Cr@p Swimmers R Us

Had a really bad the office today, couldn't get any aspect of the stroke right. I felt like it was my first time in the pool!!!!

Anyway, on a positive note tomorrow is new day. In the morning I will be popping along to the coached session at the tri club.   

I promise that you'll find the coached session excellent.

Today for me, I skipped the Friday swim (shock!), because I'd just done a mullering 23 mile run in the morning. That was good value. I'm still wearing the compression socks. No point just turning up and having a bad session in the pool and getting cramps.

I had my first swim lesson today in ooh 35 years.

Lets start with the basics Jon, you have a strong consistent kick and you don't overdo it which is great for triathlon. Everything else we can work on.

So it's not all bad 

Final RV

Coach has got it right. A bad kick is a dog of a habit for a coach to get rid of. The best students are the worst ones, because they aren't going to argue. Once you're breathing more air than water it means that you're swimming. Once you can do repetitive lengths you can work on stroke. Within 6 weeks it will click, then comes a period when techniques get embedded. 

Apparently I'm told by the coach from swim for tri that it 1500 repetitions of a movement.....one swim session can be as little as 300.....

Well that's quite good really. Only 5 sessions and you'll have it. The answer is clearly to invest a few coppers in practice sessions between lessons. I'm going three times a week in order to get it embedded.

Tonight I went for a longer slot and did 102 lengths. Bizarrely it took me 10 minutes longer than it did the first time I got that far. Reach and glide clearly isn't the same as grab and shove.

My coach has corrected by windmill arms to reach and glide. However I agree with yo Blisters.

1 handfull of water every 5s isn't the same as multiples of handfuls in the same time a la windmill/grab and shove.

We'll get there.

Session this morning was great.  When concentrating & trying probably far too hard I managed to get down to 13 strokes per length from 16 17 & somethimes even 18 strokes per length.  Inconsistent, maybe but at least I know it works & it can be done.

About time i join in here, had done little/no swimming in years till i started training 4 ish weeks ago. Worked my way up to 1250m Breaststroke in 35 min, but had been avoiding crawl, because i didn't want to learn bad habbits and i could swim 4 lengths before being too out of breath to continue.

Went along to my local tri club's swim session last night. Was really helpful, and i was pleased to find that all abilities were catered for, and there were other swimmers around my level there. My tasks for the week seem to be exhaling consistantly, and slowing the pace down. Slightly worried about being told not to do kicking drills until i get fins as what ever i do will be learning bad habits!

Well frist step on the road to swimming crawl taken, stupid target set... 1mile non stop crawl by new year. God only knows if it is doable from this base but its a target to aim for.

T Hill. Obviously God knows it's doable. I would also say that the rest of us new swimmers will confirm it. From 25m to 400m continuous is a big jump. From 400m to 1600m is not such a big jump. Because by that stage you will have got enough rhythm to be able to put a jog version of a swim together. If you can jog for 16 lengths you can jog for 64, presuming that your running has established the cardio vascular base. Top tips are:
1- breathing (every 3 is very professional, every 2 is very practical)
2- don't "kick" so much as just use your thighs to help keep you up.

Finally had a swim yesterday with new goggles that didnt leak. Made such a difference. Arrived at pool after fire brigade turned up and kicked everyone out of the building. Whole bunch of little school kids standing in the car park in their costumes and space blankets.Sooo glad I didn't go a bit earlier.

LJS and I swam 2700m of last Tuesday's 4100m tri club training which we missed. Shown below in case any of you fancy doing some of it. Our trainer is brilliant, in 4 years of swimming in the master's group, she has never repeated a single session!

warm-up - 800m, 100m each crawl/fly kick/breast/backstroke and repeat.

10 x 25m sprint/25m easy

200m breathing drill - change every 50m: breathe every 3rd/every 4th/every 5th/every 4th stroke

200m backstroke - 2 left arm strokes/2 right arm strokes/10 leg kicks and repeat.

pyramid - 50/100/150/200/200/150/100/50m

The part we didn't get to before the pool closed was: 400m crawl, count strokes for first length and reduce by 6 strokes every length.

1000m cooldown - 200m crawl with catchups/200m backstroke catchups/200m crawl with pull bouy/200m backstroke with pull bouy/200m crawl.

Last night was my first 1-2-1 swimming lesson, not sure if i felt i took enough away to justify the cost. After an hours session the teacher had found plenty of things to work on, quite a few of which i already felt were not quite right and needed work and another few that i was not aware were a problem. I'm now swimming 4 times a week, and wanted to leave with at least a couple of drills to work on beofre my next 1-2-1 session, but am not sure i even really left with one thing to practice.

I will have to have a think about things, but my current line of thinking is to give one more lesson a try, then maybe consider a different instructor, or just sticking with the Tri Club sessions. So a little disapointed, but not sure if it was my expectations that were not realistic.

T Hill I would second the use of fins.  I only started tri coachingsessions about a month ago and it has helped me enormously.  I could do 25m with no swimming aids before gasping for air at the end.  A second 25m with a 30s break nearly killed me.  Almost puked when the coach was talking to me.

He gave me some fins which enabled me to focus on my rhythm, technique, and breathing.  With fins I've gone from strength to strength now that I have to worry about my legs dropping.  Now doing 15*50m with them. 

I don't get off that lightly, I get rid of fins for part of session so that I don't become dependent on them.  Use pull buoy and nothing at all on some drills.  In both of these I take the benefits from the fin drill and it's much easier.

Keep at it.

btw.   Has anyone got a copy of 'Triathlon Swimming Made Easy: The Total Immersion Way...' that they would like to sell?

PP - I have a new copy of Total Immersion and a Swim Smooth DVD 10 steps to Front Crawl. Cost to purchase £40. I will sell them both for £20.00 + postage. If you are interested drop me a line on s.kavanagh54@yahoo.co.uk      

Back to Tri Club swim last night, funny you should mention fins, i got to test a pair i had on order that have now arrived out. I ended up doing a little over 40 lengths of crawl over the session, for the majority alternating between pull buoy, fins and aidless swimming. There is a definate improvement, and when i slow down i can go a fair bit further, proabably like my running which was too fast to start with and i had to slow down to go the distance.

Its great to hear that you were not scard off but all the talk of getting you signed up for an IM, and even better that your swimming is progressing so nicely. Not that i have any great deal of knowledge, but the swim smooth stuff seems really good, the introduction chapters of the book were slow and did send me to sleep more than once. However, once i got into the improving your swimming chapters there was lots of useful information in there, and through words and pictures they convey things to the reader very well. The only TI stuff i have seen is some of their videos, which seemed quite dated.

PP (not trying to kill the sale Stephen K - honest ) I Did actually pick up a copy of  "Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster and Easier" last week for £1.60 + £.1.95 postage from ebay which I reckoned was on a par with picking it up in a charity shop - have only read first few chapters and am finding it a bit evangelical I await the see the results when I try to apply the principals in the pool

Thanks Stephen, but I was specifically looking for the book I mentioned.  The Swim Smooth dvd sounds interesting but there is a box set which covers the OW stuff.  

Appreciate the offer though

I honestly think books and videos are all very well but nothing beats swimming with a good coach. All the  better if you can get one to video you as you swim. It's surprising how different your technique can be from what you thought it was. My OH is an excellent swimmer but even he didn't realise he is crossing the center line with his left arm until he saw it on camera.