Use Your Head in the Water

Check out the tips from Swim Smooth. I particularly like the one below:

Here's a cunning method to help you self-diagnose parts of your stroke that need work. We call it "Stroke Contrasts".

Hopefully you are having a well earned rest over the Christmas holiday and are now thinking about what training you should be doing over the next few months. This is a great time to take stock of your swimming and make some training plans to meet your goals this summer. But when it comes to assessing your stroke technique, without the help of a good coach it’s hard to judge what you should be working on.

Enter the Stroke Contrast method. This technique asks you to deliberately alter your stroke for the worse so that you can experience how it feels. The contrast this creates gives you a unique sensory experience, which helps you tune into flaws in your stroke.

The possibilities for creating Stroke Contrasts are endless. Here’s a classic session -- try it for yourself and see what you experience:

STROKE CONTRASTS TEST SESSION
Warm up: 400m smooth easy freestyle

For each of the contrasts below, swim 100m deliberately emphasising the stroke error then 200m focusing on correcting that error:

Contrast of Flaw 1: Holding Your Breath
a) Swim 100m without any exhalation into the water – holding you breathe the whole time you are face down. Rotate to the side as normal to breathe but in that short window both exhale and inhale.
b) Now experience the contrast by swimming 200m emphasising good strong exhalation into the water. Doing this you only have to inhale when you rotate to breathe. This is good breathing technique – do you do this in your stroke normally?
Find out more about exhalation.
Contrast of Flaw 2: Lack Of Body Roll
a) Swim 100m without any body roll, trying to keep your shoulders and hips flat and level with the water. To do this you might have to swing your arms round the side a bit more than normal.
b) Now swim 200m emphasising good body roll, rotating the hips and shoulders together. As you enter the water and extend forwards at the front of your stroke really emphasise rolling your body onto that side.
Find out more about body roll.
Contrast of Flaw 3: Dorsi Flexed Ankles
a) Using a pull buoy, swim 100m flexing your foot square to your leg as if you are standing. When you swim in this position your toes will point down towards the bottom of the pool. Feel what this does to your body position and how it creates drag.
b) Now continue with the pull buoy for 200m correcting this stroke flaw by pointing your toes (technical term: plantar flexion). Experience how this feels and what it does to your progress through the water.
Find out more about kicking.
Contrast 4: Head Position
a) Swim 100m, every 25m try a different head position:
1) looking straight down and slightly behind
2) looking straight down
3) looking straight down and slightly ahead
4) looking ahead (eyes still just below the surface)
b) There is no right or wrong with head position – it’s an individual thing to suit your stroke. Choose the position that felt best for your stroke and then swim 200m holding that position.
Contrast of Flaw 5: Straight Arm Catch and Pull.
a) After entering the water at the front of your stroke and extending forwards, start your stroke but deliberately keep your arm straight without any elbow bend. This means you have to push straight down on the water rather than push it back. Emphasise this stroke flaw for 100m.
b) Now swim 200m, focusing on extending forwards and then commencing the stroke by catching the water with a good elbow bend, so pulling the water back to the wall behind you. Quick tip: try exaggerating the elbow bend more than you might think necessary.
Find out more about the catch and pull.
Warm down: Pick the contrast above that made the most difference to your stroke and swim 200m at a very easy pace focusing on that one thing.

That’s a simple 2100m technique session which anyone can use to assess their own stroke. You can modify it and add in other stroke flaws e.g. bent knee kicking, late breathing and catch up stroke timing.

Important: Deliberately introducing a stroke flaw in this way increases your perception. You can often feel if you have a tendency towards that particular flaw in your stroke. But if you don’t feel any difference at all versus your normal swimming, that shows you have the full version of that flaw in your stroke. Make fixing it your immediate priority!

So How's it Going?

Almost a week since I made the decision to just get on with training and put up with the glute/hamstring problem I have. I have completed a full week of training and the injury is definately no better! But it is also no worse. True, I can't sit comfortably for any longer that 20 mins and driving anyway further than 10 miles is a real pain in the bum, but I am still training! This means that I have ran 5 times this week; nothing long but consistently putting one foot in front of the other. maybe after I move, I will try and up the pace.

Talking of moving, I am set to move to bristol on 27 Jan 10. I am none too happy to leave this location but I have no choice. I will live just South West of Bristol and seem to have some great cycling country surrounding me. However, it's the hassle of moving that really bugs me. Still, it's not like I have not done it before - only about 15 times!!

Merry Christmas to everyone out there. I hope that your training is going well and that Santa brings you some bike bling!

Morale-O-Meter

I really feel like a whinging old Victor Meldrew. Yes, with so much going wrong in so many different aspects of my life, I feel the need to detach this Blog from my incessant whining. Well it is supposed to be a training Blog. So, I am going to try and place a morale-a-meter in the permanent info on the right. That way, people can actually read the content of the Blog without falling asleep – you may still fall asleep, but it won’t be due to to my complaining about every single occurrence!

Training has been interrupted further lately. . . this is fact; not complaining! The family have all had tummy bugs. Very bad, nasty tummy bugs. I am back training now but my glute/hamstring problem remains (more fact. Notice the lack of frustration and emotion?).

To combat the lingering injury, I have a new strategy – ignore it. I havn’t tried that approach and it sounds logical to me. Of course I fully understand that everyone else may not see this logic!

Anyway, I hit the turbo early this morning. It had not done anything to me but I hit it anyway. After an hour and 15 mins I climbed off, steaming nicely as it was Baltic outside. I was in the garage with the door open and the frosty scene outside was quite festive. See, I am not Victor Meldrew! I am getting all festive! I am going for a run this evening, building on the 20 mins I did on Monday. So, pain in the bum or not, 25 mins is the target. . . . and I’m done with messing around jogging gently!

Happy festive season bloggers.

Pesky Bugs

A quick post because I am rather busy nursing sick members of my family. A stomach bug has hit us hard - very nasty strain. Julie was extremely poorly with it on Tuesday night and she is still suffering. I then caught it but not as bad. CJ is ow complaining of tummy pains . . . here we go again 8-(

Obviously, training has taken a dip. It feels an age since I had that lovely post triathlon race feeling. Hope I can regain the feeling next year!

Stay healthy dudes!

Gone is Fishman . . . .

. . . . Welcome Aquatic Boy! Well, Aquaboy is the nearest I can find. Thing is, I am far too old and wrinkley to resemble the youthful Aquaboy.

Fishman?

Could I be turning into a Fiashman?! surely not! A week has passed by since my last blog. To avoid driving away any people who may read these ramblings, I will get my rant out of the way quickly. . .

Been ill. Glute/hamstring injury lingers on. . . bla bla. . . not training well. . . bla bla. . .

Right, so what’s been going on? I collect my box trailer tomorrow or Wednesday. It depends on whether my tow bar is difficult to fit. Either way, I am excited about getting a trailer for the trivan – sad eh?! But during these long, dark and wet days of winter, I am dreaming of my trip to the French Alps in July. Throw all the luggage in the trailer (including bike) and drive in luxury for 10 hours.

Although I stated that training is not going too well, my swimming is actually not too bad. With various leg injuries going on, I have been hitting the pool quite hard – when not coughing up green junk. . . . nice. . .

Clocked a 6:04 400m and a 2:54 200m in training. Quite happy with that considering my swimming has been so dire for the last 2 years.

This Saturday is Ironman Western Australia. Really looking forward to this because Andy Fisher and Neill Gowans (both RAF Tri) are racing. Andy is a complete animal and super fast. It is his first Ironman so it could be REALLY quick or the distance will grab him and chew him out a wreck! Neill has completed a few Ironman triathlons. But this one is different. He has reportedly lost 4 Stone in weight! He has ballooned in weight over the last few years but there is a very fast triathlete in there just waiting to return! Not sure what his goals are for the race but I suspect that the weight loss alone will see him take a PB for the distance.

Best wishes to them both; race strong and wise. . . just like I always do . . . cough cough. Sorry, more green stuff there. . . .

British Sports Personality of the Year Award. Oh dear, not a good prospect! Press reports are all over the place at the moment, mostly berating the way we shortlist individuals for the title. I like this report:

Looking at the BBC’s list of nominees for the 2009 Sports Personality of the Year, you have to wonder what so-called ‘minority’ sports stars have to do to get the recognition that they undoubtedly deserve.
Win three back-to-back World Championships and break a World Record in one of the toughest sports on earth?
Maintain a 100% record in an International series at the age of just 21?
Or perform above averagely – but by no means be a world-beater – in mainstream sports and get the nod because bods at the Beeb does not have enough faith in the format of the show to put together a Sports Personality of the Year Awards that does not include the pre-requisite footballer, cricketer and tennis player?
To say that this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year is a bit of a joke is harsh. But fair? Every single athlete on the list is undoubtedly worthy of praise, and they have all performed to levels that most of us can only dream about.
But few on that list have excelled in the manner of either Chrissie Wellington or Alastair Brownlee in 2009. Bradley Wiggins and Tony McCoy have – but somehow didn’t make the list. Jess Ennis and Beth Tweddle have. Even David Haye deserves credit for his battle with the Goliath in Germany.
But some of the others? It’s incredibly disappointing.
And you have to ask why?
This week in Australia, Craig Alexander was crowned Sports Performer of the Year – the Aussie equivalent of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Awards. In a country where sports stars are revered and their passion for winning is second to none, Crowie triumphed against the biggest names in Rugby, Cricket and Athletics. Those are the big ‘three’ down under. What’s more the names that Crowie beat have already been Internationally recognised as being the best players of their respective sports in the World. Alexander was a rank-outsider going into the ceremony, but the Aussie public was given the opportunity to vote, and because of what he has achieved he won. He got the recognition he deserves.
The Great British public won’t even have the opportunity to recognise Chrissie Wellington and Alastair Brownlee.
Why? Because the nominations were made by ‘experts’ from local newspapers, lads mags and the tabloid press (all of whom have a very specific demographic). Not one of these ‘experts’ shortlisted Brownlee (including the Yorkshire Post), while only three cited Chrissie. Sporting experts indeed…
And that means that for yet another year, BBC pundits will roam the floor pouring accolades on a player yet to win a Grand Slam, a veteran footballer whose best days are way behind him, and a driver blessed with undoubted talent (and a better car than everyone else for the first half of a season).
Meanwhile, a couple of Internationally acclaimed World Champions will be looking on, probably wondering what they have to do to get on that short list. That is if they’re invited to the ceremony at all.