To quote my son's favorite character from movie Cars" "Speed. I'm speed." Exactly that is how I felt during the swim workout today. Yes we are continuing on my yesterday's post about improved swimming technique. Today was another swim workout in which Erica had me do 10x50yd and 5x100yd on fairly short rest. I was to vary between strong/hard effort and easy ones. Amazing swim that is all I can say about it. The last 100 yd in the set was all out and I swam it in 1:27 which is huge for me. I know I can not sustain such speed race, but it certainly makes you feel like speed daemon after doing 100 yd in 1:40 - 1:50 for over a year.
All it took was a trained eye and correction of style that seems to be fairly easy to implement. And I only started working on it last week. I wonder how much faster I get when I nail the kicking and breathing head position. I can actually feel when I swim when I do it wrong with the breathing - my body kind of fishtails and I need to correct it. Simply amazing. I'm actually looking forward to the race and will see what this does for the swim split.
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5 comments:
Erica is like magic. :) It's pretty dramatic, isn't it?
Wow--I'd love to know the few small pointers she gave you! I'm also stuck at the 1:50 x 100 range and in need of getting through a plateau!!
I do not think it is any secret. I will share them with you, but they may not apply to you as these were my swim mistakes and we agreed to look at quick improvements we can get done in 2 weeks. Prior to the race. I think there are other things we may work on over the off season.
Nothing beats having someone who knows swimming to look at the way you swim and point out things that need to change.
Here are the errors I was making:
1. I had the hands too close during the pull - now I have them little wider.
2. During the breathing I tilt my head which throws off my balance. So the goal is to keep the head in the same position.
3. And lastly my legs were too wide during the kick.
But this may not be what you need to do. I suggest to get someone look at your swim and help you fix it. You may be doing other mistakes than I do.
Good luck.
Yeah it is like magic. I was not expecting such dramatic change with what seemed like very minor adjustment. It just goes to confirm that swim is very technical discipline.
Leah, good luck in your upcoming race.
Cars...I must have seen that movie 250 times and heard Sheryl Crow sing the song in the car a 1000!
Kachow!
It's often the little things that make the big difference!
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