18062011 Swim Squad Review - A New Direction! (From Glee Indeed)

It was an exciting night of breakthrough for ALL of us who attended the Wednesday night's training. The path to changes was actually much smoother than what I've expected it to be from a team with quite a big number of people.

A little prologue about how I feel. I know I'm very drama sometimes but I hate to write/coach/teach/love without feelings....
It is always a challenge for me to put forth my thoughts to each and every single one of you individual and to ensure that E.V.E.R.Y - S.I.N.G.L.E - O.N.E of you understood and FEEL what I am trying to portray for you to establish and excel in the water. I think it is sometimes more an expectation that I hold constantly against myself to ensure everyone of you are taken care of. The motivation to coach with the highest expectation of self came from within me, the reason that triggers it is why I've never really excelled in any sports (by excellence I meant Podium) - that I didn't have any dedicated coach to coach me when I was younger. Now that I have the chance to give others a chance, I need to fulfil this destiny.

Firstly, lets do an incision on freestyle and dig out all the organs(parts) that made it up again to further investigate what this new direction is about.

Traditionally, there was only 1 kind of freestyle. The so called Kayak-Stroke or more well-known as Windmill freestyle nowadays. This freestyle stroke requires the swimmer to have a continuous propulsion without much of a glide phase, or, the deceleration pace. It is logical and correct that if you're RACING, you ought to be pulling continuously to chase down your opponents right? Why the hell will you want to glide and decelerate when you can stay in the constant velocity throughout the whole swim?

Allow me to showcase Mr Popov's swim. He is one of the greatest swimmer ever to grace this human world.


At the start of the video, you can see he is doing a slow swim, recovering and catching slowly but he is still doing it continuously. So this should answer the question to those of you who probably still aren't buying the idea that this particular freestyle stroke can be used for long distance swim.. And there is a perception that it is so tiring because there is NO GLIDE TO REST! Those recovery phase and catch phase of the pull are exactly where you rest, you need to practice active relaxation of the muscles that you contract to exert the push and not do the entry too forcefully that you can't relax that shoulder to extend it far.

So it was a PERFECT STROKE for racing! Or is it not? As we answer the above question, we do realize that it conflicts with one issue that humans are bound to fall for. It looks just too tiring to do that for more than 2 minutes at MAXIMUM EFFORT! I need something that can let me have a little more rest and still be fast!

Honestly, as human evolve and the conventional becomes obsolete for the sake of ease and convenience (i.e laziness).. this is what happened to freestyle too. And it of course took one of the other Greatest swimmer to "revolutionize" the change in freestyle stroke and later a very widely marketed swimming philosophy (namely Total Immersion Swimming) publicized his "gliding stroke", or what we call Front-Quadrant swim.

Let me introduce you to:

Mr Ian Thorpe.


I recommend you open two browsers to see both his stroke and Alexander Popov's side by side if you don't have a very multiple-core processing unit up there in your skull.

Allow me to digress and bring you to notice one point that I brought up last night.

I said "The glide is good if you are swimming WITH the wave, i.e: the wave is pushing you. As you stay in that arm extended position slightly on your side, the wave will help you gain MUCH MORE distance than usual."

Now, look back at the video and see how BIG his freaking feet are. They are size 17. I KID YOU NOT.

If you don't have much idea how big size 17 is, just multiply what my feet are now by 2 x and cut off the toes.

That is a pair of FLIPPERS he has! Again, after the exclamation, go back to the video and observe that he is kicking continuously, he is not doing 1 or 2 beat kick. The reason? The insanely strong kick from his insanely big feet are making up for this deceleration in his front quadrant swim!

So you can see that each individuals have a different trait that we can exploit to become the best swimmer or best anything or everything that we can be.

You can see very clearly that Ian's catch almost never starts until the opposite pulling arm almost recovers to his head area before the entry.

I am not saying that Ian Thorpe is a lazy guy but read on to see why I have the perception of anyone who would want to do the gliding stroke should be looking forward to making swimming more effortless than it already is, I mean at race pace.

Below is how I had come to an agreement to myself to accept completely the front quadrant swim and also start teaching this kind of freestyle.. 

I've studied both of them since 4yrs back when I started learning freestyle. They were Gods to me until Phelps took Ian's place as he retires. The one big question mark is "WHY DON'T YOU DO BOTH THE CONTINUOUS KICK AND THE PULL AT THE SAME TIME? That ought to give you the fastest time ever because there is CONSISTENT propulsion from EVERY POSSIBLE PART OF OUR BODIES RIGHT?".


The question often gets hidden up by itself because of a human nature to be lazy. The gliding stroke seem to be more efficient or using less energy because I can glide! And just when I was going head on with the dilema, here comes the SUPER WIDELY MARKETED TOTAL IMMERSION FREESTYLE.

Introducing Shinji from TI:



Take a look at how graceful he is and how he seem to be using ZERO energy in swimming and he just LOOKED PERFECT for any beginners who don't know anything about RHYTHMIC freestyle stroke and becomes tired just at the thought of doing one lap, let alone collapse by doing ten.

I was completely sold and I said to myself: "Heck, I won't be competing in swim competition so I should do fine with this kind of freestyle! The minimal kick appeals so much because kicking is just SO tiring. Also, even swimming noob me can tell this is SO FREAKING GRACIOUS AND BEAUTIFUL, just imagine what the others will say when they see me master it even if they don't know swimming at all?

And indulge, I did, OBSESSIVELY in fact, I practiced this stroke so hard, I felt that I've peaked with my 2 beat kick at 1:28/100m and I just can't make it go any faster unless I do some very serious gym work. It suddenly doesn't make sense to me that I'm gliding even though I have the motivation to become FASTER.

Triathlon racing is still Swim, Bike and Run. Putting them together doesn't alter the mechanics of biking and running.. so why should I change what's for fast swimming? Just to compensate for the other two legs afterwards? Isn't training all about breaking through and becoming better at enduring a high power output throughout the whole race regardless of which leg you're in?

And sometimes at night when I'm all alone thinking about swimming, it just dawn upon me that it doesn't make sense to glide without the continuous kicking to make up for the deceleration.

Picture this: 100m TRACK running sprint, when the gun goes, everybody started skipping and bounding instead of sprint running... and every time each athlete skips, he or she tries to stay air-borne for as long as possible to cover the biggest amount of distance without slowing down but not doing anything also while in the air to rest. Isn't that what we're trying to accomplish with the gliding freestyle without kick?

It just doesn't make sense to me anymore that if I continue practicing that stroke I can still become much faster without much tweaks. Either I go to the gym to strengthen my arm power or I tweak my stroke. I took the latter path because I am a meso-endomorph and if I gym too hard I'd just hulk up. At 5ft5", hulking up does me no good in triathlon. And I'm happy with what I chose to do thus far, it has also increased my horizon of swim knowledge and made me a better coach.

--------------------------------

Back to you Team Sapphire. It was inspiring to see each and every single one of you who came, from age below 10 to above 50++, gets a personal best 50m timing last night. It always feel superbly satisfying to be able to connect intellectually with you guys for swimming knowledge sharing and the results are just so intensively gratifying.

As per mentioned last night, it is up to you to choose which path you want to take in swimming. Do you have an innate need to become faster? Or do you simply want to swim better than the average joes? I can tell you firmly that ALL of you in the team are better and much more efficient swimmers than 95% of the people in Singapore (Biathlete and Triathletes included). So there really ought to come a point whereby you question yourself what is your motive in swimming and come to an agreement with it and thoroughly work towards that goal.

My job as the coach is to share with you everything I know about swimming. And I believe up til now, I've always fulfilled that criteria of not holding anything back despite being the same competitor in some competitions we join. It may mean nothing to most of you who are there to leisurely swim but it means a great deal to me because I am competitive and I will like to hold any edge I have against anyone of you. But knowing you guys as a team and family, I'd rather let that edge be my own training instead of the wonderful techniques of swimming. =)

Thank you for your time spent reading this.

Love,
KK

Lawrence: 41s (previously 49-50s)
Pauline: 58s (previously 1:15-1:25)
Wilson: 47s
Sam: 47s (previously 55s -1:02)
Jas: 58s (previously 1:10-1:18)
Meher: 58s (previously 1:20-1:25)
Musaib: 58s (previously 1:10-1:25)
Calvin: 48s (previously 55++s)
Teck Beng: 47s (matched pb after 10x50m of swim? => )
Ben: 43s (previously 49s)

15062011 Swim Squad Timing!

Dear Team,

Here's the training timing!

We did:
Warm Up (15mins):
5x100 as SKPKS

Pre Set (20mins):
400m FS normal swim

Age 46 & below 1 min rest, Age 47++ 2min rest..

400m FS negative set (must be faster than 1st 400)

5 mins rest

Main Set (30mins):
Vince, KK, Ben:
20x50m on 1min

Sam, Lawlaw, Teck Beng, Calvin:
20x50 on 1:10min

Musaib, Pauline, Robert, Yasmin, Meher:
1000m Continuous swim

Cool Down: 15mins
200m-500m Kick (every 50: 25fast, 25slow)

Total: 2800m (deduct yourself if you didn't finish any of the set please.. =) )

Basically, 1000m continuous swim is for building Swim Endurance and 20x50m helps build lactate tolerance while swimming fast!

I will be posting the review of swim on Monday or once I have the time! Apologies for the lack of posting!

Cheers
KK

Motivation versus RPE (Perceived Exertion) Part 2 of 3

The next three points we're discussing about motivation factors will be:

3) Intangible benefits (Health, Hot Bod, Race Edge, Bragging Rights)

4) Confidence

5) Goal(s)

Firstly, let's talk about...
Intangible benefits (Health, Hot Bod, Race Edge, Bragging Rights)

Very honestly speaking, I work out firstly for the benefits of health and fitness because I once was a boy who couldn't see the front of my shoes because they're covered by my bulging tummy. And following right after that reason is that I hope to one day become an inspirational person who can motivate people who are feeling down about their physical body to go out and start doing something about it.

So, when I look at a training and it goes something like 20x100 Alt Swim and Kick or 5x5x400m on 3mins I'd definitely first look at the ego factor to motivate myself. Seriously, not many of the people will go and do 20x100 (maybe except vince) or 5x5x400 (and Andy) and say "it's just a normal routine...".. Thus when you complete it, and post it in facebook, you'd get all kind of weird "WAHHH.. " or "CRAZY AR?!".. or "you're MAD." kind of ego boosting compliments.

As shallow as that sounds, this factor DOES motivate me and I'm sure also many of you out there who are hiding right now, to go out again and again to do such breakthrough workouts that touches the limits of your body. And often times, especially for men, it is through such motivation that we get to go beyond what we can endure on our own especially in the late late stages of races.

Example of such race edge happening will be during the last 800m sprint of the 10km run in Singapore Biathlon, you're probably feeling a lot of pain and like you're breathing sand into your lungs already.. then someone on the side goes like "Wah.. this guy in black 2xu underwear can run like mountain goat sia even though he looks so bulky!".. and you glance around to find that you're the only one who is wearing 2XU and that guy's referring to you.. What usually follows after that is you clocking a PB for the 800m dash despite having done the swim and 9.2KM run in Race Pace.

Another example of bragging rights being a motivation factor is how I convince my bro KH to pick up training, imagine him going to Sec 1 and when people are doing inclined flex arm hangs and barely meeting the mark, you're doing 12 x pull ups with perfect form at the effort of eating fishball noodles? Yes, he did that. The pull ups, not the noodles. I'll give you a minute to go "-_-... what did you do to your bro..."..

Ok, a minutes up.

Other than bragging rights, some of us simply enjoys the fitness benefits that the training gives. We can clearly see Lawrence gets puffed up Breasts (as mentioned by christine, his wife) and vincent getting leaner and meaner as each training goes by.. We can obviously see Marianne and Sam slimming down a lot and getting toned up by the days.. I've personally built up quite a physique while losing a little bit of fats weight..

Basically, by knowing that working out often gives you an "upgrade to the hardwares" on your body and when people notice the changes to the physique, you'll feel good. And when the lifts occasionally breaks down just for fun, you'll notice that you don't pant as much while climbing stairs, you'll then feel even better than being noticed by the others. =)

The last part of this article will be on both Confidence and Goal(s).


Confidence is something that has to ooze out from within, just like motivation. And to breed Confidence, one has to experience success. As the saying goes, success breeds confidence and confidence breeds success. It is kind of a chicken and egg topic but you get the drift. We'll first talk about success, what is it about.

Success in fitness world is largely defined by tangible qualities of life such as Fat percentage drops, KGs of muscles gained, KGs of body weight lost, a drop in swim/bike/run timing in seconds or milliseconds and the list goes on.

I find that if you set the point of success as the final goal without small ones, you'd be looking all stressed up each and every single day because chances are you'll be comparing numbers every time you can. I know of folks who get on the weighing machine 6 times in the morning to get the mean figure, stand in different foot step directions on the machine to make sure its accurate and then finish the lunch and dinner with another 6-10 stands on the weighing machine to only get disappointed because of the weight gained from the food and drink you just put into your stomach. LiKe SeRioUslY???

Sometimes, you'll get rare folks who truly (and i mean the straight from the heart kind..) observe and appreciate success as small bits of life that has gone well or better. Usually you call these kind of people perfectionists, or in chinese they are called Mr Xiao. Xiao "On" because they enjoy celebrating every little bit of success and they know that its these small little parts of success that will form a big picture of a successful person.

What makes the latter trait more likable is that when you break down the big goal into smaller ones, you'd shift your focus on the smaller goals of the big plan that you've set.. you're more likely to be happier every day because the small parts or goals are so much easier to achieve.. and by achieving in such a manner, you experience success and that will motivate you to work towards the other smaller goals and in no time, you'll see that your biggest goal will seem to be getting closer or even smaller.

I felt that confidence in doing some specific sets of workout will give you the motivation to go to a tough workout just because you know in your heart that you've "been there done that" and thus you'll definitely be able to do it again with ample mental preparation.

For example, many men don't like to do pull ups.. and just going under the pull up bar with the thought of doing 1 will sound or feel like 1 too many. However, if you can mix and match motivations to help you get across that mental barrier of doing that first pull up. When you finally go up, you'll notice that you can do more than just 1 or have lesser fear of the pull up bar when you stand under it next time.

You can try asking someone who can support you and are equally keen on performing the pull ups. Nothing beats the feeling of accomplishing a near impossible feat (as defined by your own brain) with a partner and giving each other a big bang fist bump and a good laugh following the accomplishment. The next time you come under the bar, you'll know you've done it yourself before and you'll definitely be able to jump up without hesitation even if you can only just do 1.. this time around, it'll be 1 too little. =)

Now......--------

What if you don't care about success AND failures? Some of the clients I coach tell me "I just want to do only.. I don't need to do so well or so perfect one...".. Now, seriously, I don't know how to coach imperfect strokes or forms in the gym leh.. but that's another story for another day.

With regards to gaining confidence for these kind of learners is by getting them educated. And by knowing what you're doing is right for YOU and YOU ONLY will help a lot. Do NOT just follow the universal standard even if it is practiced by the greatest without finding out if the training is applicable to you. Some greatest may have just 1 ball and you have 2,  you're special in your own way and thus training methods have to be uniquely for you too.

I don't know if you have ever come across people who used to shy away from gym but I've known AUNTIES and UNCLES in their 40s to 50s going to gym after they were educated of what is right and what is beneficial if trained properly in whichever ways. Some of them even corrected my form when I used to do very heavy sets and shown some weakness in my left hand side.

Such beautiful scenario is the display of having different source of motivations for the uncles and aunties that I knew of to go back to the gym in their free time again and again. They went back to workout the right way (Confidence), they knew that if done correctly and progressively, it'll help them incredibly in gaining bone density and functional strength in daily life. Fulfilling those small Goals of fitness will eventually equate to more play time with grandsons and daughters (Intangible benefits), they went to gym to show their peers that they are still peaking in their age (Bragging rights) and initially it is the peer influence that brings them there (Affiliation) for the chatters and laughters (Fun).

Hope you guys have a better grasp on how motivation factors can work with each other to push even the laziest of you and shy-iest of you to go out and start working out! Next up: 6) Believes !

Cheers
KK

Motivation versus RPE (Perceived Exertion) Part 1 of 3

How many of you has went through two exact same sets of workouts, fully rested, but felt like a champion on the first time then totally beaten at the middle of the set in the second?

Or how about a 10x100 set that you barely manage to drag yourself into the pool to start, let alone survive by your own (with nowhere near best results) but then later, felt that you'd breeze through the same set in a group swim (with all sets closed to your PB)?

I'm pretty sure most of us has experienced either or both types of the situations above.. Some of us may feel the urge to do it again just to conquer it by yourself and prove to yourself that it is do-able. But the rest may be totally demoralized the moment the once "easy" set of workout in the group turns into a grind. When that happens, you'd start to doubt your capability and your training plan.. unless you understand truly what's the concept behind the two different perceived exertions. If you felt the doubt on your capability, this post is for you as I try to explain why you felt that way and how you should go about getting it right.

Rest assure in this article you won't be finding a resolution as "because I'm in a group and thus the workout is easier cos of higher motivation.".. That commonly used phrase to describe the reason behind being motivated is so overly simplified that most people who experience motivation or the lack of often does so with little understanding to the meaning behind, let alone managing such matters.

As a firm believer of "knowing what you want to do in detail is the only way to accomplish what you want to do.", I hope this article will help you have a better grasp over your motivational issues and pave a better route to excellence.

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What is Motivation?

Motivation is the drive that gives you the initiative to set out and do whatever you plan to do. Everything, from the training plan, to the 4.30AM rides, to the 10x100s, to the 10x400s,  to the wearing of compression tights to sleep for recovery and even to the reading of endless triathlon tips no matter how many of them may seem to be talking about the same thing over and over again.

Obsession? There is a source that obsession stems from and that source is not passion. It started with a motivation to do something, and in turn, fall in love with it because you liked what you do, and the passion from within then fuels the motivation to make it an obsession.

We look at motivation from the simplest source, the reasons we feel good about doing something and keep us wanting to do it again, in this case, it's Triathlon.

Why do we need to manage Motivation?

1) If you're overly motivated, you may overtrain with an overzealous training regime.

2) If you're under motivated, you will dread to go to any training. Gone will be the goals you set.

3) To excel in anything we do, we have to find just the right amount of motivation.

Having the right amount of motivation each time during your workout, races or basically anything you do will allow you to get the most out of the achievements at the end of the day.

This can mean a decreased RPE for workouts due to the psychological factor of being "On form" for the sets or race. This can also mean achieving the best effort that you deem is possible of your capability in the race you chose.

And of course, at times when you underachieved despite feeling motivated, you'd most likely gain a whole lot too, out of the learning experience of what went wrong just by the focus that you are able to exert.. i.e being Completely Involved/Absorbed in the whole process and situation due to the motivation of constantly trying to achieve your best.

In its simplest form, the reason to manage motivation is to make the best out of your investment, be it time, equipment or even emotional investment into the sport that you've grown to love so dearly.


How do we manage Motivation?


Knowing the factors behind feeling motivated for doing and training for triathlon help a whole lot in developing a plan for managing motivation.

To start the discussion, I will list the several popular reasons that leads to motivation..

1) Fun

2) Affiliations

3) Intangible benefits (Health, Hot Bod, Race Edge, Bragging Rights)

4) Confidence

5) Goal(s)

6) Believes

Fun

First reason of motivation often comes from the purity of the fun factor. If something is not fun, nobody will do it 100% willingly, let alone feel motivated to initiate the start of it.

Knowing that Fun is the very fundamental of motivation helps because when you plan your training, you can in fact add in the Fun Factor to ensure you'd enjoy the training even more.

I'll give you two examples of boring workout set versus fun workout set.

1) Basketball - Shooting

Not so fun set:
- Warmup jog
- Shoot 550 balls from anywhere and everywhere you get the rebound.

Fun set:
- Warmup jog
- Do favorite dribbling practice
--25 right, 25 left single beat dribble
--25 right, 25 left left to right double beat dribble
--25 right, 25 left front to back to front double beat dribble
--4 lengths fake cross over dribble practice
- Shoot 50 balls from 11 spots on the court
-- Split the 50 balls to 25 right handed shots and 25 left handed shots

2) Swimming - Main set: 1KM Race Pace 

Not so fun set:
- 10 x 100m Hard on 2:00 <-- see already also sian if i train alone.. -_-...

Fun set:
- 8 x 50m Hard on 1:00
- 100m Hard rest 1:00
- 200m Moderate rest 1:00
- 300m Flat-out rest 1:00 then cool down

Basically, you can see that for both training, there is a main set to be completed and what I did was to add Variations to the training set.

At times, deep inside us, we know that a training set is definitely doable such as 10x100 kick. Just ask yourself if you can do a 2km swim, why can't you do a 10 sets 4mins worth of kick with rest?

However, we sometimes can't put things in the better perspective because of the enormity of the big picture. With that in mind, I also attempt to break the set into several specific mini targets.. that way, there is always something to look forward to and achieve throughout every mini sets of the training instead of having just a big chunk of workout to complete.

Affiliations
Affiliations is the term used to describe a partnership between two or more parties.


Having been through the fat and lazy stage of life, I remembered how much I dreaded going to Physical Education classes and NAPHA (National Physical Fitness Award) test. It was the PUREST form of boredom and apathy (an absence of enthusiasm or emotions was the online explanation, for me, it's an absence of BOTH)..


But I remembered how excited I was after school ended to literally RUN to the basketball court to unite with my bunch of basketball brothers. We'd run up and down the court tirelessly with NO HYDRATION in the HOT sun till the sun goes down and we'd gather for a cup noodle and a bottle of coke for mini celebration of fun and laughter. That began my journey to becoming who I am right now but that is a story for those of you who're interested to come to me for. :)


And you can see, there are so many cycling groups, running groups, swimming groups, basketball teams and there're THOUSANDS of people joining these groups and working out.. even people like Calvin of our team, he is a self proclaimed lazy person but he has not missed a single session that I could hold as long as he could make it at his best possible effort. This is an admirable feat of conditioning as he transformed from a couch potato who just do a 20lap swim a week for fun to a 2++km swimmer who have a stroke that the average joe swimmers in SG (that makes up 85% of the people in singapore mind you.) envious and drool for.


THAT - is the power of affiliation. No matter how tired he is, he'd make it to the training.. and he held himself accountable for it no matter how he perform. There're times when he felt he under performed because he was tired and he came to me and apologize for the listlessness...

Honestly, I am all impressed by this self proclaimed lazy guy because he DROVE from TAMPINES to the pool to make it for the swim when he's WORN OUT from work. Tell that to another couch potato with no motivation to workout at all and he'll tell you "YOU CRAZY OR WHAT? I RATHER SLEEP AH.".


If you don't believe what I mentioned is happening and affiliation is a form of motivation, go join a group of swimmers/riders/runners TODAY and feel your own responsibility to join them every time and again just to ENJOY the Training. =)


----- Tips for you when looking for a group to join... ------
When looking for groups in the internet, you don't necessary have to ask for groups to join. You can FORM a group yourself just by going to the forum and ask if there is anyone of the same standard as you interested to train together. Write in the post your Goal, swim/bike/run race pace, last race timing and set a date and time. 


People will not judge your timing and say you're slow, in fact, the slower you are, the more likely people will join because it is just so damn hard to find a beginner group when every groups are ongoing. At least that is the norm that people who doesn't belong to any group thinks when they thought about joining a group. The most common excuse to not join a group is "But they've been training for a long time together.. i sure last one in the team one lor...".. Seriously, only your pride and ego will care about placing, no one else will. I'd rather start last and work my way up there because I know someday I will if I start now. I know that I will get nowhere if I'd stay at home and lament about everything but nothing.


And again, if you don't want to go through the hassle of coping with your ego and pride, then start one group yourself.. it can start with 2-3 people at first but make it an effort to go at it every week and trust me, the group will grow. Just like Team Sapphire. =)


Stay tune for the continuation of article on Intangible benefits (Health, Hot Bod, Race Edge, Bragging Rights) & Confidence. 


Cheers
KK