For most of this summer I’ve done little fast swimming, largely because an autoimmune condition called polymyalgia rheumatica caused muscle inflammation and sapped my energy.  I made peace with that by figuring this was a good time for restorative swimming.  I turn 60 next March and will likely train with intensity and focus in coming months to ‘make a splash’ in my new age group. Using this summer to recharge my batteries felt like a good thing. But once my condition was diagnosed and properly treated, I felt such relief that I decided to swim my first races of the summer, on August 14 at the Betsy Owens Cable Swims in Lake Placid.

Predictably my results reflected lack of training, a fair 25:09 for the 1-mile, followed an hour later by 56:21 for 2 Miles. Ouch — 8 minutes slower than last year, and over 10 minutes back of my best since age 55.  But I felt better the next morning, when I swam up and down Mirror Lake with Neil Brophy, Bruce Gianniny and Kim Skomra. Our 45-minute swim was a relaxed cruise for Neil, who had  set a new USMS 45-49 mile record of 20:03 and Bruce who broke the 55-59 record (which I had set four years ago) with 22:51. For me it was instructive to see their stroke length.  I couldn’t come close to matching Neil’s (consoling myself that he’s 3 inches taller) and needed to focus intently to match Bruce’s.  Doing so felt strikingly salutary. That was fresh in mind when I resumed swimming in Lake Minnewaska later that week.

New 45-49 record holder Neil Brophy

55-59 record-holder Bruce Gianniny

At Minnewaska, I can monitor efficiency by counting strokes along a 200-yd line. Prior to Betsy Owens I’d been taking an average of about 180 strokes per length, as I tried to pack the two weeks during which I felt healthy again with rehearsals of race-like tempo and effort.

But with the race behind me, and encouraged by how good extending myself to match Bruce’s strokes felt, I’m now striving to keep my average at 160,  a habit I’d had several years ago but had since lost. I soon decided that the best way to prepare myself for the fast swimming I hope to do next spring and summer is to strengthen my neural efficiency foundation by continuing this way through the fall.

Smooth  Stroke, Clear Mind

This didn’t just feel good physically. Striving to reach the end of the line in 160 strokes brought a simpler, clearer focus than I’d had in some time.  After enough practice, a lap of 160 strokes or less acquires a recognizable feel—bodyline sleek and stable, catch patient and firm; even the water around me feels calmer. When any of those sensations feels slightly off, even for only a short patch. my count increases by up to 10 strokes.

Thus I start each length of the line, with a clear set of sensations-to-maintain then spend 3-plus minutes trying to hold onto the feeling . . . and striving just as intently to stay locked in mentally. Such powerful focus has made my swimming more meditative than it had been in a while.

While some may picture meditation as sitting on a pillow in a quiet room, anything you do with great awareness is meditation. “Watching your breath” is meditation; listening to chants is meditation. And so is swimming that’s focused on banishing distraction. Meditation describes any state of consciousness that’s free of scattered thoughts. The key is to choose a targeted focus.

Start narrow. Expand gradually.

Those who have only recently begun TI Practice will find more success by keeping that focus very narrow. Visualizing a laser beam projecting from your head-spine line is one example.  Slicing your hand into a “Mail Slot” is another. As your practice hours mount, your focal points can become gradually more  encompassing or consolidated as mine are.

Shinji - Mail Slot (from OTB ebook)

As your powers of focus — and your neural circuits — strengthen, you can test both by swimming faster. After 90 minutes, over two days, of striving only to hold the 160-stroke-sensation, I attempted some Speedplay practice. (Learn more about Speedplay by reading Chapter 11: Develop Speed Gears with Speedplay of the Outside the Box ebook. See it illustrated in the Outside the Box DVD. )

I began by alternating sets of 10 strokes easy, 10 strokes ‘brisk’ (which means “How fast can I swim without losing the sensation?”) I also monitored how many strokes that added to my count.  When I could consistently complete a length of Speedplay in 165 or less, I began taking 20 strokes brisk at a time. Soon I was sustaining stretches of 40 strokes brisk, with only a slight degradation in the sense-of-control I was aiming for.

This deep internal focus kept me in a meditative state, something virtually impossible while training to swim a particular time., the traditional way to train for speed.

Finally, if you race triathlons, strength of focus gains its greatest power by insulating you from the potentially-paralyzing distraction of hundreds of churning bodies.

Struggle is essential to improving your brain’s circuitry. In order to get a  skill circuit to fire optimally, you must first fire it sub-optimally. When you do it inefficiently, you become aware of your errors and have a chance to fix them. Mistakes increase your attention.

Even the swimming you practice after improving should still be effortful — a precisely calibrated kind of effort rather than brute force. Try smarter not harder.

Better skills happen not by trying harder indiscriminately, but by trying harder in thoughtful, purposeful, targeted ways. Here’s a typical sequence of an improvement-minded swimmer working with a new Stroke Thought:

1.    Choose a sensation to create or experience.

2.    Slightly miss the mark on your first try.

3.    Analyze what happened and adjust your intention.

4.    Try again.

5.   Compare the 2nd trial with the first.

6.   Try again, pursuing the more promising path.

Are we ever satisfied with our first effort at a new skill or tweak? Indeed are we ever satisfied with our 100th try?  Not if we’re seeking Continuous Improvement.

To recap: Journal reporter Kevin Helliker has swum freestyle for years but a lap or two of Butterfly leaves him exhausted. Noting that long-distance Fly has become a passion for some, he was curious if – after years of no improvement – someone like himself could learn to swim Fly for distance. His sources mainly advised to train much harder – and not just in the pool either.

Steven Munatones, a former world marathon swim champion, and founder of web sites 10kswim and 10kswimmer commented: “There’s a huge surge of propulsion as the arms pull you forward, then a deceleration during the recovery.”

That’s a completely accurate description of Fly as most everyone swims it. It’s also the reason, I’d been unable to swim more than a lap or two for 40 years. At least until I began to think about solving the deceleration problem with streamlining, rather than a “huge surge of propulsion. Watching a Michael Phelps DVD I noticed that there was a moment between strokes when he just held his streamline while allowing gravity to draw him down, then buoyancy to bear him up again. I thought that was something I could imitate.

Challenge Assumptions: Grow Neurons

After an hour of experimenting in an Endless Pool, I found I could keep swimming Fly as long as I wanted. (In the EP, with no turns, so it’s like swimming Fly in open water). How do you overturn 40 years of frustration in an hour? Well, obviously not by doing what you’ve always done.

This is a perfect example of why improvement-minded swimming is ideal for Adult Brain Building. Researchers say that attacking Mental Autopilot – habitual ways of thinking – is a known stimulus for improving brain function.   If you ride a bicycle down, then immediately up, a hill it would make no sense to brake near the bottom. Instead, you conserve momentum from the downhill to help carry you up. So why do swimmers aim for — indeed celebrate – an incredibly costly “huge surge of propulsion?” Isn’t this just like flooring the gas pedal in your car after every intersection?

What made Butterfly-for-Boomers so “tireless” is that it solved the “deceleration problem” with streamlining rather than power. Conserving momentum is obvious in cycling, but not in swimming. Finding flaws in accepted ways of thinking, then developing strategies to act more effectively – followed by Deliberate Practice to convert new thinking into new skills – are proven brain builders.

Engage. Enjoy. Improve.

Another quote from the article seems to position Fly swimming as a poor-man’s alternative to the $15,000 ROM machine that promises you can be fit in just 4 minutes a day. “’Fifteen minutes of butterfly can provide similar benefits to 30 to 45 minutes of freestyle,’ says [Tom] Boettcher.”  For me this hints a bit at the Fast Fitness philosophy (“Washboard Abs in just 5 minutes a week”) which treats physical activity as an inconvenient necessity that we should seek to squeeze in to our busy schedules..

For contrast, there’s the yoga class I took this morning, which brings essential balance to the headlong multitasking outside those walls. Giving myself fully to each down-dog, triangle or tree does to energize me mentally as align me physically. And so it is with Deep Swimming Practice. No longer do I watch the clock. Instead I relish every moment.

As Harvard psychiatry professor Dr. John Ratey wrote in Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain: “The real reason we feel so good when we exercise is that it makes the brain function at its best . . . this benefit is far more important than what it does for the body; conditioning the heart and lungs are essentially side effects.”

In the holistic view, a healthier heart and stronger, more supple muscles become the icing on the cake while flow experiences, habits of mastery and excellence, and a healthier brain become the more conscious goal. Improve-oriented swimming is the perfect vehicle.

Watch Butterfly for Boomers (ButterFrog variety)

• Physiological improvements – the body’s “superadaptation” to the stresses imposed by training – occur during periods of recovery or restoration. In training cycles, you stress the body, then de-stress, in measured ways, to allow stepwise improvements in strength and work capacity. Those who never de-stress limit the body’s capacity to do that.
• Swimming is unique. In running and cycling 70% to 80% of improvements come from increases in physiological capacity. In swimming, 70% to 90% of gains in speed or endurance come from improving the “neural programs” for efficiency. Those improvements virtually always come during easier practice.
• The vast majority of adult swimmers are more interested in swimming well for a mile or more, rather than for 100 meters. To swim well for such distances, you need to feel very controlled, very much at ease, for most of the distance. If you go “hard” it will likely be for just the last few minutes of a swim that lasts 30 to 60 minutes. If you feel as if you’re swimming hard earlier than that, it’s far less likely you’ll be able to sustain to the end.  Thus it makes sense to spend much of your training time rehearsing and imprinting the thoughts and feelings you hope to have while swimming a longer distance, possibly in open water without pushoffs to give your arms a rest.  This is even more the case if you have to cycle and/or run after finishing your swim. Yet on the occasions when I swim with a Masters group, I observe that the great majority of others there, many of them triathletes, do almost everything hard.

Easy doesn’t mean Lazy. Easy swimming is valuable even if you aren’t doing it to recover from the physical stress of harder efforts on land or in the water. It’s the best pace for examining your stroke, improving your efficiency and imprinting new skills. When I swim easily – something I do as much as 80% or more of the time – my practice repeats include one or more (often all) of the following elements:

1. I think about how I would like to feel on a brilliant long swim. In the middle of a 2-mile, 5km or possibly 20+ mile, swim how would I feel if I swam better than I ever have in my life. Not just ease but complete harmony with the water. I strive to make every stroke feel that way, to imprint the movements and sensations of brilliance into my brain, nervous system, muscles and even my psyche.
2. I strive to maintain lower stroke counts, with a feeling of rhythmic continuity, than I could maintain if swimming harder. Once that higher efficiency begins to feel “settled” I’ll increase effort , tempo, or pace very slightly (often with a Tempo Trainer) to test if I can keep the SPL and the feeling of relaxation I established previously.
3. I strive to maintain – and sometimes even improve – pace as I continue for as much as two to three hours, and often as I increase repeat distance.
4. I strive to avoid sensations of fatigue.
5. In sum I try to swim as fast as I possibly can – and yet do so effortlessly and in a way that feels almost limitlessly sustainable.

Kaizen Ease Swimming easily is most beneficial when it’s technically exacting and when you add as much or more mental energy to make up for the physical energy you subtract — when you still strive to swim better than you ever have before, and to leave the pool a better swimmer than when you entered it.

All were placed in an MRI scanner and asked to think loving thoughts about friends or family, then to think compassionately about people in general. When the monks meditated this way, their left frontal cortex—where optimistic and constructive thinking happens– showed at least 100 percent greater activation; two showed increases of 700 to 800 percent! The novice meditators increased activity in that area by just 10 percent.

This study was the first to document that thinking patterns can be improved . . . in the same way as skills for, say, music or sports . . . by stimulating cell growth in the region of the brain where that kind of neural activity occurs. The scans revealed that the monks, through thousands of hours of meditation, had grown significantly more robust brain circuits and, with it, the ability to generate far more “brainpower” in that region.

“People are not stuck at preset points,” Dr. Davidson says. “We can take advantage of our brain’s plasticity and train it to enhance chosen qualities.” In a study at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MRI scans showed that regular practice of mindfulness increased cortical thickness in the brain region we use to sustain attention and increase sensory awareness – precisely what it takes to improve stroke efficiency. This proves that the habits of excellent swimming are wired into the brain by targeted practice.

Throughout the week, Suzanne has kept a daily chronicle of her experiences as a TI teacher trainee on her blog. I’ve read it with great interest for the insights it has brought to certain things I now do so instinctively  that I barely think about them. One was a comment on a talk I gave “framing” the activities we would do over the course of the week.

A key part of our training experience is a workshop we’re conducting with “live” students all week. The workshop is 10 x 1-hour lessons, offered two per day Mon thru Fri. We’ll also coach a day-long TI 2.0 workshop for experienced TI swimmers on Saturday, giving each trainee nearly 20 hours of real-world teaching practice, mentored and observed by experienced TI coaches over the course of the week.

At the beginning of each lesson I’ve gathered our 16 students for an overview of the activities – averaging 3 to 4 drills or exercises — in the coming hour. I start by demonstrating the final drill or skill we’ll do in the session and explaining how it will improve the ease and efficiency of their whole stroke. Then I demonstrate the activities leading up to it. taking care to illustrate how one activity sets up the one to follow.

This is critical because in the middle of the hour of learning that will follow, each student will typically become so absorbed in the often-granular details of the skill they’re working on at the moment (for instance 3 considerations for finding the right position of the lead hand in Skating drill) that they can forget the point of WHY it’s important to have it there — i.e. its consequential effect on whether you move your body forward, or just move your hand back, in the stroke.

I’ll continue to read Suzanne’s blog for the self-awareness it affords me. And perhaps you might pick up some  useful insight as well.

Tuesday Feb 9 at Coronado Municipal Pool

Set #1 50+100+150+200+250 FR. EZ 50 BK between FR repeats

Notes: I held 36-37 SPL on FR repeats and 38-39 on BK lengths.  My goals on this set were to (1) begin practice by deepening my neural program for a long, relaxed stroke and (2) to test whether I was equally efficient on both breathing sides. I breathed right on one length and left the next. I was pleased that SPL was same on both.

Set #2 Swim  12 X 150 FR with Tempo Trainer, striving for best combination of SPL and Stroke Rate (or tempo).

1-4 @ 1.10-1.12-1.14-1.16

5-8 @ 1.16-1.14-1.12-1.10

9-12 @ 1.08-1.0-1.04-1.02

Notes: On the 1^st 150, with my Tempo Trainer set at 1.10 sec/stroke, I averaged 40SPL (38+41+41). My plan on #’s 1-4 was to slow tempo on each and try to subtract as many strokes as possible as tempo slowed. My plan on #’s 5-8 was to reverse tempo back to my starting point – while trying to avoid adding strokes.

On # 4 I averaged 38 SPL – or 6 fewer total strokes for 150. How does that convert into pace? I allow 3 beeps on each pushoff so my pace/50 on #1 was 43 x 1.10 or 47.3 sec. My pace on #4 was 41 x 1.16 or 47.5 sec.  My pace was .2 sec/50 slower BUT I felt materially more relaxed, meaning that pace would likely be sustainable for a longer distance.

The real benefit came when I begin increasing tempo again, (and seeking to avoid adding strokes.) When I got back to 1.10 on #8 my average SPL was 39, one stroke lower than when I started the set. This converted into a pace of 46.2 sec – which, though faster, actually felt a bit easier than #1 had.

I’d originally planned to swim only 8 x 150, but decided spontaneously to keep swimming 150s – and increasing tempo – until my stroke count reached the same level where I’d started – 40 SPL. That didn’t happen until I reached 1.02 sec/stroke on #12, At 1.02, 40 SPL converts to a pace of 43.8 sec. And how does this difference in pace convert over the estimated 38,000 meters (760 x 50m) of an English Channel crossing? 760 x 3.5 sec = 44 minutes saved.

As I’ve noted, every set I do in the pool has one of two objects: (1) to develop brain circuits that get me across the Channel more easily or (2) to develop circuits that get me across faster.

I don’t do any sets for conditioning purposes (Conditioning “happens.”) I don’t do any to get the yards in; over the next six months, there will be sufficient yards.

Set #1 was for the former. Set #2 was for the latter. But here’s the key takeaway from this set. While I swam much faster on #12, and worked harder, my brain wasn’t thinking “Work harder.”  It wasn’t even thinking “Swim faster.”  My focus was entirely on the difficult task of keeping my stroke long, effective — and feeling relaxed and leisurely — while the beep on my Tempo Trainer got faster.

An intention of “going harder” isn’t a realistic option in swimming the English Channel. That’s why my intention, my focus, is always on building or maintaining efficiency in training, — and will be the same while swimming alongside Lance Oram’s boat.

Mon Feb 8 3100 LCM at Coronado Municipal Pool plus 2+ miles at LaJolla Cove

Warmup Swim: 200 Free at 34-35 SPL

Set #1 3 rounds of [4 x 100 Free] on 1:55 interval – 100 EZ Back-Breast between rounds.

SPL: 34+35 (69 total strokes)

Times: 1:46-1:43

Notes: This was an economy-oriented set-intending to use as few strokes and as little energy as possible. I was pleased by the improvement over similar sets last week. I took 5 fewer strokes per 100 and my interval was 5 seconds faster than any set of 100s last week. I achieved the efficiency by focusing on making my recovery in each stroke as relaxed and unhurried as possible. My times improved in the 2^nd round, over the 1^st, and improved again on the 3^rd round, with constant SPL, demonstrating that your swimming can improve when more repetition helps your nervous system  learn to perform a task more efficiently.

Set #2 3 rounds of [4 x 100 Free] on 2:00 interval  100 EZ Back-Breast between rounds. 1^st round @ 1.13 sec/stroke; 2^nd round @ 1.14 sec/stroke; 3^rd round @ 1.15 sec/stroke

SPL: 36+38 (74 total strokes) on rounds 1 and 2; 73 and 72 strokes on 3^rd round.

Times: 1:33 on Rounds 1&2;  1:32-1:30 on Round 3.

Notes: I repeated Set #1, but this time with a Stroke Rate set by a Tempo Trainer. I set the TT at 1.13 sec/stroke on the 1^st round. My strokes/100 increased by 5, but my times improved by over 10 seconds from Set #1. On the 2^nd round I slowed tempo by .01 sec to 1.14 sec/stroke. I took the same number of strokes and kept my times the same. This raises the question: If my total strokes were the same but my tempo was .01 slower, how did I keep my times the same? I should have swum nearly a second slower (74 strokes x .01 sec = .74 sec).

Though the change in tempo was slight I used the extra  in each stroke to improve my hold on the water slightly and thus travel slightly farther on each stroke. In Round 1, I had to stretch and glide a bit to reach the wall after 74 strokes.  At a tempo of 1.14, my 74^th stroke took me strongly to the wall, saving enough time to offset the .7 sec that slower tempo should have added.

On the 3^rd round, I slowed tempo again to 1.15. Again, taking 70+ strokes at a slower tempo should have slowed my times. Instead, I used the extra time to improve  my grip again and reduced my SPL on the first 50 to 35, saving 1.15 seconds on that lap. This improved my times to 1:32 – and 1:31 when my I was able to finish stroke, rather than glide on my 73^rd stroke. On the last 100, I cut a stroke from the 2^nd 50, resulting in improving in time again (since cutting a stroke also saved 1.15 sec) for a time of 1:30. In this case, slower strokes yielded faster times – because my efficiency improved more than my stroke slowed – a great outcome for long-distance endurance.

Swimdown 100 Easy Long-Axis Combo

Open Water I finished this practice at 6:10 am, climbed out and drove directly to LaJolla Cove to swim 2+ miles in 57F water, taking just over an hour to complete the swim. Last week I also swam twice a day with an afternoon open water swim usually following my morning swim by about 8 hours.  This week I’ll begin doing some of these “daily doubles” back to back to see how I tolerate them. This morning my energy was a bit low toward the end of my Cove swim.

Set #1 4 x 50 + 2 x 100 + 1 x 200 + 2 x 100 + 4 x 50 on interval of 1:00/50

SPL: 50s – 37; 100s – 37-38; 200 — 37-38-38-38

Times: 50s: 52-51-50-50;  100s: 1:40-1:38   200: 3:14   100s: 1:34-1:33        50s: all :45

Notes: My goal was to use the SPL from the first four 50s as a basis for the rest of the set, and let the “tuneup effect” improve my times throughout the set.  I descended the first 4 x 50, swam a faster pace on the 2 x 100, improved my pace again on the 200,  improved it again on the 2^nd set of 2 x 100 (these were 5-6 seconds faster than the 1^st set of 100s) and held a constant pace on the final set of 50s (average of 5+ seconds faster than the initial set of 50s. This set illustrates what I call the “tuneup” effect.

When your training focus is physiological you start workout with a warmup. This is designed to have physiological effects – increased heart and respiration rate, increased body  temperature, decreased muscle viscosity (i.e. they “loosen up.”)

When your training focus is neural, you start practice with a  tuneup – sending signals along brain circuits both for keen attention and for skilled movement. As these circuits are tuned, the body also experiences the physiological effects of warmup. The difference is that while the swimming is relatively easy, the skill elements require exacting focus and precise, consistent execution.

As the tuneup and warmup effects took hold, I was able to improve pace, even while increasing swim distance, with no change in Stroke Length.

Set #2 12 rounds of [effortful 100 + recovery 50] on 3:00. The effortful 100s averaged 1:30 @ 75 strokes. The active-rest 50s were Backstroke, averaging 75 seconds, which left 15 seconds of passive rest before starting the next 100.

Notes: I plan to swim an “effortful” set twice a week, usually Tues and Fri morning. Virtually all other pool training will be designed to imprint efficiency – i.e. to help me get across the Channel more easily. The effortful sets are intended to increase pace-holding capacity – i.e. to help me get across the Channel faster. These sets will be 30 to 45 minutes in duration, and include an approximately equal ratio of work-to-rest. The rest will mostly be active – i.e. recovery-pace swimming.

The difference between effortful sets and efficiency sets is that I’ll aim to maintain a more challenging combination of Stroke Length and pace or tempo. These sets will be more metabolically demanding, leaving me somewhat more fatigued and possibly with sore muscles. Thus (because of the overall volume of my training, and my age) I have to be careful not to overdo and to allow sufficient recovery between them.

I swam this set 1 SPL higher than Set #1 – a minimal difference moving from tuneup to effort. My first 100 was 1:30, the next two 1:32, then a long string at 1:30 with one at 1:29. The last two were 1:29 and 1:27. In the middle, on two consective 100s I took 74 and 76 strokes. The other ten were all at 75 strokes.

Swimdown: 200 [50 Back @ 42 SPL + 50 Breast @ 21 SPL]

As this is my first week of concentrated training, after 4 months of relative inactivity, I’ll be conservative on both volume and effort this week. The goal in this practice was to swim as well as possible by maximizing mental effort while minimizing physical effort.

Set #1 Swim 8 x 200 on 4:00. Maintain constant SPL. Aim for “effortless” increase in pace.

SPL: 36-37-37-37 on most 200s

Times: Descended 3:43-3:35-3:27-3:22-3:21-3:16-3:16-3:12

Notes: I intended this to be an “open-ended” set. Rather plan a specific # of 200m repeats I would continue the set so long as my repeat times improved and my SPL remained steady. My SPL target would be whatever it was on the 1^st 200. I didn’t do a formal warmup so the first few repeats would serve as warmup.

In addition I decided to swim with no overt kick and the lightest possible pressure on my armstroke – aiming for a truly effortless descending set. This would create two benefits: (1) Replace physical, with mental, effort; and (2) Aid in recovery from residual soreness from yesterday’s practices. (I swam 3200m in the pool in the am and 2400m in the ocean in the pm.)

I managed to continue improving my 200 times, without increasing my initial SPL, for the first six 200s. On #7 I had both an increase in SPL (to 38 on the 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th 50s) and failed to swim faster. So I did one more 200, adding a light compact “toe flick” to the non-overt 2BK I’d been using to that point. My SPL returned to where it had been before and my time improved by 4 seconds.

A key question is how did I swim faster without adding strokes. I traveled a constant distance on each stroke throughout the set (1180 total strokes for the numerically inclined). To swim faster I would need to increase Stroke Rate since I kept Stroke Length constant. However I never tried to stroke faster. Another way of looking at this is that I traveled the length of each stroke faster as the set went on. Still, I never tried to swim faster. I swim sets like this – swimming faster without “trying” regularly – My conclusion is that my nervous system gets “tuned up” with more repetitions of the same task, which results in improvements in the mechanics of both active streamlining and propulsionn.

This suggests a clear benefit for neutrally-focused training: While more repetitions tend to fatigue the body, they can have the opposite effect on a well-trained brain.

Set #2 Swim 3 rounds of [50+100+150+200] on an interval of 1:00/50.

Task: Increase SPL by one stroke per 50 in each repeat 50 @ 37SPL; 100 @ 37+38; 150 @ 37+38+39; 200 @ 37+38+39+40

Notes: While the task in Set #1 was to keep SPL constant, in Set #2 the task was to increase SPL in a closely calibrated way. It is an exacting skill to choose a stroke count, swim 50 meters and hit that count precisely. It is even more demanding to set a new SPL on each successive length – in this set there were no consecutive lengths on which SPL remained the same. – and be able to adjust your stroke to hit a new count, on the nose, in each length.

The goal of this kind of set is twofold: (1) Use its mental and coordinative demands to strengthen the neural pathways for stroke adjustment; and (2) Add effortless speed by increasing stroke count – I.E. More strokes should always result in more speed.

My 200 times in the three rounds were 3:16-3:14 and 3:11 – though my total stroke count for each 200 was the same.  This indicates again that my nervous system “learned” the particular task I gave it as I repeated the basic set of 50+100+150+200 three times. As well, my 200 pace in each round was faster than the 100 pace in that round, indicating that I converted more strokes into more speed.

Swimdown: 400    [50 BK @ 41SPL - 50BR @ 21 SPL]

Swimdown: 400 50 BK @ 41SPL – 50BR @ 21 SPL.