
12 x 50yd, repeating on an interval giving you 10sec to 15sec rest

This is a 2400 yard set. One set. One set and you’re done. No break in between any of these elements, like it’s a straight swim. The hard part is figuring out how to create the interval so that after each element you’re ending with the clock on the top, to start your second element.

But it’s not that hard to figure out. If you perform your 50s repeating on the :50, the :55, the 1:00, the 1:05, or the 1:10 in each case after 12 of them you’ll finish ready to leave on the top. If you perform your 75s leaving on the 1:15, the 1:30, or the 1:45 you’ll finish 4 of them ready to commence your next set of 50s on the top. So, those are your possible leave intervals.

There is no warmup or warmdown because the first and last elements of this mega-set kind of amount to those. The leave interval should be pretty easy on the 50s. It’s just a case of making the interval and not working too hard. The 75s is where you work hard during this workout.

The Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, thus far:

Guppy Challenge Week 1; Workouts for Week 1
Guppy Challenge Week 2; Workouts for Week 2
Guppy Challenge Week 3; Workouts for Week 3
The High Elbows of Good Swimmers; Workouts for Week 4
Swim Paraphernalia for Guppies; Workouts for Week 5
Swimming Isn’t Intuitive; Workouts for Week 6
Debunked Swim Mythology; Workouts for Week 7
Every Swim Workout is a Race… Not! Workouts for Week 8
Visualization, Relaxation, Emulation; Workouts for Week 9

The post Visualization, Emulation, Relaxation first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

Like Three Days of the Condor, this is Eight Weeks of the Guppy. Four weeks to go. The Guppy Challenge features workouts delivered two ways: the traditional way you’re getting them here, via these articles; and preloaded into your FORM goggle. If you get your workouts the FORM way there are 5 obvious advantages: prescribed rest instead of leave interval; you don’t need a pool clock; you know your pace real-time all the time; your effort automatically uploads to your connected app; you don’t need to remember or refer to the printed workout. There’s a lot of other advantages (like post-swim analytics) but we’ll start with those.

Regardless of whether you’re a FORM-type person a pool clock-type person the axioms of swim training apply. Two of this week’s 3 workouts don’t have you working that hard. The first is an outright easy day. You might wonder what the point is and this brings us to the first axiom. The most important thing you can do to get faster in the water is swim. That’s not as universally agreed upon as what you might think. But it’s time in the water that’ll make you faster, and it’s frequency and volume that count. How hard you work when you’re in the water is secondary.

What you do when you’re in the water is important of course, but it’s not whether you do 6x400yd or 12x200yd. What’s important is that you go to the pool with reasonable frequency (3x or 4x a week); that you swim anywhere from 2000yd to 4000yd when you’re there; and that you constantly work on your technique. The technical elements on which you’re working during this Challenge are twofold. The first is creating a pulling surface that’s perpendicular to the water – anchoring your entire arm, from your bicep to your fingertip, in that spot and pulling yourself past it. The second is a kick that looks not that different when you’re swimming then it does when you’re kicking. No leg-splay. Feet on the surface. Feet pointed mostly down, not sideways, as if you’re doing the sidestroke. Anybody who masters those two things is a fast swimmer, automatically. Kick sets, catch-up drill, 6k Switch, pull sets, all are designed to help you fix 1 or both of these elements.

Back to effort. This is important whether you’re a swimmer or a triathlete. I wrote an article 22 years ago that had absolutely zero scientific basis underpinning it, and I don’t know to this day if academia has added anything to the discussion. Does the heart get tired? For sure, athletes sometimes get to a point in their training when their hearts can’t beat anywhere near their usual high cadence. The question is, did the heart get tired? Or did something else in the body get tired and the heart isn’t generating a high pulse rate because certain skeletal muscles (for example) aren’t working hard enough to elevate the heart rate? I suspect the heart can get tired and the fact that we don't have the formula for this is to me uncompelling. We also don't know, really, what causes something as basic as fatigue. So, as to this question, I have suspicions, but I don’t know. What I do know is that I had my first ablation for atrial fibrillation 6 weeks ago (fingers crossed, in sinus rhythm since then) and I can’t begin to count the friends of mine in their 60s who’ve had one arrhythmia or another. We don’t usually die from our arrhythmias, but they are the big sloppy kiss our heart gives us after redlining it for 4 decades.

For this reason I’m less interested nowadays in turning every workout into a high heart rate effort. It would be different if I didn’t also bike and run. If I just swam 3x a week, fine. But if I do 6, 8, 10 or more workouts a week, how often do I want my heart way up there? Remember, what’s important is not how hard I swim, but that I swim. There is 1 workout this week that is quite hard. For this reason, there should probably be bikes and runs this week where you don’t redline your heart.

I can give you youngsters the following bit of advice. As I have aged I have changed my behaviors. I don’t race every workout. I don’t drink; I sleep a lot; I got off my caffeine addiction; I’m very careful about my diet; I manage my stress; I manage my crises. I sometimes wonder what I could have done earlier in my life had I adopted these behaviors decades earlier.

For you intrepid souls who’ll need a 4th workout this week, here it is, but fair warning this is one of those go-hard workouts. If you go hard during this workout, you must back off certain other swim, bike and run workouts:

6x50yd warmup, on an interval giving you 10sec rest.
6x50yd alternating kick and swim: 1x50yd kicking, 1 swimming, 6 total.
10x150yd. Leave on the top or the bottom, whichever gets you closer to 40sec rest between each one. Swim these 150s kind of hard. Calculate and remember and average for each swim so that you can repeat this later, to see if you beat your average time.
2×50 or 1×100 easy as a warmdown.

Total yardage: 2,200

The Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, thus far:

Text for Guppy Challenge Week 1; Workouts for Week 1
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 2; Workouts for Week 2
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 3; Workouts for Week 3
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 4; Workouts for Week 4
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 5; Workouts for Week 5
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 6; Workouts for Week 6
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 7; Workouts for Week 7
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 8; Workouts for Week 8

The post Every Swim Workout is a Race… Not! first appeared on Slowtwitch News.

First a little housekeeping. Some of you have had a hard time seeing the workout tabs past a particular point in the Google Sheet containing these workouts. I have therefore split the display into discrete sheets for each week. Please advise if this does not fix the problem; otherwise I’ll assume it will. At the bottom of this page you’ll find links to each week’s workouts.

Let’s debunk some old thinking about swimming that you might’ve heard if you’re within spitting distance of my generation. Take for existence the S pattern. This is what I was taught when I was in swim classes in my youth. Of course this goes way back, to when Earl Scheib would “paint any car, any color, for $29.95.” I don’t know how long they continued to teach the S pattern but the idea was this: Once you moved still water, move your hand to another place so that you could begin pulling water that isn’t already moving.

Nobody believes that anymore. In fact, you couldn’t keep your hand in the same position in the water if you tried. Nevertheless, you should try. Pulling in any direction other than straight back is a bad habit.

Besides, I have a conceptual problem with the idea of pulling water, or with the concept of water that’s moving. You aren’t actually pulling water back, ideally. In my view, the most efficient stroke is one in which you’re anchoring your arm in the water and pulling yourself past the water, without your arm slipping. Grab and pull. Grip and rip it. No more S pattern.

This next one is a little controversial, and I don’t mean to tell swim coaches how to coach swimmers, but for you all, hypoxic workouts are a waste of time at best, and a detriment at worst. We get these in Masters team workouts, if we swim with such a group. The coach will tell you to breathe every 5th or 7th stroke and that might have some utility if your sport includes a lot of time underwater after a flip turn. But that’s not you. Oxygen is your friend. In fact, I don’t find a lot of benefit in bilateral breathing. That’s just a less hypoxic hypoxic drill. I do find it a huge value to become adept at breathing on your non-natural side. In fact, when I give you sets of 50s for warmup or warmdown I think it would be instructive to swim every other 50 breathing on your other side and let’s see if you can get the times for each 50 the same.

Minor point, but I was taught never to take a breath directly out of a flip turn. Turn, push off the wall, take a stroke without breathing, then take a breath on the second stroke. To me that's just a continuation of that same fixation on oxygen deprivation that old swim coaches have.

What is of real benefit to you is learning how to take consecutive breaths and that means 3:2 breathing (2 breaths per 3 strokes), generally leading to just taking a breath whenever you want. The older you get the more you’ll need to breathe. Taking consecutive breaths into or out of a flip turn will become second nature. This will serve you well in the open water when you need to sight to the other side; when swells from one side cause you to be more efficient breathing on the lee side; when someone swimming closely on your natural side means you’ll want to breathe on the other side; or because you’ll lose a breath through misadventure and you’ll need to get another breath quickly.

So, for sure, become adept at breathing on either side, but not through the forced application of bilateral breathing, which simply limits your oxygen intake.

Your yardage is going up, you may have noticed. Now it’s typically in the 2,500 or 2,600 yard range. If you haven’t already, invest in a pull buoy. And maybe some paddles. You’ll have begun to generate muscles that allow you to keep your elbow high during the pull phase; to bend at the elbow and use your entire arm as a pulling surface. But, again, don’t think if it as pushing water back; think if it as pulling yourself past water that isn’t moving at all.

Your extra credit set is pretty simple, if you intend to do a 4th swim this week. It’s 6 x 400yd, the first as a warmup, each one progressively harder. Just make sure each 400 is faster than the one before, even it’s just by a second or two. Give yourself at least 30sec rest, but start on the top each time. That means if you finish in, say, 6:25 you’ll leave on the 7min. If you finish in 6:45 then you leave on the 8min.

The Guppy Challenge Series, in partnership with FORM goggles, thus far:

Text for Guppy Challenge Week 1; Workouts for Week 1
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 2; Workouts for Week 2
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 3; Workouts for Week 3
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 4; Workouts for Week 4
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 5; Workouts for Week 5
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 6; Workouts for Week 6
Text for Guppy Challenge Week 7; Workouts for Week 7

The post Debunked Swim Mythology first appeared on Slowtwitch News.