Posts about swimming technique and mechanics
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…
When I was teaching Week 4 of my Monday night triathlon swimming class for the Chicago Triathlon Club, I had a swimmer ask me why she felt slower after we had started to rework her timing, balance, and vessel shape. I’ve introduced the Total Immersion Perpetual Motion Freestyle stroke drills…
My office manager forwarded on an article from “Chicago Parent” on the use of swim noodles in swim classes. I was about to write a blog post that swim tools don’t teach, teachers do. I was going to take a triathlete angle and pick on my favorite enemies, the hand paddle…
So what do you think about when you are doing your swim training or lap swimming? If it’s not about how you are actually moving through the water and the quality of your movement, you are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to improve and to enjoy your swimming. Total…
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…
I was reading through the Total Immersion Coaches Manual and came across a helpful chart. It provides a general stroke count range based on the height of the swimmer. A couple of caveats: 1) If your count is above the range, don’t think that you have to start swimming in…
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. For those who have not met John…
Sorry that this post came in late… We do sets called “stroke elimination sets” periodically in practice. These are sets where we start off with a base stroke count and ask you to take strokes off the count when you swim. We do these sets as a way of getting…
