This log is slightly ego hurting. Be warned, but take heart that everything written is true and are facts we NEED to know in order to improve.
Tonight's intended program:
Group A:
Sam, Gen, Mari, Weihan, Leon, Neil
Warmup:
100Free
100KoS, arm ext.
100Free
100KoS, arm ext.
100Free
Pre set:
2x150 build up, no rest
Main set
Pyramid set
50,100,150,200,150,100,50
w/ 5sec rest between each
200(easy, moderate, fast, easy)
Cooldown
100 breast
Group B:
Robert, Wilson, Ziting
Warmup
4x50(Free, Kick w/ board, Pull, Free)
Pre set
4x50 Free
1min rest on last person reach
Main set
Pyramid set
25,50,75,100,75,50,25
30 sec rest between each
Cool down
200 breast
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Review
Sam:
Sub 1min easy swims after the run in the afternoon?!
Amazing.
As you can see, before the I note you on the breathin part to keep your ears to your shoulder, your breathing is very not streamlined. Compare mine. :)
Gen:
Backache. Great effort! I hope you're heeding my advice to stretch after every workout... Shan't nag more and just keep my fingers crossed that you won't get injured someday just because of tight muscles. I nag cos I care k. So take care.
Marianne:
Still very short pull. The video and pics below will be self explanable.... Let me know if you don't understand still.
Why is the thumb out?
The arm just exited water, see the back splash.. why so early exit?
As you can see, sam and I are both pulling all the way to our thigh, whilst yours is at your tummy area only... one thigh length worth of propulsion leh!!
Leon & Neil
I noticed that the rest times are NOT followed in pyramid sets. May I know why? Trying too hard to chase ar? haha. The rest is EXTREMELY important. This is the first time you guys train in a swim squad, thus you don't really know how the sets goes like and plus you guys started in the middle, thus everythign is a little rushy.
Next time, there will be sets of 200s, 400s and even 500s.. If the rest are not taken seriously in between, strokes will falter and you know what will happen when you did 500 strokes of bad practice. Plus, you'd probably find that you can't maintain the same timing in 2 or more sets despite having the rest time if you don't rest at all during the appointed rest time.
Neil, get a doc's advice and see if they can help with any supplements. My brother's getting the same thing as you.. too low fat count i supposed. If I found a solution I'd let you know.
Robert
Its imperative to remember that slow and steady wins the race. I can see a huge improvement in body position when you're not breathing... however everything tends to collapse when you're tired and need "MORE TIME" to breathe... As spoken in debriefing, pressing down to keep the head up to have more time to breathe is a vicious cycle as it keeps getting the hips to drop deeper and deeper each time you come up to breathe.
I can see the pulling is getting gentle now... but I need you to try harder in doing this:
Forget the fact that only stronger pulls can get you moving. Try to pull so gentle that you feel like you're just doing 1kg dumbbell curls. Then add streamlining to that effort of pulling and look at the tiles on the pool's floor to see if you're moving. That's the only way you can convince yourself to do light pulling.
I believe there are more concerns. There have to be as there seems to be endless things to think about and make things click. Let me know in details, I will get back to you point by point, word by word. I'm waiting for your email.
Pauline
Very gracious. Very impressive on self pacing and effort control. It may look effortless to everyone but I know you are feeling breathless after 6x50 already. You totally grasped what I said about holding good postures in swim even in hard swims! Whilst I am telling the boys in your home to pull gently, I am gonna tell you to pull harder now.. you know what it takes to go faster! Don't control so much already! :D
Only two faults I could find are:
1) kick is a little too weak at the end, need to compensate abit when core is tired (scroll down to read below bold section).
2) Breathe holding is NOT recommended... thoracic pressure buildups can cause ALOT of problem breathing... and can even cause drowning when the pressure adds on to the panicky feeling at race....
Wilson
Good work on locking core!
Strength gain is progressive and slow (depending on how fast u recover and how often u swim), but it'll b better than time spent in gym as it's Swim-Specific core strength.. Take a look at the video and snapshorts + details.
Backache. Great effort! I hope you're heeding my advice to stretch after every workout... Shan't nag more and just keep my fingers crossed that you won't get injured someday just because of tight muscles. I nag cos I care k. So take care.
Marianne:
Still very short pull. The video and pics below will be self explanable.... Let me know if you don't understand still.
Why is the thumb out?
The arm just exited water, see the back splash.. why so early exit?
As you can see, sam and I are both pulling all the way to our thigh, whilst yours is at your tummy area only... one thigh length worth of propulsion leh!!Leon & Neil
I noticed that the rest times are NOT followed in pyramid sets. May I know why? Trying too hard to chase ar? haha. The rest is EXTREMELY important. This is the first time you guys train in a swim squad, thus you don't really know how the sets goes like and plus you guys started in the middle, thus everythign is a little rushy.
Next time, there will be sets of 200s, 400s and even 500s.. If the rest are not taken seriously in between, strokes will falter and you know what will happen when you did 500 strokes of bad practice. Plus, you'd probably find that you can't maintain the same timing in 2 or more sets despite having the rest time if you don't rest at all during the appointed rest time.
Neil, get a doc's advice and see if they can help with any supplements. My brother's getting the same thing as you.. too low fat count i supposed. If I found a solution I'd let you know.
Robert
Its imperative to remember that slow and steady wins the race. I can see a huge improvement in body position when you're not breathing... however everything tends to collapse when you're tired and need "MORE TIME" to breathe... As spoken in debriefing, pressing down to keep the head up to have more time to breathe is a vicious cycle as it keeps getting the hips to drop deeper and deeper each time you come up to breathe.
I can see the pulling is getting gentle now... but I need you to try harder in doing this:
Forget the fact that only stronger pulls can get you moving. Try to pull so gentle that you feel like you're just doing 1kg dumbbell curls. Then add streamlining to that effort of pulling and look at the tiles on the pool's floor to see if you're moving. That's the only way you can convince yourself to do light pulling.
I believe there are more concerns. There have to be as there seems to be endless things to think about and make things click. Let me know in details, I will get back to you point by point, word by word. I'm waiting for your email.
Pauline
Very gracious. Very impressive on self pacing and effort control. It may look effortless to everyone but I know you are feeling breathless after 6x50 already. You totally grasped what I said about holding good postures in swim even in hard swims! Whilst I am telling the boys in your home to pull gently, I am gonna tell you to pull harder now.. you know what it takes to go faster! Don't control so much already! :D
Only two faults I could find are:
1) kick is a little too weak at the end, need to compensate abit when core is tired (scroll down to read below bold section).
2) Breathe holding is NOT recommended... thoracic pressure buildups can cause ALOT of problem breathing... and can even cause drowning when the pressure adds on to the panicky feeling at race....
Wilson
Good work on locking core!
Strength gain is progressive and slow (depending on how fast u recover and how often u swim), but it'll b better than time spent in gym as it's Swim-Specific core strength.. Take a look at the video and snapshorts + details.
The straight lines in white shows streamlining of the body in the water. I've plotted out how your body looks like in water.. streamlined? hehe.. you see for yourself!Weihan
Same problems as previous post... Please read up and rethink. Great stamina.. Great perserverance thru the blisters! Admirable!
Ziting
Superb! See, your stroke technique is gd enough to win Mr Muscle Wilson! Keep up the gd work, reduce the kicks, add more body rotation (especially on the left side!) and you'll be right there with your wonder boy kor kor already!
Conclusion of reviews:
It's all about holding a streamlined position. We can see very clearly here the importance of streamlining.
First, other than sam and gen who had competitive swim/lifeaving backgrounds, Marianne, ziting and Pauline are pure average swimmers at this moment.
Their body strength are definitely way lower than those of Robert, Wilson or Neil and Leon..
However, over a same distance of 50m,
Pauline still take lesser strokes than most of US..
Now, without taking speed into account, isn't it an irony since the more strength one can put into a pull should logically result in a further stroke length each pull?
Marianne's doing as fast as leon but with lower stroke counts. (1min 6sec per lap avg)
Ziting is even skinnier than Neil, yet Wilson kept exclaiming "wah..
She damn strong.. I'm OWNED(meaning lost to her completely) by her the whole night man..."..
Let's ponder for a second and see if the following reasons i come up with makes sense...
The reason pauline's taking much lesser strokes is because she held her streamlined position before, during AND after her pulling. She didn't care how hard she was pulling at all but the thing that goes thru her mind is probably just how she can maintain the feeling of slipping through the water in as slippery a manner as possible.
The reason ziting swim fast is because she got a strong fundamental base of drill work from my class previously that she can user her core to keep her hips up ON the surface all the time and her strong consistent kicks kept her feet on the surface too, wherelse Wilson and robert's legs are sinking from hip Down.
Lastly, marianne's body in her gliding position is definitely one of the longest looking one as she reach in front alot and her hips and legs are on the surface too just like ziting.. Plus, her speed comes from consistency in her strokes even WHILST BREATHING. Leon and NEil tend to lift head high able water whilst doing harder effort swims.
With these case studies, we can tell that holding a streamlined position whilst swimming is WAY MORE IMPORTANT than the amount of force being applied backwards to propel. I strongly advise everyone who feels that their stroke has got some streamlining problem, to start pulling more gently.. Focus the effort onto hardening the stomach area to activate your abs and lock your torso and hips together.
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I'd end the blog entry with a list of stuff we should do to keep the body streamlined in all ways.
1) In gliding/side position, reach forward with arm, feel stretch from lats to finger tips (keeps torso to lead arm in straight line)
2) Upon entry and stretching out, also in gliding position, press onto chest lightly (feels like leaning onto the water) until the hips floats up on surface.
3) During body rotation from left to right and right to left, harden stomach muscles and use long and gentle freestyle kick to keep lower body and upper body connected and in synch during movements from limbs
4) Look down at floor at all times, unless sighting. This prevents the head from getting out of water (duh), which leads to a good body alignment when you need to keep the hip on the surface.
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Cheers
KK (videos below for comparison)
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