SWIM SQUAD 011210

Dear Team,


I understand several of you are going to Standard Chartered run this weekend and thus I made the swim a very informal and educational one. I think it fulfilled 2 main purposes.. first, of letting those going for the run have a rest and i believe secondly everyone seemed to have more or less grasped what I was trying to share about keeping your body straight in the body using your core.

I could see everyone's hips floating much better after activating the erector spinae, glutes and hamstring in that land swimming drill. However, I see possible issues arise from the 10 minutes of swim.

1) It requires a lot of mental strength to keep the chin up, chest up and buttock up proud posture.
Holding that posture whilst thinking about breathing, EVF, leg kicks from hips and body rotation is definitely a lot of thinking to do.

2) Your core may not be strong enough to hold that hip up high for long period of time yet and thus some of you may be rushing to do too much practice.

At all times, make sure you do just enough until your buttock starts to sink. It may mean 80 laps for me, it may mean 2 laps for somebody else.

Whatever it is, when it comes to techniques and skills, it NEVER pay to rush to increase volume and duration. Once technique falters because of muscular fatigue, then practice will become very meaningless unless you rest and allow the muscles to recover and be able to hold the position again.

It can look really easy for people like sam, myself and vincent to be performing it but it is because we've been doing swim in the right way or at least, sports at quite a high intensity before and thus our general body conditioning are pretty O.K. but it is a very tough thing to do for most general population. That includes all of us in the team.

So, once again, patience is a Value to inculcate... and it is never too late neither can it be too early. The sooner you start to practice going slower and in the right manner, the EARLIER you'll get to benefit from the practice.
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I'd like to commend Calvin, Teckbeng and wilson for trying. Their body like mine are very bottom heavy and/or lengthy. The longer and heavier the lower body is, the harder it is to keep it afloat and yet, they're trying their best to do it without complaints... I recognize this effort because I was one of the "victim" of being bottom heavy... But you'll realize that constant practice of this mental control of your lower back and other core activation will allow you to get stronger and stronger overtime that you'd be able to do it just like what I showed or even better!
For Mrs Takesawa, I'd like to praise that your swim is one of those who felt 150% correct to me after you corrected your entry to be at shoulder width and also today you kept your hip up and manage to erase the lazy legs to keep the feet up breaking the surface gently. It is a very very correct stroke and definitely ready to push for greater heights!

Wilson got lots of brush up to do and I believe your posture problem came abit from the long runs.

Vincent, you need to try and reduce the amount of time you spend in level 8-10 kind of effort. The lesser you visit that, the better you will become in months to come.

Basically there is two parts to conditioning your body to burn fats.

1) Eat and Drink lesser sugar and mid to high G.I. Carbs (limit that to just after workout)
2) Train more at low intensity of 4-6 level of effort.

You know where I am getting to la. I shall stop my nagging here. Apologies to be a nanny of some sort la.
Sam, KH... I need two of you to start gymming with me to prep for OSIM.
Lawrence and Ebnu, are we confirmed on Aviva? I need to plan for you guys yah..
Hong Jun, please make sure stroke is correct as you clock the distance. Try not to just do freestyle in every lap. Mix up all the strokes to get overall conditioning.
Benjamin and Jaslyn, as spoken before, from these two training sessions, I will like to presume that you two are power type athletes who can perform very well in sprint events. And that means you need to apply a lot of force in water, i.e there will be A LOT of resistance coming in your way if you don't correct the breathing technique.
Another flaw I saw in your stroke is that

1) Jaslyn kick too much

2) Benjamin is just fluttering the ankles and toes
The kick should be at max 3 beat per pull during slow to moderate effort swim like tonight.

And the kicks should start from the hips, not just move as fast as possible from the ankles. The ankles have very small muscles and will easily get injured when kicking that way.
"Moo"saic, You have to work harder on the other strokes to have an edge at your age of competitive swimming. It is not so much about freestyle only but you need to be well rounded so that your overall body will be better conditioned to move in the water. That will build you a base foundation that will help you a lot should you decide to pursue swimming in the near future more seriously in multisports.

Cheers
KK