First of all, let me introduce My real blood related brother, KH. And also a short story followed by what happened today that triggered my thoughts to write this entry.
He is a really really nice guy... and even though he never speaks out front to me (cos he's a rather quiet guy about his emotions), I knew deep inside he's always trying very, no, extremely hard to live up to my expectation. Or rather, the expectation that he thinks I have for him.
How I knew about this "expectation" thingy is like this...
Yrs back before I started swimming, I was a rather established ball player around the courts and my brother seem to naturally picked up balling.. I was hoping that my reputation didn't affect him and how the rest view him... Subsequently, I backed off from balling... then one day, I saw him on the court and decided to have a game.. he flunged and it seemed like he haven't even know how to dribble or pass the ball properly. I noticed there was this pressure when he played with me.. I didn't like that.
Anyway. this so called expectations or training I've given him has pushed him pretty hard and got him to be pretty much fitter today at his age group compared to his otherwise sedentary gamers/geeks circle.
So, today we went for a long ride together with 2 of my friends.. I went at a relaxed pace as I just wanted the ride to be a relaxed one.. but this very bad weakness of mine is that I always fail to curb the training devil inside at just pass half way of the rides. As usual, I let loose a little and pushed the pace.. he then tried to follow despite being already quite tired from the first half of the journey.. To keep story short was that the Result was that he bonked out and got pretty severely dehydrated - which in my opinion, is rather dangerous.
So here comes the note... I'm gonna keep it straight to the point. Header, and pointers.
--------------------------------------
Issue:
People who train in a group which consists of players who are stronger tends to push themselves harder than usual due to several reasons. Now, I personally feel that this formula works:
Healthy dose of challenge in a group + LOADS of self-body-awareness + Ability to STOP yourself when you know you've come REALLY close to the limit or beyond and is not feeling comfortable to continue.
Combination of the 3 elements will lead to tremendous improvement. But without any of them, things can turn ugly.
Reasons that people pushed themselves in a group.
- To feel like they belong
- To live up to expectations (male homosepians are such egoistic living things, we always think that every other one out there have an expectation on what we do and how we should perform.) The fact is that 90% of the time, no one really care about how good or bad you are performing, except for yourself and perhaps your teammate if its a team sport and also your coach/supervisory personnel.
- To overcome a limit and have a breakthrough
- To show off or boast ability in a practice
- To see how much one can push themselves.
Problems that may occur.
- When you get dehydrated, body's ability to perspire and release heat through evaporation will be severely messed up. Thus overheating may occur, and then heat stroke or heat exhaustion will follow. Tiredness and inability to continue even at steady state will be among first symptom to hit them hard and make them realize they're digging a endless hole. Dizziness and even Fainting can occur soon after that. Also, in extreme cases heat problems CAN be deadly if the person did not sound out and stop to get rest or rehydrate/refuel.
- Reaching the limit (training at max RPE or near) is always risky, that is why base training intensity is always at 70%to80% Max Heart Rate or lower. So as to reduce risk of training.
- Fainting/Dizziness can poise a very serious danger in any group sports that are require forward moving all the time. Especially cycling. Imagine fainting off the bike. Imagine you're drafting someone and that someone suddenly just fades and fall in front of you at 30KPH.
--------------------------------
My advice:
To constantly look for the limit is good. But make sure you know your body well enough through long progressive training sessions before you plunge into it. Always be careful, be safe than sorry in terms of sports doing.
Whether or not another has expectation on how you perform, it is ULTIMATELY YOU who're the one performing. Nobody will smack your head and say "WHY YOU SLOW DOWN?!" when you first raise your concern about your ill feeling. Whether or not the group is competitive or leisure, the first priority should be your own safety. We should all be responsible to ourselves before thinking about how we should be responsible to others. And by doing that, we're also ensuring others' safety in a group exercising environment.
I mean seriously, it is nothing wrong to voice the concern about your own body and just ask for a short rest if something went out of control or you find yourself in an alien environment where you don't know how your body is exactly reacting or the symptoms seems awfully new to you. I doubt any group will say "You.. slowed down just now.. we dropped you so you're OUT of the group.. DON'T COME EXERCISING ANYMORE.. SLOW POK.".. A group like that will not be worthy for you stay anyway.
--------------------------
I know that this entry will seem to be targeting my brother solely, but I believe those who read this will find it applicable too if you do exercise in a group someday.
Keep in mind the formula:
Healthy dose of challenge in a group +
LOADS of self-body-awareness +
Ability to STOP yourself when you know you've come REALLY close to the limit or beyond and is not feeling comfortable to continue.
Achieving all 3 is difficult in every sense, but it all will come with practice and progressive training and personally, I believe I'd rank self-body-awareness and understanding top priority in any sports anyone do. Share with me your sentiments personally if you feel that I'm wrong.. we can all learn. :)
Cheers,
Coach KK
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
My swim trg.
Set myself too high a target to swim for today.. the swim TT n monday and run TT last night kinda wore me out...
Warmup:
Hypoxic swim
100m each
3(pull):1(breathe)
5:1
7:1
9:1 (Unable to do more than 2 cycles for now)
7:1 (a little struggling)
5:1
3:1
Main set:
6x 50 (as in 25m sprint, 25m easy stroke maintenance), 10Sec rest btw each
100m Breast
6x50 (as in 25m reach and glide, 25m sprint), 20Sec rest btw each
100m of 3 fast stroke, 6 scullling motion in 1 arm extended side FS kick drill
200m Pull (with paddle, pull buoy & strap)
200m Pull (with paddle, pull buoy)
100m Pull (pull buoy) --> Stroke breaking down... thus didn't do 200m.
Cooldown:
50m underwater Fist FS swim easy. Focusing on form
50m Easy reach and glide
200m Easy swim (as in 2x [50m Breast + 50m FS])
Total Mileage done 2.3k.
---------------------------------------
Supposed to be doing 200m Pull (pull buoy), followed by 100m Fist FS swim, then end main set with 200m Race Pace. But since stroke is really breaking down and i'm losing more than 20% control of body movement.. I stopped there after 100m Pull with pull buoy and went on to do cool down to build the technique back.
All sets are done with ample amount of rest (10 to 20secs max) to ensure quality of strokes. Hypoxic sets are done with more rest to ensure safety.
New hairstyle feels good. Its time for a change.. for the better. :)
Cheers
Coach KK
Warmup:
Hypoxic swim
100m each
3(pull):1(breathe)
5:1
7:1
9:1 (Unable to do more than 2 cycles for now)
7:1 (a little struggling)
5:1
3:1
Main set:
6x 50 (as in 25m sprint, 25m easy stroke maintenance), 10Sec rest btw each
100m Breast
6x50 (as in 25m reach and glide, 25m sprint), 20Sec rest btw each
100m of 3 fast stroke, 6 scullling motion in 1 arm extended side FS kick drill
200m Pull (with paddle, pull buoy & strap)
200m Pull (with paddle, pull buoy)
100m Pull (pull buoy) --> Stroke breaking down... thus didn't do 200m.
Cooldown:
50m underwater Fist FS swim easy. Focusing on form
50m Easy reach and glide
200m Easy swim (as in 2x [50m Breast + 50m FS])
Total Mileage done 2.3k.
---------------------------------------
Supposed to be doing 200m Pull (pull buoy), followed by 100m Fist FS swim, then end main set with 200m Race Pace. But since stroke is really breaking down and i'm losing more than 20% control of body movement.. I stopped there after 100m Pull with pull buoy and went on to do cool down to build the technique back.
All sets are done with ample amount of rest (10 to 20secs max) to ensure quality of strokes. Hypoxic sets are done with more rest to ensure safety.
New hairstyle feels good. Its time for a change.. for the better. :)
Cheers
Coach KK
25/11/09 Swim Trg
Ahh... wanted to update this in the morning but I guess I'd do it now since I just had a late night talk with my good brother Jing Fu.. now very motivated to achieve some goals. That aside, I'll talk about last night's training.
First and foremost, a VERY warm welcome to Marianne!!! A really tanned girl who looks really great with that sunshine smile. Just like Samantha when I first knew her (now still the same..=)).
*clap clap clap*
So, with Wilson at Thailand, Ben giving the last burst at his exam, Edmund going to Polo training without early notice, gen at a make up class because of a missing lecturer and then Lawrence overseas chionging for work, we're left with me, Sam, Ziting (wondergirl), and Weihan (our super biker)... and Marianne~
The night was an easy cruising night.. with loads of drills.. loads of talking from the coach, myself.. puzzling everyone with things that never come across the mind of any person who just hit the pool with nothing in the mind except "30 laps in 'N' mins".
After the warmup 200m swim, we settle into slow moving pace and started the following drills:
1) FS Kick on the side (arms on our body side)
-Teaches what is wrong body posture
-Allows recognition of sinking hips with the knuckles as indicator and palm touching thighs
-Teaches swimming downhill with thoracic (chest) pressure.
-Teaches confidence to swim without the use of arms as leverage/support which will aid in relaxation of the arms when not needed in propulsion (e.g. breathing.)
-Teaches bodyroll.
2) FS Kick on the side (1 arm extended)
- All of above + more specific to frontcrawl
- Teaches the perfect gliding position in front crawl swim.
3) Underwater FS swim
- Due to the whole body being submerged, any drag created by body is amplified and thus allowed easier recognition of any stoppages/slowdown of body in FS Swim caused by non-streamlined movement. In short, teaches streamlining.
--------------------------------------
SAMANTHA
Significant improvement tonight in body positioning and maintaining arm extension. Consistently pressing on the chest and keeping the body streamlined has her averaging 44strokes for both laps of normal swim continuously. That is something impressive.
Issues:
- Need to work on the activation of latissimus dorsi during pull. Can tell she's still swimming with the arms only.
- Need to work on the coordination body. I.E Synchronizing the arm pull and kick WITH body rotation.
- Need to work on kicking from the hips and having smaller kick
- I also noticed the lack of effort on the plantar flexion while kicking, thus creating drag.
---------------------------------------
MARIANNE
Despite looking similar to Sam, Marianne SWIMS LIKE HER TOO. Except she has better arm extension. Perhaps all the rowing has developed the triceps better and does arm extension is better held. Who knows? =D
It is a pretty good first swim impression. Not as lousy as she claimed herself to be. Very humble indeed. She manage to grasp the technique of pressing her chest into the water and swim downhill. But it seems like only the right side is firing and left side still need some time. Good enough for an hour in my opinion!
Of course there are places to improve on and to name afew......
Issues
- Kick has too little hip flexion (30degrees), weak kick.
- Left pull starts with palms ulna flexion. Can cause ulna ligament inflammation if not changed.
- Always looking forward in the swim literally... seems to be trying to find some handsome guy or something.. :P
- Too much emphasis on 'S' pull. 'S' should be created by body roll. Not a purposeful deed of pulling in a 'S' motion.
- Recovering without a high elbow. Not relaxed at all.
- Body roll not synched with pull and kick (like sam's).
-ETC. :)
---------------------------------------
ZITING AND WEIHAN...
They have pretty good body positioning when they do make the effort to press the chest down and really get into the position. Bad news is they don't seem to be hardworking enough to hold that position whilst swimming. Perhaps, the lack of competition has caused the lack of need to improve and be persistent in the strokes. Still, this is something worth mentioning and letting them to look into.
Signing up for a race is a great idea, but still, its up to the racer to decide whether or not to put in 150% effort or just go there and DO an event.
But then again, little boys and girls, I understand that the competitive nature is probably not needed here if all you're looking for is a leisure swim... Maybe you can just do it to shut uncle KK's nagging because you know HOW PERSISTENT I CAN GET WHEN YOU'RE JUST NOT DOING IT RIGHT.... :)
Issues:
- Weihan's kick is powerful, good for racing if done right. Not good when he overdo and let the leg come flying out of water and creating huge loads of drag during swim. He should not be slower than Sam THAT MUCH.
- Ziting's stroke is buttery smooth. Even I like to watch her swim and feel its really effortless. But when tiredness set in, she need to put in the extra effort to hold the position (read above for re-emphasis)...
-Weihan's recovery is NOT RELAXED. Remember, high elbow, dangling wrist and hands.
-----------------------------------------------
MYSELF
Corrected my left arm entry whilst turning my body to breathe. Now I'm moving almost equally on both side but tiredness still can make the bad habit come back which means its not 100% changed yet.
Improved water catching feeling with sculling drills and underwater swim.
Changed my catch to start deeper than my shoulder level to prevent shoulder pain. Worked wonderfully for my recent 2X500m TT.
Overall swimming seem to have improved because of the recent hypoxic swim training I've done. I've just started on it so maybe its psychological for now.. or maybe I really do think about it when I train thus it is sinking in really quickly compared to the others?
More on hypoxic training:
Hypoxic (low oxygen) training involves the reduction or elimination of breathing while training. The development of hypoxic training is credited to legendary coach and scientist, Dr. James Counsilman of Indiana University.
The theory is that hypoxic training increases the ability of the muscles to work better when oxygen levels are low, such as at the end of a 200 meter race. It is also believed that reducing the number of breaths per lap will increase the swimmer's speed, because changing the body position to take a breath tends to increase drag.
However, I personally agree with this article by Terry Laughlin:
http://www.alexandriamasters.com/articles/hypoxic.htm
Hypoxic training gets you used to swimming good smooth strokes without the unwanted tension and also helps you to focus on good swim technique symmetry. It does not promote physiologically the amount of O2 used by the body unless you live in high altitude places and train there like some Craig Alexander do. :Pp
That will be all for now, I can finally sleep.
Cheers
KK
First and foremost, a VERY warm welcome to Marianne!!! A really tanned girl who looks really great with that sunshine smile. Just like Samantha when I first knew her (now still the same..=)).
*clap clap clap*
So, with Wilson at Thailand, Ben giving the last burst at his exam, Edmund going to Polo training without early notice, gen at a make up class because of a missing lecturer and then Lawrence overseas chionging for work, we're left with me, Sam, Ziting (wondergirl), and Weihan (our super biker)... and Marianne~
The night was an easy cruising night.. with loads of drills.. loads of talking from the coach, myself.. puzzling everyone with things that never come across the mind of any person who just hit the pool with nothing in the mind except "30 laps in 'N' mins".
After the warmup 200m swim, we settle into slow moving pace and started the following drills:
1) FS Kick on the side (arms on our body side)
-Teaches what is wrong body posture
-Allows recognition of sinking hips with the knuckles as indicator and palm touching thighs
-Teaches swimming downhill with thoracic (chest) pressure.
-Teaches confidence to swim without the use of arms as leverage/support which will aid in relaxation of the arms when not needed in propulsion (e.g. breathing.)
-Teaches bodyroll.
2) FS Kick on the side (1 arm extended)
- All of above + more specific to frontcrawl
- Teaches the perfect gliding position in front crawl swim.
3) Underwater FS swim
- Due to the whole body being submerged, any drag created by body is amplified and thus allowed easier recognition of any stoppages/slowdown of body in FS Swim caused by non-streamlined movement. In short, teaches streamlining.
--------------------------------------
SAMANTHA
Significant improvement tonight in body positioning and maintaining arm extension. Consistently pressing on the chest and keeping the body streamlined has her averaging 44strokes for both laps of normal swim continuously. That is something impressive.
Issues:
- Need to work on the activation of latissimus dorsi during pull. Can tell she's still swimming with the arms only.
- Need to work on the coordination body. I.E Synchronizing the arm pull and kick WITH body rotation.
- Need to work on kicking from the hips and having smaller kick
- I also noticed the lack of effort on the plantar flexion while kicking, thus creating drag.
---------------------------------------
MARIANNE
Despite looking similar to Sam, Marianne SWIMS LIKE HER TOO. Except she has better arm extension. Perhaps all the rowing has developed the triceps better and does arm extension is better held. Who knows? =D
It is a pretty good first swim impression. Not as lousy as she claimed herself to be. Very humble indeed. She manage to grasp the technique of pressing her chest into the water and swim downhill. But it seems like only the right side is firing and left side still need some time. Good enough for an hour in my opinion!
Of course there are places to improve on and to name afew......
Issues
- Kick has too little hip flexion (30degrees), weak kick.
- Left pull starts with palms ulna flexion. Can cause ulna ligament inflammation if not changed.
- Always looking forward in the swim literally... seems to be trying to find some handsome guy or something.. :P
- Too much emphasis on 'S' pull. 'S' should be created by body roll. Not a purposeful deed of pulling in a 'S' motion.
- Recovering without a high elbow. Not relaxed at all.
- Body roll not synched with pull and kick (like sam's).
-ETC. :)
---------------------------------------
ZITING AND WEIHAN...
They have pretty good body positioning when they do make the effort to press the chest down and really get into the position. Bad news is they don't seem to be hardworking enough to hold that position whilst swimming. Perhaps, the lack of competition has caused the lack of need to improve and be persistent in the strokes. Still, this is something worth mentioning and letting them to look into.
Signing up for a race is a great idea, but still, its up to the racer to decide whether or not to put in 150% effort or just go there and DO an event.
But then again, little boys and girls, I understand that the competitive nature is probably not needed here if all you're looking for is a leisure swim... Maybe you can just do it to shut uncle KK's nagging because you know HOW PERSISTENT I CAN GET WHEN YOU'RE JUST NOT DOING IT RIGHT.... :)
Issues:
- Weihan's kick is powerful, good for racing if done right. Not good when he overdo and let the leg come flying out of water and creating huge loads of drag during swim. He should not be slower than Sam THAT MUCH.
- Ziting's stroke is buttery smooth. Even I like to watch her swim and feel its really effortless. But when tiredness set in, she need to put in the extra effort to hold the position (read above for re-emphasis)...
-Weihan's recovery is NOT RELAXED. Remember, high elbow, dangling wrist and hands.
-----------------------------------------------
MYSELF
Corrected my left arm entry whilst turning my body to breathe. Now I'm moving almost equally on both side but tiredness still can make the bad habit come back which means its not 100% changed yet.
Improved water catching feeling with sculling drills and underwater swim.
Changed my catch to start deeper than my shoulder level to prevent shoulder pain. Worked wonderfully for my recent 2X500m TT.
Overall swimming seem to have improved because of the recent hypoxic swim training I've done. I've just started on it so maybe its psychological for now.. or maybe I really do think about it when I train thus it is sinking in really quickly compared to the others?
More on hypoxic training:
Hypoxic (low oxygen) training involves the reduction or elimination of breathing while training. The development of hypoxic training is credited to legendary coach and scientist, Dr. James Counsilman of Indiana University.
The theory is that hypoxic training increases the ability of the muscles to work better when oxygen levels are low, such as at the end of a 200 meter race. It is also believed that reducing the number of breaths per lap will increase the swimmer's speed, because changing the body position to take a breath tends to increase drag.
However, I personally agree with this article by Terry Laughlin:
http://www.alexandriamasters.com/articles/hypoxic.htm
Hypoxic training gets you used to swimming good smooth strokes without the unwanted tension and also helps you to focus on good swim technique symmetry. It does not promote physiologically the amount of O2 used by the body unless you live in high altitude places and train there like some Craig Alexander do. :Pp
That will be all for now, I can finally sleep.
Cheers
KK
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Swim Squad - 11/11/09
Ahh.. our second swim training was joined with wonderGirl Ziting and wonderBoy Weihan! Two of the fittest secondary school students with better strokes of front crawl I've ever seen (swim team people not counted!=P)!
So, last night was a speedy night. It was intense! It was painful! But I am pretty sure the inner masochistic nature of ours made it enjoyable at the very least.. com'on! All of you smiled and laughed last night~! incredible! =P..
--------------------------------TRAINING------------------
Warmup sets of easy swim, pulls and kick...
Followed by speedy swims of 50s.. not alot.. but with recovery swims and ample amount of rest except for the last person (thank you on behalf of everyone wonderGirl.. :p) with 20secs only.
I personally feels that at this stage when everyone's stroke isn't fantastic and mature enough to hold for a really high intensity bout of training, the ample amount of rest will do very good to help us recover from the lactic build up and allow us to swim good strokes for the most of the whole 50m at good speed.
That is an idea I founded when I was training on my own when I set targets like 10x50m at 1min and i'll only end up with about 5secs to even just 1 sec rest at the end of the reps. Yes, that is what you want to do to FITNESS.. but then, swimming is so much about reducing drag with body posture and that the stroke technique is of such high significance, I can't help but felt that my stroke was SHITTY at the last few reps especially after the first 25m of each 50.
Basically this idea is that to train time-tight beginner swimmers, we should balance the workload (intensity and volume) vs technique in the very few sessions they can squeeze out. Thus the long amount of rest will allow for greater stroke control and still good speed. Of course, we have endurance sets which is swam at a lower intensity and that will help on the "stamina" side... so it should be a perfect plan for now..
------------Results----------------
----------------Review----------------
Ziting and Weihan tend to pull too deep into the water at the starting half of the pull. Try to keep a bent elbow a the first half of the catch.
Ziting's high elbow recovery always have her hand swinging very far away from her body. Try to keep it closer (shorter distance to travel from exit to entry compared to drawing a semi circle with your hand from exit -- out to the side -- then to the entry).. That will equate to a easier higher stroke count if need be.
Sam's main weakness comes from her inability to be aware of what her lead arm is doing. It is not straight almost all the time and is going waivering up and down after the entry. Try to keep it at the same depth after entry. Good work on the body roll! Keep working on it and you'll eventually get the hang of it! Old habits die hard.. I'm sure you'll do better in no time and that your shoulder will feel no more strain!
Gen's lack of awareness in her swim cost her all of her second 25m of last night's training. You need to be aware of your body posture even ESPECIALLY swimming at slow speed because that is when you're able to swim longer and thus ingrain the much needed correct stroke into your nervous system. When you're tired and worn out at muscle fatigue, the strokes will collapse due to a human's inability to multitask the need to constantly gasp for air, thinking about the pain in the arms and body and.. the last thought of the mind will be "what was that? the stroke? i need to survive! F the stroke la~!... Get what i mean..
Lawrence stroke issue still lies in the pulling that crosses the center axis of the body. This cause the body to move side to side in each and every stroke. You could manage to go straight because you swam with your eyes opened and your body makes minor adjustment that it needs to travel straight. Just try swimming 20strokes with your eyes closed one day and you'll see what i mean.
Despite that there is a chance that both arms pull across the center axis at the same strength and same distance and cancel out the moving to the side notion, it is still a waste of energy to sway from side to side compared to moving straight in every stroke... Keep working on that and you'll be faster than me in no time! Judging from last night's swim, your start can be very strong! jiayou!:)
Last but not least, myself...
Stroke wise, i think my lead arm is not having a deep enough entry and I am not reaching in front enough. Also have the same habit as sam of letting the arm waiver up a little after the entry. Should try to keep it at same depth. Kick has a little too much knee bent and thus i could feel the drag. Still couldn't get bilateral breathing quite right.. stupid habit of mine.
Left arm's lack of feel for water at the catch is a deadly weakness for me.. need to work more on left arm sculling to learn to catch more water. Lactate threshold dropped quite alot too having missed quite afew swim squad hard swims.
Not to worry, I'll get it back in no time.
C you guys next week!
Cheers
Coach KK
So, last night was a speedy night. It was intense! It was painful! But I am pretty sure the inner masochistic nature of ours made it enjoyable at the very least.. com'on! All of you smiled and laughed last night~! incredible! =P..
--------------------------------TRAINING------------------
Warmup sets of easy swim, pulls and kick...
Followed by speedy swims of 50s.. not alot.. but with recovery swims and ample amount of rest except for the last person (thank you on behalf of everyone wonderGirl.. :p) with 20secs only.
I personally feels that at this stage when everyone's stroke isn't fantastic and mature enough to hold for a really high intensity bout of training, the ample amount of rest will do very good to help us recover from the lactic build up and allow us to swim good strokes for the most of the whole 50m at good speed.
That is an idea I founded when I was training on my own when I set targets like 10x50m at 1min and i'll only end up with about 5secs to even just 1 sec rest at the end of the reps. Yes, that is what you want to do to FITNESS.. but then, swimming is so much about reducing drag with body posture and that the stroke technique is of such high significance, I can't help but felt that my stroke was SHITTY at the last few reps especially after the first 25m of each 50.
Basically this idea is that to train time-tight beginner swimmers, we should balance the workload (intensity and volume) vs technique in the very few sessions they can squeeze out. Thus the long amount of rest will allow for greater stroke control and still good speed. Of course, we have endurance sets which is swam at a lower intensity and that will help on the "stamina" side... so it should be a perfect plan for now..
------------Results----------------
| Name | Fastest Lap mm:ss | Slowest Lap mm:ss | Avg/Lap mm:ss |
| KK | 0:42 | 0:48 | 0:46 |
| Sam | 0:55 | 1:06 | 0:59 |
| Gen | 0:52 | 0:59 | 0:56 |
| Lawrence | 0:59 | 1:06 | 1:03 |
| Weihan | 1:00 | 1:12 | 1:05 |
| Ziting | 1:10 | 1:35 | 1:25 |
----------------Review----------------
Ziting and Weihan tend to pull too deep into the water at the starting half of the pull. Try to keep a bent elbow a the first half of the catch.
Ziting's high elbow recovery always have her hand swinging very far away from her body. Try to keep it closer (shorter distance to travel from exit to entry compared to drawing a semi circle with your hand from exit -- out to the side -- then to the entry).. That will equate to a easier higher stroke count if need be.
Sam's main weakness comes from her inability to be aware of what her lead arm is doing. It is not straight almost all the time and is going waivering up and down after the entry. Try to keep it at the same depth after entry. Good work on the body roll! Keep working on it and you'll eventually get the hang of it! Old habits die hard.. I'm sure you'll do better in no time and that your shoulder will feel no more strain!
Gen's lack of awareness in her swim cost her all of her second 25m of last night's training. You need to be aware of your body posture even ESPECIALLY swimming at slow speed because that is when you're able to swim longer and thus ingrain the much needed correct stroke into your nervous system. When you're tired and worn out at muscle fatigue, the strokes will collapse due to a human's inability to multitask the need to constantly gasp for air, thinking about the pain in the arms and body and.. the last thought of the mind will be "what was that? the stroke? i need to survive! F the stroke la~!... Get what i mean..
Lawrence stroke issue still lies in the pulling that crosses the center axis of the body. This cause the body to move side to side in each and every stroke. You could manage to go straight because you swam with your eyes opened and your body makes minor adjustment that it needs to travel straight. Just try swimming 20strokes with your eyes closed one day and you'll see what i mean.
Despite that there is a chance that both arms pull across the center axis at the same strength and same distance and cancel out the moving to the side notion, it is still a waste of energy to sway from side to side compared to moving straight in every stroke... Keep working on that and you'll be faster than me in no time! Judging from last night's swim, your start can be very strong! jiayou!:)
Last but not least, myself...
Stroke wise, i think my lead arm is not having a deep enough entry and I am not reaching in front enough. Also have the same habit as sam of letting the arm waiver up a little after the entry. Should try to keep it at same depth. Kick has a little too much knee bent and thus i could feel the drag. Still couldn't get bilateral breathing quite right.. stupid habit of mine.
Left arm's lack of feel for water at the catch is a deadly weakness for me.. need to work more on left arm sculling to learn to catch more water. Lactate threshold dropped quite alot too having missed quite afew swim squad hard swims.
Not to worry, I'll get it back in no time.
C you guys next week!
Cheers
Coach KK
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Maiden Training!
Tonight, 4/11/2009, 8pm marks the official start of our free triathlon swim training!
Despite the fact that there are only 4 people who turned up, training was fruitful and definitely rewarding with loads of laughters. =)
Below are the summary for the training.
Warmup swim
Catchup drill
Body roll drill
Fingertip dragging (high elbow) drill
Drill Swim with board for lawrence and wilson. Emphasis on keeping head and torso submerged in the water.
Drill swim with arms pulling on the side instead of going inwards across the body.
Drill swim with entry in the direction of our shoulder instead of going to the center.
Drill swim with emphasis on breathing with almost half face submerged in water.
--------------------------------
Everyone's reaction for the drills was "Gao wei" (hokkien dialect for awkward) or.. "feels damn weird leh.." or.. "I thought I'm doing that already!!!"..
Well, to be frank, to change from an old habit to a new one is definitely a damn "gao wei" feeling. But then again, swimming efficient frontcrawl in itself is not a skill that we're born with.. learning it in the beginning while we were young is definitely the most "gao wei" times of all.
It is just that now we're all grown up and thus the "gao wei"-ness is much more amplified by our heightened awareness of surrounding and our feelings compared to when we were young.
Anyway, I hope that after the training on wednesday night, you guys will still take some time to practice (i said practice. MINDFUL ones, that is..) the points that I've stated during our training.
Feel free to contact me at 81800621 (SMS preferred as my phone screws itself if i talk over it for like 5 minutes... christmas is here.. blackberry, anyone??? :P)
Cheers
Coach KK
PS- Some notes for gen.
Your time trial timing is 10mins 42 sec. Not bad for an untrained swimmer. But definitely have room for improvements judging from the stroke you have at the moment. Remember that swimming is a sport with repetitive movements, just like running., thus doing the same movement over and over again during a workout means you'll be doing it for 100s of times.. and when you multiply that with the 2cm of gliding you add to your stroke by correcting your hand position, you'll get 200cm more for each 100strokes you do. Do the math, focus on your technique and have faith. I'm sure you and sis will get better soon! Sam's TT is not recorded here cos it is not an accurate one.
PS PS - The purpose of Time trials is not to show off how fast you are but for you to gauge if you're improving. As the training goes on, we will be doing more time trials after every some time of training. Results will be posted here. And you can check them out. :)
Despite the fact that there are only 4 people who turned up, training was fruitful and definitely rewarding with loads of laughters. =)
Below are the summary for the training.
Warmup swim
Catchup drill
Body roll drill
Fingertip dragging (high elbow) drill
Drill Swim with board for lawrence and wilson. Emphasis on keeping head and torso submerged in the water.
Drill swim with arms pulling on the side instead of going inwards across the body.
Drill swim with entry in the direction of our shoulder instead of going to the center.
Drill swim with emphasis on breathing with almost half face submerged in water.
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Everyone's reaction for the drills was "Gao wei" (hokkien dialect for awkward) or.. "feels damn weird leh.." or.. "I thought I'm doing that already!!!"..
Well, to be frank, to change from an old habit to a new one is definitely a damn "gao wei" feeling. But then again, swimming efficient frontcrawl in itself is not a skill that we're born with.. learning it in the beginning while we were young is definitely the most "gao wei" times of all.
It is just that now we're all grown up and thus the "gao wei"-ness is much more amplified by our heightened awareness of surrounding and our feelings compared to when we were young.
Anyway, I hope that after the training on wednesday night, you guys will still take some time to practice (i said practice. MINDFUL ones, that is..) the points that I've stated during our training.
Feel free to contact me at 81800621 (SMS preferred as my phone screws itself if i talk over it for like 5 minutes... christmas is here.. blackberry, anyone??? :P)
Cheers
Coach KK
PS- Some notes for gen.
Your time trial timing is 10mins 42 sec. Not bad for an untrained swimmer. But definitely have room for improvements judging from the stroke you have at the moment. Remember that swimming is a sport with repetitive movements, just like running., thus doing the same movement over and over again during a workout means you'll be doing it for 100s of times.. and when you multiply that with the 2cm of gliding you add to your stroke by correcting your hand position, you'll get 200cm more for each 100strokes you do. Do the math, focus on your technique and have faith. I'm sure you and sis will get better soon! Sam's TT is not recorded here cos it is not an accurate one.
PS PS - The purpose of Time trials is not to show off how fast you are but for you to gauge if you're improving. As the training goes on, we will be doing more time trials after every some time of training. Results will be posted here. And you can check them out. :)
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