(chill pop music)
- Morning, Trainiacs.
That there, was a
pretty,
I had a bit of a revolutionary moment.
I've talked about this a lot in like very recent videos
about how I've really struggled with that,
that left, straight arm catch that I've got.
I know what the answer is.
And even if you don't have one of these Swim Spas,
I know how you can figure out the answer
to your swim faults.
Oh man, I did some good thinking in there.
(chill pop music)
All right.
So, Trainiacs.
Dogs.
Always with their collars shaking.
Why you might not be getting better at your swimming,
is well a number of reasons.
Number one, if you aren't yet under,
let's call it
145
per hundred
meter or yard pace,
kinda interchangeable,
I highly recommend a phenomenally rated
all fiver-star reviews on Amazon,
triathlon swimming book,
"Triathlon Swimming Foundations",
by a really good looking author.
That's gonna address a lot of the very basic issues
that are holding you back from getting to that like,
proficient level of swimming.
145 per hundred, there abouts.
But, let's say you're under that.
Somebody like me, who in a race is under that 145,
and you're working on the same problems
year after year after year
and not making a huge ton of progress.
In my case, the thing that I've struggled with
as you've seen with very recent videos,
is a very straight arm catch
and I also kind of plateaued
around that 130 per hundred pace.
I wanna show you something that blew my mind when I saw it.
It was like, wow.
Five strokes it took to fix something.
Five strokes.
All right, so I want you to take a look at this here.
This footage is from me just last week.
This is like eight days ago.
Look at that left arm.
I want to show you the right arm,
where that nice catch is at that really good,
bent elbow,
nice and forceful,
kind of positioned, very good,
but I have always struggled with that left arm
being way out there to the point
that at it's most,
it's still almost a straight arm.
Now, here's where things got really cool.
This was a video from me just yesterday.
Take a look at that right arm.
Same thing.
Everything's good,
but take a look at the left arm now.
Watch it.
Bam!
Ho!
Am I right?
Or am I right?
Look at this.
All of a sudden, we got,
it might even be just a little bit too bent
now that I think about it.
Look at this.
Yeah, that's probably even a little bit too bent
and when this happened,
it was five strokes into a swim.
Five strokes.
Within five strokes,
I was able to go
from a totally straight arm to a nice bent arm,
nice and powerful,
after years of not being able to fix it.
Allow me to explain.
Man!
I'm pumped about this.
Does it show?
All right, so once you've dealt with the basics,
the getting ahold of your breathing,
the making sure that your legs aren't sinking,
the making sure that you're not wiggly.
You start getting into more nuanced issues with your swim.
It's bent elbow.
It's is your hand pushing back or is pushing out?
It's are you having a slight cross-over
and then having to move sideways?
All these little things that I'm working through,
that a lot of people are working through
that are very very hard to fix.
And here's why.
When we get into the water, we're borderline weightless,
somewhere around 90 percent of our weight gets displaced.
And I want to explain why that's such a big issue.
Do this.
So, what I want you to do, is just stand up
and at home, have somebody press down on your shoulders.
Like, just, go like this.
Press right down.
What you're gonna notice, is your core kinda tightens up.
You tense up.
Now, if people aren't pressing down
and you're just standing,
you're still gonna be able to tense up
and hold that nice tight frame.
So then, here's what I want to show you.
Practice that tightening up,
that feeling of being nice and tense.
So, then go into the water.
Go into like, a face-down float
or on your back
and see if you can still tense up.
What's gonna happen is your body is gonna be so displaced
that you almost don't have a feeling
of what your muscles are doing
and that' one of the issues that makes it so hard to fix
all of our faults in the water.
We don't an awareness of where our body is,
because we're kinda weightless.
Like, we don't have all the same sensations
and body awareness that we have the other
23 hours a day
even if we are swimming an hour every single day,
which none of us are.
So, basically every time we get into the pool,
we don't really know where our hands are,
we don't really know how tight our body is.
When somebody says hey, bend your elbow, Taren.
Like, I'm trying to bend my elbow, I can't do it.
It's not you, it's the water.
But, here's what happened in there
that allowed me to in five strokes,
fix what I haven't been able to do in five years.
Look at this footage of how I've sat it up under water.
I've got one mirror now on the bottom of the Swim Spa
and then one mirror facing me on the Swim Spa.
So, what happened is I was instantly within five strokes
able to see, oh, this is the exact spot
that my hand needs to be.
Boom. Done.
I can actually feel it now.
And I can also feel now when my hand goes out here,
that it's wrong, without even looking at it.
So, that issue of not having proprioception,
body awareness in the water is why it's gonna be so hard
for all of you to make gains in the water,
but here are the ways that you can do that in order
of like, what would be least desirable
but still way better than somebody just saying,
bend your elbow and then going for a swim
to most desirable.
Now the first option that you can do
is video taping yourself and sending that footage away
to a swim instructor
or doing the analysis yourself
and seeing what your faults are
if you know what you're looking it.
It's better than nothing,
because you're gonna start to see what you have to work on.
But, the issue is that,
let's say you record yourself at 7 AM,
it might be weeks before you get that footage back.
So, it's not instant feedback.
You can't instantly apply it,
which makes it a little bit less ideal.
The next option that you can go with
is video taping with almost instant feedback.
So, that's an instance where you're taping yourself
doing one length of the pool,
stopping, taking a look at video footage,
doing another length of the pool,
stopping, taking a look at video footage.
It's more instant.
The next option that you've got is having say,
a coach on deck.
So, this is somebody that is instantly able to call out,
hey, here's what you're doing, fix it
at every single
time you hit the wall.
It's gonna be more instant, because you don't have to stop,
look at footage, go back.
They're gonna know right away what you need to work at.
The next even upgraded option.
This is where it starts costing a little bit of money,
but ends up being fairly valuable
if you're looking to gain seconds
and money isn't an option for you.
And this is where you can get bone conducting
or ear pod headphones.
And you can actually get a device
where through an app on your phone,
a coach is coaching you while you're swimming
and you are actually getting the instruction
as you're going.
That is almost instant.
But, the best option that I've found,
as I've started thinking about this,
I'm sure there might be
or could soon be
another better option.
But, going into a Swim Spa with a mirror on the bottom,
a mirror on the front,
it allows you to boom,
instantly within a second, no delay,
see what you're doing wrong and instantly adjust.
That's the power of this.
So, that's why it's so hard.
It's not you, it's the water.
If you are still struggling with things like, breathing,
like, sinking legs,
you're swimming slower than 145 per hundred,
go give this a try.
You can get it on all the Amazons.
You can get the ebook,
you can get the audio book instantly
at triathlonswimmingfoundations.com
and it is very quickly becoming one of the most reviewed
and the most highly reviewed triathlon swimming books
on Amazon with a 100 percent five-star reviewed.
So, go check that out
and rest assured, that there are ways to fix your swimming
and it doesn't need to involve
hundreds of thousands of meters of swimming
every single month.
You just need to maybe look at some different tools
that make it easier to swim in the pool.
So, go check out the swim book
and if you aren't already subscribed,
hit the subscribe button below, Trainiacs.
I'm pumped.
That left elbow hasn't bent in the pool in ever.
Unless I was doing dog paddle.
That was fun.
Speaking of dog paddle,
we still have to get her in the Swim Spa.
You would love that.
Right, Gracie?
I'd love it.
I'm a big swimmer.
She is a great swimmer.
She's a lab, she's excellent.