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.
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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)
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