Reviews reviews reviews!!!

Much awaited review of last wednesday's swim!


Oh wait wait.. first of all..

CONGRATULATIONS TO LEON AND ROBERT FOR COMPLETING THEIR FIRST BIATHLON!!!!!

Leon did 13minutes swim and 23min run!

Robert completed with a brave 20mins swim (Come on, 20minutes swim are real nice! :D) and 29minutes run!!!

Pauline, even though you didn't recover yet, i'm sure you'll be well for tribob sprint triathlon!!!

I'm really proud of what you guys have done in the race and even more importantly, enduring the nags in training~~~~ jiayou! more to come! hehe.

*APPLAUSE*****


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Ok.. back to review....

I thought everyone did very well and marianne shown superb improvements but still died on the last few. :P


Ryan:
I am really happy about the timing you're posting and your aerobic fitness and core strength are pretty much there to hold the body in a streamlined position except when you don't kick.

Which means if you don't kick, your body will start snaking around and that spells trouble in saving energy because in triathlon, we all try to cut the amount of kick and put it in only when it really counts.

Looking at your kick timing, your kick aren't helping you alot at all in frontal propulsion (despite same or more energy expenditure than those who's kick are helping them move) and if we look at the above analysis plus this, your kick is only good for streamlining..

A kick for balancing and streamlining don't have to be continuous and it can be in 2 beats or even 1 beat per 1 pull. Something for you to ponder if you intend to be more efficient.

According to what I see, the high elbow is something you should really take a look into right now and I believe your straight arm pulling under the water is probably why the momentum of a straight arm swinging out exiting the water and going back in in front again.

Straight arm pulling can allow you to catch a lot of water but it also causes your arm to become a very huge piece of drag in front (you're moving in front and thus when you pull straight down until the arm is perpendicular to the floor, the water is also pushing against that whole arm). Think about reducing frontal drag and applying same amount of force. Check the video i posted previously on how to do the catch.

Gen
Timing isn't improving much despite training for so many times liao. Why? Techniques wrong never change. When doing high effort set only know how to chiong chiong chiong nia. Focus on the technique then apply force! Don't be like cow can?

- Left arm pull is horrendously short. How can it end at the stomach area when you are sprinting? Already having a short catch because of bad shoulder flexibility, and you still shorten your pull, it simply means your pulling has VERY VERY LITTLE propulsion. The catch phase is NON-propulsive, so your current catch position is around the forehead or face area instead of an ideal in-front-of-head area... so your pull only has propulsion from the length of the point from your eyes to your lower abdomen. How cool is that?

- Evidence of short catch position, look at fist drill + pull buoy lap timing. Your normal lap swim is about 6 to 8 seconds faster than marianne and this time when marianne was really trying to hang in there with you girls, you're actually doing slower than her. Why? First, hip is sinking, second......
Fist drill works in a way that it takes away the sensitive paddle of your palm and force you to go into a early catch position without a feel of fingertips holding onto the water at the beginning of the pull. Because of this lack of anchoring palm onto water, you were not able to catch alot of water at all and the catch was probably around chest level instead of face when during fist drill. Ask me if you don't understand.

- Right arm also never finish pulling. Somewhere around starting of the thigh? I got a feeling that when you went to gym to do some kind of gym work, you did not do til the full range of motion of your arm joint and thus now your muscle has very little automatic active range of motion that it should be trained to use.

- When you use pull buoy to pull, you did not make an effort to tighten your core and thus your hip was sinking and your body was snaking really alot from side to side with the rotations that was happening. by the way, There was NO rotation towards the non breathing side of your body.

- When you finish breathing, WHY MUST YOUR HEAD ENTER THE WATER LOOKING IN FRONT FIRST THEN LOOK DOWN AT THE FLOOR? can't you rotate straight down to the floor? Once or twice in many strokes to see if got ppl nevermind.. EVERY SINGLE TIME ALSO LIKE THAT!!! HAIZZ...

- You do very well for the sprints.. and I know you always tell ppl "Yah my coach always say I do very well for sprints but sprints only la... then he always say my technique yada yada yada.. but i also don't know yada yada yada.."
Seriously, let me tell you "WAKE UP EH!" What's the point of keeping letting ppl telling you only your sprint good and only your short d good? can't you change and shut them up? how can you don't know when i already told you SO many times and you have the heart to change and not say you don't even come for training!

If you really take me like your khor, i tell you, Haiz. its really frustrating for me to keep writing the same mistake of you over and over again and see you never change and keep telling ppl the that you're doing the same mistake with that silly smile on your face. Please jiayou can, Mei?

Marianne
Looks like the extra swims you did paid off well? Having two swims a week really makes a huge difference but at the expense of luxurious time.

Even though your fist + pull buoy laps are slightly faster than gen's, I'd like to make a guess that this is actually because when you have a pull buoy, you are above to keep your hip floating better and when you squeeze the buoy, you actually kept your body more streamlined than when you're kicking and thus the quicker time? You digest, and tell me if its correct.

I see nothing much to change for now since competition is near, except also a better catch position perhaps...

Wilson
I tink we should go for a run session and bike session. Proper ones. A session where we're maintaining aerobic threshold speed, something that is comfortably uncomfortable and you can maintain. Because when you go into such sessions, you'll learn to relax the other parts of the body and just "tense up" the needed areas to maintain a good form so that all energy can be efficiently used by the working muscles.

For now, you get the idea of which area to flex and hold, but you haven't get the idea of holding them without the need for thoughts of them.

Next time, try these:

Take a huge breathe of air and go into the water and just stay in there and close your eyes. See how long you can hold. Let nothing run through your mind and just listen to your own heart beat and gently bubble. I can hold 2 mins ++. The more relaxed you are, the lesser oxygen is used by the muscles because none is tensed up. I am so relaxed that I can open my eyes and see but I am not even thinking or registering what I saw. -Shut off-.

After doing that, try to do the side kicking with arm up extended drill, and once you start kicking, forget abt the kick, close your eyes and blank out your mind. Shut off again. Try doing that and subconsciously holding your body to a streamlined position.
After 1 breathe, stand up. Do another one on the other side.

Step 3,
1 breathe, do as many pull as you can with your eyes closed and make sure you're always streamlined after every pull. Try doing that with your thinking shut off, just let your body do the work that it has learnt for so long already.

That is the most relaxed swim you can get.

Final step.. Utilizing it on normal lap swims.
Push off the wall and immediately start bubbling and pulling. Do not hold breathe and do extra freestyle kicks. Just pull, bubble and breathe. Your first 10 pull is probably gliding alot. Your aim is to glide as much for the last 10 pull!

The only way you can do this is to minimize the oxygen debt in the first half and be extra relaxed in the first half instead of the normal natural instinct to make use of the kick off to do some powerful quick pulls to gain some distance before momentum drops to none. Pull as gently as possible at the first half then try to finish stronger than you start. That way you'll have a balanced lap and not always die off at the second half. As you get better, split the laps the same way.

Sam
I know you're concerned about your timing. Don't be. On tuesday you did a 750 swim + 55minutes run. That is a 1.5hr total body workout and plus you've been training consistently for weeks, look at your training program, its peaking next week.. so fatigue is definitely around. You're gonna do without the swim today and rest well. Monday is another 1km swim and 60mins run. Jiayou! :)

- When you breathe, you tend to braethe too late. Start the body rotation slightly after the catch phase, and you'll be able to turn up to breathe when the pull is half way through your torso! :)

-Also, when you are doing easy swim or not thinking, your lead arm is always not straight and stretching one leh... it means when you're tired or when you're doing it reallly realllllyy fast... you're going to make the same mistake too.

Oh, one last problem... i copy and paste for you.
- When you finish breathing, WHY MUST YOUR HEAD ENTER THE WATER LOOKING IN FRONT FIRST THEN LOOK DOWN AT THE FLOOR? can't you rotate straight down to the floor? Once or twice in many strokes to see if got ppl nevermind.. EVERY SINGLE TIME ALSO LIKE THAT!!! HAIZZ...

Must take note k.

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Everyone:
The reason last week's set was with pull buoy, kicks and fist swim is because this allow you guys to see these weak links of us mere mortal swimmers (the olympians like phelps and thorpe has probably perfected them already):

- Catch positioning
- Strong kick
- Second nature Core activation in swim

I see ryan's hip always snaking to the left when breathing and using the buoy.

I see marianne's body pretty straight (i'm guessing again, that last time you trained alot with pull buoy and thus the lousy kick but still 1 mins swim. :P)..

I see sam's body pretty straight except when breathing the lead arm is not straight and sometimes body tend to crunch to the right.

I see gen's body snaking left and right.

I see all except marianne's hips are flexed with the buoy.. no activation of core to keep the legs up! Even 2 cm of hip drop can slow you down alot!

Everybody's kick is damn slow la.. including myself... zzz... My fastest was 3:30 only last week before i fell sick.

Anyway, ppl, great job thus far! Hopefully i see all of you this wednesday!

Cheers
KK (Shagged liao...)