- And there are three big mistakes that you might be making.
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Swimming can become quite easy for you, I guarantee it.
(whoosh)
Is how you will be a fast swimmer.
(whoosh)
Good early afternoon Trainiacs.
Got in a, just a wee little swim, couple thousand meters,
totally solo, just drills by myself.
Gotta travel a little bit tomorrow, so I came in here
on a Sunday by myself, did short course drills.
I talk about things going by slowly, it's like (slow growl)
glacial pace.
Now I've touched on each of these potential causes
of being a slow swimmer, and improper technique before,
but I don't know if I've ever put them together
in one condensed lesson.
If you haven't yet gone and downloaded this entire
swim drill series that I've got,
go to triathlontaren.com/swimdrillprogram.
That is the sequence of I think 15 drills that I use
from literally drowning, like not being able to swim
a length of the pool, to being able to complete
a 27 and a 39K open-water marathon swim.
Seriously, do it if you haven't yet.
So what I'm talking about is having proper balance swimming.
You might be thinking to yourself, Taren, why do I need
balanced swimming?
Well, balanced is your body position
in relation to the water.
It's being controlled in the water, not feeling like
you're sinking, not feeling like you're fighting the water,
not feeling like you're going like this.
Basically, you want to feel like, we can use a couple
analogies: one is a pig that's on a roast,
and you're just going side to side, and your entire body
is straight and level; now there is, like think about logs
floating down a river.
They're just perfectly horizontal, and if they get going
with the current they just fly.
We want to be the pig on the spit, or a log.
That doesn't sound like very fast.
The proper body position in the water is one of the biggest
keys to swimming fast, and there are three big mistakes
that you might be making with relation to how you're
positioned in the water.
A first one is having sinky legs, and for that I want
to use a kickboard.
Orange kickboards for life.
If you have sinky legs, picture this as your legs.
If you have sinky legs, the water underneath is going
to be hitting it and dragging.
You want them up nice and close to the surface.
A really easy way to work on that is to do a drill
that I've talked about before called pressing the buoy,
pressing the T.
Learning how to press your chest into the water,
pressing that down, which will kind of seesaw
your legs back up.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to get a snorkel
and kick in the water, just a light flutter kick,
not so fast that it's going to naturally bring
your legs up, but just really light and press that chest
deep into the water.
The next one, what I want to use for this,
I want to use a fin.
The next issue is having your hips break and not being
like that solid line from front to back, and if you
think of it, having your hips break and come up
as you're pushing your chest down, you don't want your legs,
this isn't working very well, breaking and causing a V,
basically your bum coming up close
to the surface of the water.
You want a really flat plane throughout your entire body.
So as you're pressing your chest down, you don't want
to be pressing down and having your hips come up.
You can battle this really easily by making sure
that your core is activated but not tight.
Tight core is going to constrict our movements,
so you want it activated, you want it feel like it's engaged
in the lower abdominals and the lower back, and just feel
like it's tight enough that you've got one solid chain
from the front of your body to the back.
Last one, I should have saved the fins for this one.
The last one is having a scissor kick, and that's where
you're kicking and your legs spread out really wide
as you go to grab a breath.
That spreading your legs wide is going to create
a bunch of drag as your legs go way out the side
of your body, and they get out from in behind that torpedo
that you're creating with the front of your body.
So the easiest way to combat this is just to practice
little tiny flutter kicks where your big toes
keep hitting the side of each other, and just think of that
while your heels are just going out the surface
of the water barely.
And that will keep your legs together.
So starting from the front of your body, you want to press
your chest into the water.
Coming down, you want your core all activated, not tight,
creating constriction, and then you want your legs
to follow with a slight flutter kick in behind
that torpedo, that channel in the water that's created
by the front of your body.
You want to go down the water just going side to side,
nothing spreading out, nothing dipping down.
And that is how you will be a fast swimmer.
So that's it, Trainiacs.
Just those three things and swimming can become
quite easy for you, I guarantee it.
Didn't start out easy for me.
I promise you that if you go through the swim drill
program, if you listen to these issues about balance,
and proper technique, it's not going to become so much
about surviving the swim, it's going to be about
how fast you can get in the swim.
Now, Canadian version of the Super Bowl: Gray Cup.
Gonna stay in my PJ's and hit the couch.