Triathlon swimming made easy (8 page)

And, while swimming freestyle, you're at your sleekest when you spend most of each stroke cycle on your side, particularly
in the brief interval between strokes. But doing that requires an impeccable sense of dynamic balance and side balance.

2. Wave drag. Just li
ke a boat, you leave a wake while swimming. Wave drag is the resistance caused by the waves or turbulence you create. As Hines
quips, "Making waves takes energy — all of it supplied by you. "The bigger your wake, the greater your energy loss. Unlike form drag, w
hich increases as the square of velocity, wave drag increases as its cube. So as you double your speed, energy spent on wavemaking increases eightf
old.

The key factor in wave drag is how smoothly you stroke. A rough, choppy, or rushed stroke increases turbulence, and turbulent water increases resistance. That's one of the reasons a long stroke is such an advantage: It lets you use a slower, more controlled turnover at any speed, which in turn means less turbulence, fewer waves — and less drag.

3. Surface drag is friction between the water and your skin. No technique can change this law of nature, but you can affect how it applies to you by wearing the right suit. Shed your billowy boxers for a skin-tight suit, and just feel the huge difference it makes. Racers, as you probably know, also shave down, and on top of that may don special racing suits of Teflonlike fabrics to reduce surface drag further still. So slippery is the material when compared to skin, that an increasing number of elite (and many subelite) competitors now wear styles that cover more and more of the bo
dy. For the rest of us, however, a well-fitting lycra suit will do the trick.

Tuning in to Drag

Besides the drag-defeating strategies noted above, the simplest and best strategy for slipping more easily through that wall of water is to pay attention to it. Alexander Popov may be the world's fastest swimmer, but he often practices swimming "super slowly" at speeds where he can feel the resistance trying to hold him back, so he can figure out how to minimize it. Even without Popov's super-sensitive "drag antennae" to pick up signals, there are ways you can heighten your own sensitivity to it:

First, intentionally create more drag. Push off the wall with your arms wide and head high. Feel the resistance. Then push off in the most streamlined position, and notice how much it's reduced. Use that "awareness training" in your regular swimming to recognize the ways in which the water resists you, and to the stroke changes — such as keeping your head in a neutral position — that enable you to feel less of it.

Second, use your ears. Tune in to how much noise you make while swimming. Do you splash, plop, or plunk? Sound is energy, and the less of your mechanical energy you convert into noise, the more remains to move you forward. More to the point, anything that results in noisy
swimming is evidence of inefficiency. Working on "silent swimming" is one of the best ways to tune in more acutely to how you're flowing through the water, and can help you improve your fluency.

Third, use your eyes. Are there bubbles in your stroke? Goggles make it easy to tell, and marathon swimmer and TI coach Don Walsh uses his to observe one of the most available pieces of "swimming knowledge" you can have about yourself. In fact for a full year of practice, Don thought more about eliminating bubbles than about anything else and credits that focus with helping him complete the 28.5-mile Manhattan Island Marathon in
14,000
fewer strokes than hi
s rivals.

That number is no figment. Walsh actually calculated it, by having his boat crew monitor his stroke rate and compare it with that of other swimmers. He swam just as fast at 50 strokes per minute as other swimmers did at about 72. That means in the nine hours it took Walsh to swim up the East River and down the Hudson, he took something on the order of 27,000 strokes, while virtually every other swimmer in the race — including many who finished behind him — ended up needing about 41,000! That many strokes would have sent Don halfway around Manhattan again! Viewed another way, he g
ot a "free ride" of almost 14 miles by being so slippery. If you could learn to slip through the water rather than battling it, you'll see far fewer bubbles, and there will be much less turbulence in your wake.

Note: In 2002, inspired by Don's example, I swam the MIMS with a goal of beating Don's stroke count. I completed the 28.5-mile swim in 8 hours and 53 minutes at an average of 49 strokes per minute - for a total of just over 26,000 strokes. And with the mean stroke count for other MIMS racers between 38,000 and 29,000 strokes, I also saved enough strokes to swim halfway around the island again.

Finally, imagine your body has a kind of shadow trailing behind you as you swim. Remember: You're creating a wake similar to that of a boat, and though it spreads a bit as it reaches your feet, it doesn't spread much. Consider that wake your shadow, and anything that slips outside it as drag. Your feet, for
instance, may be helping you along as you kick, but as soon as they slip outside your "shadow," they increase drag.

The Choice Is Yours

You have a choice to make each time you arrive at the pool: Spend your time training hard and long to muscle up your propulsive force and inflate your aerobic capacity, or focus on trimming drag and reducing the energy spent making waves. A trip to any aquarium will show you the smarter path is the path of least resistance.

Up to this point we've been focusing on good "vessel design," exploring all the ways to stay balanced, long, and sleek. Now that your "hull" is as efficient as it can be, it's time to tune up your engine to run with the same, smart efficiency.

Chapter 8

"95-Mph Freestyle" — Effortless Power from the Core

So far, our strategy for mastering fast, fluent, "fishlike" swimming has focused on minimizing resistance — not on maximizing propulsion. But once you've conquered drag, you can create new efficiencies by learning to tap an effortless power source as you stroke. The good news is that the eliminating skills you learned to minimize drag are the same skills you'll use to maximize propulsion. You just think about them differently and apply them in different ways.

Over time, all the counterintuitive things you've learned you must do in a concentrated way to be Fishlike — hiding your head, pressing your "buoy," lengthening your vessel — will gradually grow into habits. As they do, you'll be able to shift some of your brainpower to making your propelling actions smooth, controlled, and fluent. The first step is to learn to use your most effortless power source: the core body.

You'll see the most persuasive argument for that by visiting an aquarium. Watching fish under water makes it clear that the best "engine" for propulsion in a fluid is the core body. Lacking arms and legs, fish can't propel by pulling and kicking; they use rhythmic body undulation or oscillation to move with stunning speed, grace, and ease. Watch from poolside (or on TV) at an elite-level meet and you'll see the world's best swimmers apply the same principle: The torso sets the rhythm and the arms and legs
synchronize with it. Then watch lap swimmers at your pool. Most do just the opposite: arms flail, legs churn, and the core body isn't involved or works at cross-purposes.

So, let's begin a whole-body tune-up of your power train, from the engine (your torso) to the propellers (your hands).

The Kinetic Chain: Power from the Core

It's only natural to think of our arms and legs as the "engine" for fast swimming. When we want to go faster, we instinctively work them harder and faster. And when swimmers devote countless yards to pulling with a foam buoy immobilizing their legs, or kicking with arms holding a board, they're reinforcing these instincts in their muscle memory. The shift from arm-dominated to core-based propulsion will take time, patience, persistence, and attention. But I promise the rewards will be more than worth it.

If you
really
want to learn to swim like a fish, consider again how fish actually swim. They scoot through the water in a most uncomplicated way, by rhythmically oscillating or undulating the entire body, which produces tail-whip, and off they go. Fishlike propulsion for humans is based on the same principle: core-body rotation for long-axis strokes (freestyle and backstroke), undulation for the short-axis strokes of butterfly and breaststroke.

In an ideal world it wouldn't be necessary for swimmers to
learn
hip rotation. Rolling from side to side is already the most natural way for your body to accommodate the alternating-arm action of freestyle. Prove it to yourself by standing in place and moving your arms as if swimming freestyle. Roll your hips and you move freely; keep them immobile and you feel restricted. Because rolling is a natural accommodation, a freestyler must actually expend energy to remain flat (usually by splaying the arms or legs). This isn't usually intentional; swimmers remain flat because they haven'
t mastered side-lying balance. As soon as they become comfortable with sidelying balance — something not natural or instinctive in most people but which can be learned — they stop fighting themselves and roll more freely.

Though coaches speak of hip rotation as a way to swim more powerfully, in truth it has an even greater advantage: As I explained in the
last chapter, your body slips through the water more easily in the sidelying position.
Remember: Techniques that reduce drag are always more beneficial than those that increase power.

But as you become more slippery by learning the balance that frees your body to roll, you also gain access to an incredibly powerful "engine" for swimming propulsion: the kinetic chain, the same power source that uncorks 95-mph fastballs. A baseball pitcher's power originates in the legs and gradually gets magnified as it travels up the chain for delivery to his pitching arm to uncork a blistering fastball.

The world's best swimmers know this instinctively. While inefficient swimmers use arms and shoulders to do most of the work, Olympic swimmers get their power in the torso and use their arms and shoulders mainly to transmit this force to the water. Great technique can be a great equalizer: Mastery of the kinetic chain is what allows Tiger Woods, for example, to drive a golf ball farther than rivals who are bigger and stronger. It also provides the power for nearly any kind of hitting or throwing motion.

The kinetic chain is not a complicated concept. In fact, you probably learned naturally to use it, many years ago, on a playground swing. I hazily recall starting with vigorous leg kicking, which just made the swing shake a bit, but certainly not soar. But I can vividly recall how satisfying it was when I began to figure it out and experienced, for the first time, the effect of engaging
every
muscle in finely timed, coordinated action. If I leaned forward slightly, the swing would move back a little. As gravity pulled it down again, I helped it along by leaning back. Each time g
ravity reversed me, I added enough leverage to make it go a little farther. And farther, and farther.

The most thrilling moment was when I reached the apogee of the backward swing, having figured out how to put
all
my muscle and mass into a perfectly linked series of arcs. The simple desire to go higher and faster taught me to pull on the chain with my hands and tighten my stomach muscles to link the tension of my backward-pulling arms to the stretching toes of my forward-straining legs, adding my power to the accelerating force of gravity. This skill, simple enough to be learned by any child, produced a breathtakingly powerful swoop through space, with such
marvelous efficiency that I could continue endlessly without tiring. Engaging the kinetic chain, when you get it right, can be an addictive experience. It's no less so for your swimming, when you learn to use it fully.