More Navel Gazing

What with my own training going on, I haven't watched Basta swim lately. I figured he had it pretty much under control and now it was just a matter of longer and faster.

Well, I watched him swim a couple laps in the pool before I was ready to jump in and start my own workout. He looked like a corkscrew. What happened to his nice smooth roll? It was gone. His upper body was completely disconnected from his lower. He was twisting at the waist and giving a weird whirly kick with his legs on occasion. Huh? What happened here?

I stopped him and asked why he wasn't rolling any more. He, of course, said that he was. We talked about that for a bit and then he claimed to have never rolled like that before. Wrong again. I told him to do some laps of the rolling drill but he didn't remember it. I told him how to do it and he said it was impossible for him, he'd sink. Sigh. He fights me so hard on this swimming.

So I got in the pool and showed him the drill, straight from the Total Immersion video. Push off the wall on your side, kicking gently. Bottom arm is under the water and reaching forward, upper arm is on your thigh out of the water. Your hips align with the bottom of the pool and the sky, your face points directly down. Glide in that position for a few moments, then pull the forward arm down and roll the body to the same position on the other side. Roll face up to breathe then back down to face the bottom of the pool. Glide on each side a few kicks, then roll gently to the next side.

After a few laps Basta finally stopped fighting it and got the smooth roll down again. We think that the roll went to hell when he started to really reach for maximum length on his stroke. He was reaching too far, twisting his upper body, leaving his lower body to do whatever, and crossing his midline in a big way, too. Basta, Basta, Basta. Coaching him like this is interfering with my workout time, too. My work schedule doesn't align with the pool hours very well so my available time to swim is very limited. When I walk the deck watching him swim I'm losing my own training time. That's a bit of a problem.

Fortunately, this didn't take long to fix. He looks much better again.

As for me, I tried all the methods of counting laps that I'd read about after a quick google of 'counting swim laps.' I did 1x400 doing an easy, build, easy, hard sequence. Swim each length in that manner and after the hard length you've done 100. Repeat 4 times to 400. That was easy to keep track of and was a good workout, too.

I did the next 400 using letters of the alphabet. 400 is 16 lengths, or A through P. Pick a category of some kind and think of all the words you can that start with the letter of the lap you're on. I chose 'animals.' So on lap one I thought "Aardvark . . . Abalone . . . Apple - no that's not an animal . . . Anchovy . . " and so on. It worked. I never lost track of where I was. P, the end of the 400, came pretty quickly. But with all the searching in the brain for animals there wasn't any time to think of form, speed, variation in arm turnover, anything. So this would be good for just slogging out the laps. I'll use it once in a while.

For the third 400 I counted every length, not lap. That way going up would be an odd lap, coming back would be an even. If (when) the mind drifts and I lose track of the lap count, at least I know if I'm on an odd or an even and it can help find where I am. That did indeed help, though not perfectly. I still had to really think sometimes -- now was that 7 or 9? Hmm. Must have been 7 . . .

I did that 3x400 in 33 minutes. 11 minutes per 400, or around 2:30/100m. Slow. If I keep that pace for the event I'll have a 48:16 swim. Not quite the last one out of the water, probably. I must pull harder. A little quicker arm turnover. Press the chest and streamline the body. Steady improvement.