In news this week:
- How Better Technique Can Make You Slower – You’ve gone through drills, you’re stronger, you’re holding the water better…but your times are dropped off. There’s two reasons this happens. I’ll take swimmers for stroke correction and after we’ve gone through the changes, some swimmers will be too ‘gentle’ with the water. Trying to do everything perfectly at the expense of swimming fast. There’s a balance between swimming with good technique with speed and trying to be perfect in the water. The other thing that can happen particularly for distance swimmers, is they drop their stroke rate (cadence) in order to swim with good technique. The solution is usually to keep their stroke rate high and reduce their kick. The better technique should result in better hold of the water.
- How Many Sessions A Week Should I Be Training – For most amateur triathletes or swimmers I find two sessions a week can maintain your swimming…and three or more a week will improve your swimming.
- Resistance With Sponges – Resistance training is used across a lot of sports but not enough in swimming. It’s good for pushing past your strength and power limit. You see it done in the gym with weights and running with parachutes. A few ways to do it in the pool are with stretch cords attached to a block…or my favourite method…a big sponge attached to a rope tied around your waist.
- Better Breathing Without Getting In The Pool – You can train your respiratory muscles using a PowerLung to improve strength, endurance or both. A few minutes a day is enough to see results. I’ve tried both the Powerlung against imitation devices but they did not work as well and were messy.
- Workout Of The Day – This week I’m putting up a workout every day on our Facebook page. It’s winter here in Melbourne and it can be tough to get motivated to exercise. Join in and do the workout of the day to kickstart your training. Comment on the Facebook page to let me know you’re joining in.
Hi! I am an Australian living who has been living in Italy for 8 years now. I enjoy you videos and other information provided. I have been swimming since young (like all Australians) and joined a masters swimming group 5 years ago here in Italy. I swim the distance events for my age group 45 plus. Thanks for your interesting videos, there’s always something that helps me out.
Thanks for all the valuable tips which have helped me tremendously with improving my swimming technique.
Brent, I am preparing for our national event called “The Midmar Mile” here in South Africa, outside the town of Pietermaritzburg. As it is an open water swim, what should I do improve or have a successful swim.
Much Thanks,
Rob
Yes, but how ? (in regard to high cadence)….anything to help get that turnover going ? Thanks,
Hi Rob,
Every 3-4 weeks I like to do a test set. A set where you can measure your progress leading up to an event. When I’m training for a 1.2km open water swim I do 6×200 (with about 10 seconds rest between 200’s) and see how fast I can hold. I’ll talk more about this in next weeks news.
Aside from that, as long as you are doing the right workouts you’ll be doing well. Is it a 1 mile swim?
Keep your kicks small (and try dropping it to a 2 beat kick), don’t move your lower body too much and keep your shoulder rotation even.