One might ask: “Why make such a point about getting the timing right in Spear?”  The answer, which will be important to her as a teacher, is that there will be certain circumstances in which you would be more particular and others in which you might choose to be less.

In the 100s of workshops I’ve taught I can recall countless instances where some aspect of SpearSwitch — most often Patient Catch — proved elusive for some student. Because the Weekend Workshop follows a formal structure limited by (i) the allotted pool time and (ii) the fact that we can’t hold up a class of 10 to 20 people because 1 or 2 haven’t quite got it, I decide to move on to SwingSwitches. At first I was troubled by progressing to the next drill, when the previous wasn’t quite right. But I often saw that the problem resolved in the next step.

So the question is, if a particular aspect of skill finds resolution in a later step in the progression, why revisit it?

In the case of a teacher trainee, the answer is simple. Students learn movements far faster and more clearly by visual means. Thus the most valuable skill as a teacher of skilled movement is the ability to demonstrate impeccable form.

(It’s also essential that they be able to accurately mimic the incorrect form of a student. I’ve learned that the fastest way I can correct a student’s movement error is to demonstrate a few cycles of what I observed them doing, then, without pausing, smoothly segue into a few cycles what I’d like to see them do.)

The other aspect is: Should she encourage a student to revisit the earlier drill in pursuit of ‘perfection.’ It’s less about pursuing perfection, than it is (i) Encouraging an unquenchable kaizen passion for real Mastery; not every student will choose that path, but we always encourage it. And (ii) Swimming with the highest level of skill is such a complex art, and the path to that level has such individual unpredictability, I have had ‘unexpected epiphanies’ on countless occasions – noticing some sensation I had not noticed before that made such a difference in my whole stroke, that I made it a focal point for hours of practice.

In the case of nailing the timing in SpearSwitch, I’ve found that it helped me get the subtle distinction between holding the water and pulling. When I took that distinction to Swing and Swim, both got better – even after the general form of both had been ‘acceptable’ or even quite good.

SpearSwitch with Patient Catch

Segment 1 of the “Work Less, Swim Better” series showed me moving smoothly through a pack of other swimmers in rough water in the 2006 World Masters Championship. Segment 2 uses underwater video to reveal what was happening underwater as I did. The key points include:

Pierce the Water

Human swimming, exemplified by the swimmer in the next lane, is all about pulling and kicking. His hand goes in, down and back in one motion. As the video shows, I travel twice as far on each stroke, taking 4 to 5 strokes, to his 9 to 10 over about 10 yards. His stroke moves water back, My stroke moves my body forward. One reason is that I use my extending hand to “separate water molecules” (as does the tapered snout of a barracuda) then line up my body to slide torso and legs through the human-sized sleeve I create. That habit – taught in Lessons 2 and 4 of the Self-Coached Workshop – significantly reduces drag so I travel farther on each stroke.

Hold your place

Human swimmers press the hand straight down by instinct – and because they need constant propulsion. When drag is high, you lose momentum quickly, so you have to stroke ceaselessly. Streamlining helps me conserve momentum, which gives me the luxury of more time to firmly trap water behind my hand. My solid “grip” is another reason my stroke propels me twice as far. It also means lets me use the “free energy” of a weight shift, rather than weaker and easily-fatigued arm muscles, as my human-swimming lane mate does. The patient catch and synchronized weight shift are taught in Lessons 5 and 6.

Cocoon of Calm

We all start out as Human Swimmers.  It takes targeted and patient focus to replace deep-seated habits with Separating Molecules and Holding your Place. This not only helps you hold form in  rough water; it also builds powerful focus that converts into a “cocoon of calm” when you encounter a churning crowd in a triathlon swim leg or open water race. Practice like that demonstrated by TI coaches from 2:14 to 2:38 helps swimmers not only accept, but enjoy, close quarters. Even while crowding each other, and intentionally creating contact, none change their form. (Click here for an expanded version of this video .) This builds resistance to the loss of form and focus experienced by many triathletes in the first minutes of a race.

Anyone can learn PMF.

There’s nothing accidental about the form those TI coaches display. Besides the seven coaches in a pack, the three swimming under the bridge, and the four swimmers following the rope all look virtually the same. PMF is the first example in swimming history of a precisely-replicable technique . . .  and one that’s highly effective: All three TI coaches swimming under the bridge — Greg Sautner, Dave Barra and me – have won USMS national open water championships. PMF is a form anyone can learn by following the  step-by-step stroke-building procedures in the 10-Lesson Series.

From Chapter 5 “Different Strokes: Open Water vs. Pool Technique”

While others at Masters workout focused on pool speed, I used every repeat, no matter how short, as a rehearsal for open water races.  On short repeats, most would swim with aggressive, high-turnover strokes – some taking 21 or more strokes for 25 yards, while I limited myself to 15 SPL, regardless of how brief the swim or how hard the coach urged us to swim.

I probably could have swum those sprints faster by taking more strokes. But since my favored races were long open water swims, rather than pool sprints, I preferred to imprint the optimal way to swim during them. On “sprints,” rather than take more strokes, I focused on getting more out of those I took. I felt this would help program my muscles for the faster parts of open water races-–the start and finish. I was unconcerned that my sprints were slow by pool standards, so long as they developed open water speed.

Beyond the question of stroke count, I’d also begun to refine my sense of technique adjustments that minimized fatigue without sacrificing pace, a years-long process that included an unhurried catch, a higher-elbow-but-lighter-pressure stroke, and a patiently-tuned 2-Beat kick.

My goal was to avoid reliance on fatigue-prone arm and shoulder muscles by drawing ‘free power’ from weight shifts and untiring core muscle. This required the patience to work in a longer time horizon: While my pool-mates were thinking about racing to the next wall, I thought constantly about how I hoped to feel during open-water races months-–or years–in the future.

To swim your best in open water you must make a strategic choice to swim in a way that could slow your pool times, at least on shorter repeats — and, during a period of adjustment, possibly on longer ones as well. However, any swim that lasts over a minute should benefit fairly quickly from the reduced energy cost of Perpetual Motion Freestyle.  But first, you must be willing to defer the immediate gratification of short-term speed for long-term gain.

*  *  *  *

Will myelin improve my  swimming?

At 1:23 of the accompanying video, I play a brief clip from the Outside the Box DVD, showing me swimming in the 2006 World Masters Open Water Championship in San Francisco Bay (clip shot by TI-Japan Head Coach Shinji Takeuchi.) It shows me swimming through a pack of swimmers from waves which started 5 to 10 minutes before mine. The difference between my technique and theirs is striking. I explain their struggles as resulting from “not enough myelin.” This excerpt from the Outside the Box ebook explains the significance of myelin.

From Chapter 10: “Increase Sustainability by Secreting Myelin!”

Muscle memory is a metaphor for a physiological change in your neuromuscular system. Swimming efficiently requires a specific set of muscles to be turned on (and off) in an exacting and non-instinctive pattern. With each stroke, an electrochemical signal travels from your brain to instruct motor units to contract or relax. Each time the signal crosses that circuit, a bit more myelin, a fatty substance that acts like insulation on electrical wires, is secreted, strengthening the signal received by your muscles. A relatively faint signal is good enough to keep the movement consistent while swimming slowly for short distances in a low-distraction environment. It takes a strong signal, i.e., a lot of myelin, to remain efficient as your fatique increases when you swim a mile or more at higher speeds with waves smacking you or avoiding collisions with other swimmers. . . . in the rough water of San Francisco Bay, the main difference between me and those I’m passing is myelin secretion. Thicker insulation, laid down during thousands of focused, purposeful rehearsal repeats allows me to swim with virtually the same stroke as in the pool or a serene lake. Lacking it, most others swim with a “barely coping” stroke.

1. Human brains produce new brain cells–=a process called neurogenesis.

2. Exercise increases neurogenesis.

3. Neurogenesis improves thinking.

Apart from raising, then debunking, a notion that too much exercise might hurt neurogenesis, the content of this article offers little that’s new or significant. Like many others, it missed what I think of as the most important point of all. Since exercise increases neurogenesis and neurogenesis improves thinking, the optimal situation would be to use that new improved thinking capacity to tackle new and more complex skills in your exercise.

In other words, don’t just push your body, push your brain at the same time. This lets us know that not all exercise is created equal when it comes to brain-building.

When it comes to promoting brain function, the most beneficial physical activities combine the following characteristics:

Aerobic – Ensures the brain a better supply of the oxygen and glycogen on which it runs.

Complex – Complexity (i.e. as gymnastics involves more complex skills than running) requires the brain to coordinate a ’suite’ of motor and cognitive functions, leading to Synaptic Plasticity – a richer network of connections between neurons and circuits

Kaizen – The potential for continuous long-term skill improvement means that both neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity will also continue at elevated levels than when the improvement curve levels off. This also leads to the development of “cognitive reserve’ which has been credited with increasing resistance to age-related loss of mental acuity.

Sensory Enriched – Activities that rely heavily on a well-developed sense of feel, and which provide enriched sensory feedback, promote more neurogenesis than activities you can do on auto-pilot.

Swimming provides the greatest opportunity to exploit the brain-building potential of all these characteristics.

Which means a strong case can be made that Swimming Makes you ‘Smarter.’

He commented: “My abdomen is relaxed, when it should be tense to draw my spine straight. When practicing in front of a mirror, I really have to maintain massive abdominal tension to reduce the arch. Today at the pool, I had some success, by telling myself I was not swimming but making a bridge.”

Katie and Alan both advised Andreas to focus  on releasing his head to a neutral position before focusing on core muscles. TI Coach Suzanne Atkinson added that “some focus on contracting the abdominals . . . will aid in all the fundamentals . . . connecting the pull with rotation with kick and even breathing, tightening your body position and unifying the actions.”

This is all advice worth taking to heart:
1) Releasing your head to a neutral position should solve most issues with excess lower-back curvature, reducing the amount of ab activation needed.
2) Creating tone (not tension) in the core should be directed more at stabilizing the bodyline overall, and with improving integration of all elements of the  stroke.

This got me thinking about how I’ve trained and thought about core muscles in relation to swimming, and specifically to freestyle technique.

I regularly  do many hours of dryland exercise, like the bridge illustrated above, plus yoga. I do those as much to keep my back strong and supple–though spending many hours sitting at a computer desk–as to benefit my swimming.  I’ve sometimes compared the ‘core engagement’ I feel while doing dryland exercise to what I feel while swimming. I feel my abs working much more intensively during land exercise  than while swimming.

On a few occasions I’ve  thought of ‘pulling in my belly-button’  or ‘tucking my tailbone’ while swimming. As “Stroke Thoughts” I’ve found those interesting, but not sensed significant change in my stroke as a result.

On the other hand, what I’ve found more revealing are times when I’ve simply paid attention to abdominals as I swam, to bring what’s happening naturally from my subconscious to conscious awareness.

When I first did so, I was surprised to discover a striking level of abdominal tone, despite not trying to contract them. My immediate reaction was “Hey, this is a pretty good ab workout.”

After later reflection, my intuition was that tone in the core most likely resulted from hundreds of hours of thinking about Active Streamlining, including such thoughts as:
1) Fit through a smaller ‘hole’ in the water.
2) Use the extending arm to lengthen the bodyline.
3) Keep the bodyline long for a extra nanosecond in each stroke.
4) Make less noise, fewer bubbles and smaller waves.
5) Line up each side of my body to follow the spearing arm through the ’sleeve’ it makes.

In other words, thinking consciously of an image like the one below- as well as practicing the variety of drills and Stroke Thoughts that produce this kind of alignment – will ensure that every length you swim will also give your abs a good workout AND fire a larger and more integrated network of circuits in your brain.

Michael Sokolove (who also wrote a profile of Michael Phelps prior to the 2004 Olympics) published How a Soccer Star is Made in the June 6 edition of New York Times Magazine.  It contrasted the player development approach at Ajax Academy, the leading youth soccer program in the Netherlands, with how soccer players are developed in the U.S.  Below I’ve included several excerpts, between which I inserted in bold questions about swim coaching, mostly in reference to youth coaching but many of these questions could apply equally to those who coach adult swimmers.

The Netherlands, with about 6%  the population of the US, produce an outsize percentage of the world’s best soccer players. What do their player development methods tell us?

“One man, Ronald de Jong, said: ‘I am never looking for a result — which boy is scoring the most goals or who is running the fastest. That may be because of their size and stage of development. I want to notice if a boy runs on his forefeet, lightly? Does he have creativity with the ball? Does he really love the game? These things predict how he’ll be when he is older.’”

Do swim coaches more often pay attention to the fastest athletes  (and consequently slower swimmers receive less coaching)? How commonly do they take more notice of the details of each swimmer’s style?

“One element of the academy’s success is that the boys are not overplayed. Through age 12, they train only three times a week and play one game on the weekend.  By age 15, the boys are practicing five times a week. Training consists of drills in which players move quickly and kick the ball to each other at close range. In the U.S., this kind of activity would be a warm-up, with the coach paying scant attention and maybe talking on a cellphone. At Ajax, these exercises — designed to maximize touches, or contact with the ball — are the main event. “

How often and why do swim coaches, like soccer coaches, seem disinterested in what’s happening in the pool?

“Drawn from a nation of fewer than 17 million, the Dutch national team relies on players who know what they want to do with the ball before it reaches them and can move it on without stopping it. David Winner calls this ‘physical chess.’  Watching the U.S. national team play the Dutch . . .  the Dutch zipped the ball from player to player and from side to side of the field, while the Americans ran and ran, chasing the ball but rarely gaining control. When the Americans did get the ball, their passes too often flew beyond reach or out of bounds. The Dutch style demands the highest order of individual skill: players with a wizardlike ability to control the ball with either foot, any part of the foot, and work it toward the goal through cramped spaces and barely perceptible lanes.”

“How the U.S. develops young players is not just different from what the Netherlands and most elite soccer nations do — it is diametrically opposed.  Even at the Pee-Wee level, Americans put together teams built to win. The best soccer-playing nations build individual players with superior technical skills who later come together on teams the U.S. struggles to beat.”

“The balance between games and practice in the U.S. is skewed when compared with the rest of the world . . . a teenager in the U.S. can play 100 or more games in a season, for two or three different teams, leaving little time for training . . .  our best players tend to be fast and passionate but underskilled and lacking in savvy compared with players elsewhere. “

How much of swim practice is typically devoted to targeted skill development, and how much to swimmers simply racing each other repeatedly?

“I watched for 30 minutes as a coach tutored Florian Josefzoon. Bryan Roy, a former member of the Dutch national team, demonstrated a series of stutter-steps and pirouettes, then kicked the ball to Josefzoon, on the right wing, who trapped it and tried to match Roy’s moves. It was as if Roy were teaching him a dance. When Josefzoon mastered one set of steps, Roy showed him something new. “

Is it common for swim coaches to introduce a new, more advanced skill, as soon as a simpler one has been mastered?

“Ruben Jongkind, who mainly works with track athletes, was altering the posture and gait of a 15-year-old. Jongkind told me that while the boy was actually quite fast, he ‘was running like a duck, shuffling,’ Jongkind said. ‘That takes more energy, which is why we have to change his motor patterns, so he can be as fast at the end of a game as the beginning.’”

Which is more common: Trying to improve swimmers’ end-of-race speed by improving their motor patterns to increase energy-efficiency? Or with more conditioning?

“Jongkind said the player had progressed to ‘consciously able but not subconsciously able’ to run with the desired form, meaning that in the heat of competition, he reverted to his old form. I pointed out that a fast but flawed runner in the United States would likely be left alone. ‘Everything can be trained,’ Jongkind said. ‘You should always try to make an improvement if it’s possible.’”

Is it common for swimming coaches to follow a plan for improving everything in a swimmer’s makeup—stroke, turns, sense-of-pace, savvy?  Or mainly their fitness?

There are few better examples of simple wisdom that can apply to  nearly anything. Like swimming improvement.

Between unremarkable wood block and preternaturally lifelike duck lie three distinct stages, each requiring specific tools.

A band saw to cut a piece of lumber into the general shape and size of the duck. It cuts away large chunks of  not-duck quickly, but not finely.

Carving knives to create a recognizable, yet still rough, head, body, wings and tail. These cut away smaller pieces of not-duck but what lands on the floor are still chunks.

And finally,  rasps and sandpaper to detail beak, eyes,  wings and tail.  The not-duck falling to the floor at this stage goes from chips to splinters to powder.

Improving your stroke follows a remarkably similar process of carving away whatever doesn’t display the fluency, relaxation, and general harmony shown by an efficient stroke. Start with big chunks and progress steadily to ever-finer skills. This also means working from large body parts and “gross-motor” skills, to smaller body parts and “fine-motor” skills.

Balance and weightlessness drills like Superman Glide, Laser-Lead Flutter, or Core Balance, take away big chunks – discomfort, breathing distress, tension, sinking legs, unstable body.

Alignment and streamlining drills, like Skating , SpearSwitch, SwingSwitch, shape a human – or terrestrial mammal – body to have the “slippery” qualities of aquatic mammals.

Propulsion-oriented drills, like OverSwitch and Stroke Thoughts to “tune” the Catch and 2-Beat Kick, create a smooth and effective arm-and-leg action.

Using this clip of Perpetual Motion Freestyle as a model, what can you carve away from your stroke that looks different?

Have you noticed, as an adult swimmer, how long it takes to learn a new skill? I noticed. Since 1988, virtually all of my coaching has been with “adult-onset swimmers” – people who had no formal coaching in their youth. From 1972-1988 I’d coached younger people. So I had lots of opportunity to compare how adults and kids reacted to a new skill or drill.

The kids would seem to be barely paying attention as I described it, but on their first length, they would usually come pretty close to what I was hoping to see.

The adults would listen intently. I’d see them, brows furrowed, mulling it over. Some would do a bit of “air swimming” rehearsals. No matter. For all their attention and desire. their first attempt usually bore little resemblance to what I’d been trying to describe.

Here’s why: According to Barbara Strauch’s book The Secret Life of the Grown Up Brain in middle age, our brains learn new tasks more slowly. The good news is that we gain more from repetition than younger brains.

The Thinker

And that’s where motivation and engagement — which were strikingly evident at TI Workshops — pays a big dividend. Patient, examined repetition is the key to learning any motor skill. As I’ve noted before, it takes up to 7000 reps to burn a simple skill into muscle memory, and up to 20,000 to make a complex skill permanent.

And the longer it takes us to learn something, the longer we remember it.  So slower is better when it comes to learning swim skills.

Energy cost really depends on how you swim – either stroke. Energy cost will be lowest in both strokes when you do the following:

1) Focus more on streamlining than propelling. In both strokes, the typical swimmer gives most of his attention to pulling and kicking. Instead, think mainly about doing what it takes to put your body in a streamlined position at the conclusion of each stroke. “Streamlined” means elongated and sleek, with head hanging between shoulders.

2) Spend more time in that streamlined position, most of it below the surface. Spend less time in any non-streamlined position. We’re talking about nanosecond adjustments here, but small changes in timing make a big difference.

3) While you focus on holding a streamlined position, let gravity take you down . . . until you feel buoyancy has become the stronger force. Let buoyancy return you to the surface. This is far more economical than diving-and-climbing.

4) Start the next stroke just as you feel buoyancy – working mainly without much help from you – is about to take you back through the surface. Do just enoughwith your hands to help your head clear the surface for a breath.

5) About that breath: Keep your head as stable and neutral as possible – and your chin in the water – as you breathe.

Related resources:
Find considerable detail and step-by-step suggestions for building skill, speed and endurance (i.e. the distance you can swim WITHOUT fatigue) in the book Extraordinary Swimming.

For visual learning aids, there are the DVDs BetterFlyfor Every Body and Breaststroke for Every Body.

Alan Perez sums up lessons learned on a set of 3 x 500 this way: I did note that the more relaxed I could swim, a feeling of conceding to the water, esp. when fatigue crept up, the better I was at holding my spl and form. The more tense even if I was focused intently, I’d almost always add a stroke.

Alan’s language – particularly “conceding to the water” – evokes an organic-and-opportunistic thought process that experience has taught me is the best way to approach any effort at improving your swimming.

Traditional swim training – as advocated in books and magazines or practiced at your local pool by Masters and youth teams  - is based on arbitrary and rigid formulas.  Swim X # of repeats, of Y distance at Z pace or heart rate.  These formulas came from research conducted on treadmills and exercycles, not swimming. But nearly all “serious” swimmers  follow them uncritically because it’s what everyone else – particularly those in the know – seems to be doing. It’s like ordering IBM equipment in corporate settings 25 years ago: No one will criticize if you do.

In Alan’s example, and virtually every practice set shared on the TI Forum -whether the goal is to improve efficiency or pace – TI Swimmers have pursued a distinctively thoughtful and adaptable process.

This typically means starting with a “discovery” swim or set intended to reveal what your mind and body are ready for at this moment. Then think of a way to pursue, measure and evaluate improvement on the baseline, adjusting approach and strategy based on empirical experience as you go.

This could mean

• - Shortening — or lengthening — repeats,  rest interval, or tempo;
• - Doing one repeat again because you sense some “slack” in how you performed it – though your plan might have called for something different;
• - Choosing to swim the same pace repeatedly — rather than try to go faster — but create that pace with fewer strokes, or a more leisurely tempo;
• - Or seek to improve that pace – with no increase in exertion – by shortening repeat distance or increasing recovery interval — then recognize that the enhanced pace resulted from completing the distance with fewer, more effective, strokes.

What all have in common is seeking to learn something from every set,  adding the experience of each set to a continually expanding framework for how to improve your swimming.

Arbitrary and formulaic swim training is the prevailing paradigm. Thoughtful and organic swim training  is the emerging paradigm. I have high hopes emerging will begin to replace prevailing in the next five years.

Related resources for guidance on emerging paradigm training:

Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body Part 3

The ebook Outside the Box: A Program for Success in Open Water Part 3 Chapters 8 to 12

Triathlon Swimming Made Easy Part 4, Chapters 11 to 17