Topics specifically related to open-water swimming
I was going through my stack of swimming rags yesterday, and I came across an interesting analysis of the straight-arm recovery in freestyle in Swimming World’s December, 2014 issue (“Freestyle Straight-Arm Recovery” by Rod Havriluk). The article’s main intent is to put to the test the conventional wisdom that a…
A few months ago, I was asked at a talk how to use a Tempo Trainer effectively in a swim practice. For those not familiar with Tempo Trainers, they are little plastic discs that can clip to your goggles or go under your cap when you swim. You can set…
I took off in the middle of the day to do my swim today. I wanted to play around with some Tempo Trainer sets in this practice and see how I would do. If you are interested, you can see the detail on the practice on our website. For those…
I read an article on the American Swim Coaches Association (ASCA) website a while back. It’s written by John Leonard, the head of ASCA, and it’s a response to an email that he got from a coach about practicing with good swimming technique. His response highlighted the importance to coaches…
I was thinking of a set of drills and focal points that I could use in the first month after my MAF test. Total Immersion has embraced the 2-beat kick and integrating the kick with the body rotation. Kick cadences is something that I have never done. Since I come…
For those not familiar with the Chicago open water swimming scene, the Big Shoulders 2.5K and 5K open water swim is one of the big open water swims in the Midwest. My mentor, Terry Laughlin of Total Immersion Swimming sent me an email a week or so ago saying that…
One of the best ways to improve your freestyle is to incorporate “fist” swimming into your practices. Of course, you would never know this because all of my swimmers groan or mutter profanities under their breath whenever I assign it at swim practice. If you read most triathlon books or…
Want to become a faster swimmer and enjoy swimming more? Start by figuring out how to swim effectively in the water rather than immediately trying to build up your training volume. The reason that it’s more important to focus on how you swim rather than how far or how hard you swim…
One of my clients sent me a link to an article in Triathlon Competitor magazine called Do you know your Ape Index? The article talks about how arm length can affect your cadence — short arms yields a higher cadence and long arms yields a lower cadence. He asked me if…
If you are blind like me, swimming has always been a little challenging because I couldn’t see the pace clock, other swimmers, the practice on the board. Since I’ve started to do more stuff in open water with my team in the last 10 years, it’s…well…game over out there. The…
