On the TI Discussion Forum Hamilton posted this query:

On one of the swimming web sites, I found this statement: “The strength of the kick comes on the downbeat. Very little propulsion, if any, is generated with the upbeat of the kick.” I am curious to know if I should even be trying to get propulsion on the upbeat, or return stroke of the kick. Any thoughts?

Terry replied It’s true that there’s more force generated on downbeat than upbeat. But the statement you quoted is a bit too simplistic. The kick is a “system” in which all parts affect the action of all other parts. Trying to parse whether the upbeat or downbeat of the kick is more ‘important” makes no more sense than trying to assign greater importance to the upstroke or downstroke of a piston in an engine.

The whole stroke is also a system — of which the kick is a “subsystem.” In any system, when you focus on improving harmony and cooperation among all parts, you achieve greater efficiencies than when you emphasize or favor one part.

In the “stroke system,” propulsion isn’t the primary output of the kick subsystem. The dynamics of the stroke system are a bit more complicated than that.

Let’s focus on the 2BK as taught by TI, because that’s the “default technique” we teach in Perpetual Motion Freestyle. In PMF the primary contributor to propulsion is the weight shift. If we use an analogy with a powerboat, the weight shift is the “engine” for propulsion. The hands and arms are the blades of the propellor.

The energy source we tap for the weight shift is to get body mass and gravity to work together – mainly because that energy source is significant, sustainable and “low cost.”

The 2BK makes an insignificant direct contribution to propulsion, but a highly significant contribution to weight shift.

• When I add “snap,” I do it to downbeat.
• A right leg downbeat drives the left hip down.
• In a well-coordinated 2BK, there’s a left leg upbeat at the same moment . . . which becomes more dynamic because the stronger downbeat contributes to a sharper weight shift.
• And this helps propel the right hip up.

These stroke dynamics are taught in Lessons 3 and 4 of the Easy Freestyle DVD.

Originally Posted by HandsHeal

The co-founders of NLP believed that four essential patterns of behavior underlie success in an endeavor:

1) set specific goals and outcomes
2) maintain flexibility to attain specified goals and outcomes
3) seek feedback and adjust behavior and/or goals that are not working
4) monitor one’s internal state and adjust as needed

NLP techniques change behavior by modifying internal representations to aid the attainment of desired goals.

Both TI swimmers and coaches have significant roles in practicing the four NLP patterns of behavior. Bedause of experience  TI is better  positioned than individuals for teaching the internal representations that will improve swimming behaviors.

My internal representations include both visual impressions and Terry’s phrases like, “Yield to the water”, “Feather feel”, etc.

“Ease” has a rather abstract meaning. That stroke thought might not be generally effective, because of the wide variation in skill levels, andinternal representations of swimmers who hear it.

The new swimmer needs to be taught first how to float, then themechanics, then coordination, and so forth. Then, and only then, can they begin to put those fundamentals together with the advanced thought  “swim with Ease.”

I’m looking forward to ever more interesting internal representations to consider, and methods to modify them, that flow from the Kaizen thinkers at TI headquarters.

Terry replied

Hands, you raise two key points here: (1) the influence of the concepts that guide our actions (NLP calls them internal representations); and (2) the importance of visual and verbal instruction that help the student translate those concepts into progress toward their goals and outcomes. So let’s consider the word “ease” in both of those contexts:

1) A concept that guides our actions. Positioning  EASE as  motivating goal of swimming is critically important because it counters the  prevailing orthodoxy that hard is good and harder is better. If you believe the prevailing orthodoxy then as you start a repeat, set or race you’re likely to think “Swim hard.”

This virtually guarantees you will swim harder. It’s nowhere near as certain that you’ll swim better.  As Amy noted in an earlier post, a likely side effect of an intention to “Swim Hard” is that you’ll increase muscle tension. And that will hurt your effectiveness.

So for TI to position EASE as a foundational goal is important in changing concepts.

2) However simply doing so isn’t enough. Therefore we translate ease into specific stroke thoughts in many ways. Here are just a few:

• “Hang” your head.
• “Hang” your hand.
• Cooperate with gravity.
• Marionette Arm
• Featherlight catch. (Or “Gather moonbeams.”)
• Rotate less. (Swim OFF your stomach, not ON your side.)
• “Nudge” your hip.
• Get your legs to “draft behind” your torso.
• “Flick” your toes.

Those are just instructions on “mechanical” ease. In addition, we have a whole range of instructions for “strategic” ease, such as  ”how to swim faster”: (1) Focus on sustainability, not velocity. (2) Reduce the resistive force of the water before increasing the propulsive force you generate. (3) Work the “math” of speed – building “neural circuits” for high-skilled combinations of SL and SR – rather than heedlessly churning your limbs faster.

And finally there are “illustrations of ease” such as the image below of Shinji, from the Outside the Box video shoot demonstrating the Marionette Arm.

Perpetual Motion Freestyle: the picture of ease

Standard marathon swim training calls for long hours, long repeats, and long sets. I will do some lengthy training sessions — up to six hours in open water — but I think there’s also a place for short, acutely-targeted, practices and sets that aim more for precise execution than tedious repetition.

In fact, for me this is a necessity. Because of a neurological condition – arthritic narrowing in my lumbar spine – I tend to get foot and calf cramps after less than an hour of swimming. So I need to program my pool practice to wring maximal value out of minimal time. The best way I know to do so is with a focus on training my nervous, rather than aerobic, system.

Traditional swim workouts include standard ingredients, such as a warmup, kick set, pull set, main set, sprint set, perhaps a “technique” set. What they have in common is a focus on how far and how hard. Often, there’s filler – included to “get the yards in.” Sometimes, without much irony, it’s even called garbage yardage. A leading goal of this kind of training is to “grow new capillaries” which are microscopic blood vessels.

My practices are explicitly designed to grow new brain cells instead. “Capillary beds” still get improved, but that’s just incidental. What’s explicit in my practice planning is a series of tasks that build the skills or habits that make a difference in my open water races. I also design most sets to include a means of measuring how efficiently I complete each swim. Finally, my sets or tasks require strategy to be completed successfully.

The key to training this way is to design training sets as empirical experiments in efficiency. This requires at least two kinds of data on each swim to measure how effectively I swam. A combination of SPL (Strokes Per Length) and time; of SPL and SR (Stroke Rate, with the aid of a Tempo Trainer), or SR and time.

Most swimmers only know the final time for a repeat – by looking at the pace clock when they finish swimming. I always know how I constructed that time.

I don’t always begin a set with a specific goal in mind. Usually I just do the first swim moderately, then use my time and SPL as a benchmark on subsequent repeats. I always set a strategy for improving on the benchmark throughout the set. Measurable results and a strategy for improving them are the key elements to effective training and to growing brain cells as well as capillaries.

In a series of posts I’ll share examples from my practice.

Friday Dec 11 2200 yards in 38 minutes
This was my first pool practice in 10 days, a week of which was spent in San Francisco – where I swam in the 52-degree Bay but not in a pool. So I was feeling a bit rusty as I started. Also only 38 minutes remained of open swim when I got in, so I decided to swim a single set of 7 x 300 on 5:00.

Doing a practice which consists of only one extended set isn’t unusual for me/ As noted above, I can only last about an hour in the pool, so I try to spend every minute on activities that directly aid improvement. I usually start with a gentle pre-set, but because I started right in on the main set, the first few 300-yard repeats effectively became the warmup.

Starting directly with the main set helps reveal the details of how a swimmer’s body responds to warmup. Physiologists say warmup prepares the circulatory system to deliver more oxygen to the muscles and the muscles to consume more oxygen. But that doesn’t convert automatically into faster swimming. The only guarantee of faster swimming is to improve Stroke Length and/or Stroke Rate. So I’m curious about what happens to those during warmup.

I swam #1 in 4:22 (4 min, 22 sec). I hoped to maintain 14SPL but within 100 yards was taking 15SPL then 16SPL near the end. My stroke felt slightly ragged (an effect of “neural rust”?) and thus not resistant to the slight increase in fatigue that follows the first few lengths of any swim.

On #2, I swam no harder — in fact I felt a bit easier - but my time improved to 4:17 and I held 14SPL for the first 200 yards. Why did my Stroke Length hold longer and why did I swim faster? Mainly my stroke felt a bit more “tuned” – I felt noticeably more precision in my movements and timing. That allowed me to cover 300 yards in 5 fewer strokes. And since each stroke takes about a second, I saved 5 seconds from #1.

On #3, again I didn’t increase effort, but held 14 SPL for the entire distance and improved another 3 seconds, to 4:12. Again I saw a direct link betweenstrokes saved and seconds saved;- it took 3 fewer of each to complete the 300. Once again, I experienced a bit more “mojo” in my swim, reflected mainly in a slight, but noticeable, improvement in my sense of integration – arms, legs and torso more in synch.

The takeaway from the first 3 x 300 is that the primary benefit of the warmup period might be more in neural tuning than in the physiological effects that usually get the credit. At least that seems to be the case for me, a reflection of my focus on creating neural adaptation with my practice.

After improving my times while lowering my stroke count over the first 3 x 300, I sensed I had wrung all the improvement I might get out of that strategy, and decided to go the other way – increasing stroke count — on the final 4 x 300. On #s 4 to 6, I would start at 14SPL, then allow myself one more SPL at a pre-selected point.

On #4 I held 14 SPL for the first 250, then increased to 15SPL on the final 50. My time was 4:09, improving by 3 seconds while adding 2 total strokes.

On #5 I held 14 SPL for the first 200 and increased to 15SPL on the final 100, adding 2 more strokes, and again improving by 3 seconds to 4:06.

On #6 I held 14 SPL for the first 150 and 15SPL on the final 150, adding 2 strokes once again – and again I improved by 3 seconds to 4:03.

Over 3 x 300s, I had, in essence, “traded” 6 strokes for a 9-second time improvement. In fact, over the first 6 x 300, I had dropped a total of 19 seconds – but my stroke count was still lower than it had been on #1! At no time had I consciously tried to either “go harder” or “swim faster.” At all times, my instructions to myself were process-oriented – a focus on how I executed my strokes. This is what I mean by a strategic approach to swim training.

On #7, I took 13 SPL on my first length, then held 15SPL for the next 11 lengths. I also switched from bilateral breathing, which I had done up to that point, to breathing left all the way, as I usually do at the critical point in my races. My time was 3:58. This was also the first 300 on which I felt physically taxed. It took enormous discipline to hold 15 SPL on the last few lengths.

How does this very brief practice – 2200 yards and 38 minutes– relate to the 22 miles, and possibly 14 hours it may take to cross the English Channel? Though my practice was brief, for the entire time every cell in my body was organized around getting as much as possible out of each stroke, with the least possible effort. The exacting nature of the task I set myself – and the unblinking focus required to complete it – are also good training for the mental stamina which I believe is even more important than physical endurance in Channel swimming.

There is no formula: You improve at the rate your brain and nervous system can encode and memorize new skills or tasks. Swimming 500 yards (or even 10 x 50) with consistent efficiency and pace IS a skill, and a quite advanced one at that.

Therefore your lap regime should be organic, not arbitrary. To make it organic, base it on “mojo” rather than some formula. Keep swimming as long as you feel you are doing what you want to do. Stop as soon as you’re not.

I use “mojo” to refer to a feeling you’re striving for. The feeling could be as simple and general as ease. Or it could be slightly more specific– like “weightless legs.” Or it could be highly specific such as Feel your hand pause for a nanosecond on catch. (For more examples see How to Breathe Easier in which I suggested five focal points or sensations to improve breathing technique.)

For new or untrained swimmers, I usually recommend that they start a swim routine, or any set, with a single  pool length — usually 25 yards. Pick a stroke thought – one thing you’d like to do really well the entire lap. When you reach the end, take 5 deep slow “cleansing” breaths – but keep thinking your stroke thought, because thinking it activates the same brain cells as doing it. Repeat.

Stay with one thought and one-length-at-a-time for 7 to 10 minutes. In fact, if you “lose your mojo” before the end of the pool, you don’t have to complete the length. Stop and take your breather anywhere. You’ll learn faster by progressing incrementally from 5 easy strokes to 7, then 9, etc, than doing 5 easy strokes followed by 15 barely-hanging-on strokes. And if you start to feel breathless, rest for more than 5 breaths.

When should you introduce your next mini-goal or focal point? The recommendation I make above for 7 to 10 minutes is a general guideline. Continue with the same thought so long as you feel you’re still improving your awareness or skill on that point. Introduce a new stroke thought when you feel the original one is as good as you can make it right this moment, or when you feel eager for new stimulus.

When should you increase the distance of your practice repeats? Step up to 2-length, or 50-yard, repeats when one length is consistently good and you feel no fatigue – physical or mental – when you complete it. Because 2 lengths is really 2 x 1 length with no rest, you could gradually decrease the number of “cleansing breaths” you take before pushing off again. When you can complete 5 to 8 successive lengths with consistent mojo, taking just 2 or 3 cleansing breaths between, you’re ready to step up to a continuous 50 yards. And when the 2^nd length of your 50 matches the mojo and ease of your 1^st length, you can add a 3^rd.

Call this an organic rather than arbitrary way to increase your distance.

Happy laps!