Swim Trg 07/04/2010

I really ought to be sleeping at 4:30 right now since I have a race coming this weekend.. but reading Teck Beng's sms just gave me a boost in spirit to complete this better for you guys.

To TB:
With admiration comes inspiration (i hope),
With inspiration comes passion,
With passion, there's an impulsive ignition,
To swim harder and Try a Tri,
To experience the never-ending High,
Fall in Love with pain (with trg),
And laughter (at trg) all the same.
All those, in the name of passion,
That came from a spark of inspiration,
That came from someone's admiration. :)

Thank you for the motivation! =)
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Above's the log with the stroke count and timing. Fill in the blanks and email me if you have more to put up. Seriously, this is for your own good and also for my reference when I'm planning the training. As a matter of fact, I DO plan every single thing in the training so that I achieve the following:

1) Everyone benefits in both fitness and finesse (pacing, technique, stroke, endurance, etc.)
2) Trg can run as parallel as possible in two groups
3) I can observe/train tgt effectively
4) Everybody can do it.

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One thing I didn't understand is why Andy and Calvin didn't send me your stroke count and timing? Couldn't remember? Or you didn't thought that I will really put this up? haha.. whichever, fill me in if you have the time. (If don't have, go create time.. :P)

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GENERALLY...
Everyone in Wilson's group have a straight arm pull (Except TB). That causes drag and when you're fatigue (power output decreases), the drag ratio will be much higher than the power you're putting out with your pull. I.e you'll slow down A LOT.

Everyone also have the tendency to "store power" in your legs or prepare your legs by opening up before kicking. This action will WORSEN (I.e gets opened wider and wider) as you fatigue because your body will automatically ask you to open wider so you can kick as hard as before you fatigue. When you open your legs up in a free style swim, it breaks the streamline position that is optimum for piercing through the water. That again SLOWS YOU DOWN.

You can see that the above syndromes are Very Very bad because the case worsen when you tire out.. that is you'll do fine and can live with them for 10 laps perhaps.. then on the 11t laps onwards you'll find your strokes increasing and SO are your timing! Very very inefficient in my opinion.

Last but not least everyone's not very good at activating your core and swimming from your hips... there's a lack of body rotation and thus also the lack of latissimus dorsi (your wing muscles at the side of your back) activation in your pull. This take some conscious thinking to flex that muscle as you extend your shoulder(go google arm extension is what movement.. it means moving your arm from front to the back.).. Remember, always use big muscles in sports, the limbs are but just rotors from the motor.

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Individually......

From this training, we can compare the result of previous training and see that my brother KH has SIGNIFICANT improvement of stroke length. His timing wasn't properly taken but it was around 10% to 25% slower than wilson only. Given a strength comparison, its not too bad. And this time, KH's strokes didn't collapse completely and is able to complete 200m swim after all those before the 200s.. Pretty impressive I will say.

Wilson's swim has improved a lot, partially from the cross training from run and bike.. consistency is key, not just intensity/volume per session. Straight arm pulling is causing a lot of trouble. No pushups/pullups or any form of strength training for now for you as you got REALLY TIGHT SHOULDER muscles and pecs at your chest. Do more stretching, hold them, don't bounce.
If die die have to work out at gym, find out how to do a full range of motion and muscular activation for every movement of arms and legs from me first.

If you train with a bad range of motion then your muscle's range of motion will shorten due to incomplete contraction. I.E Stiffness and bad performance in sports + injury risks ++.

Look below at the end for a e.g of such case of bad range of motion training.

Teck Beng's swim is DEADLY CONSISTENT.. albeit the lack of sync from body and limbs causes a significant loss in potential power output. Nice catch you have, but how come the right hand fingers always open up wherelse the left hand's fingers are nicely closed ALL THE TIME? Yep, it happened through all the laps when I was sitting under the water watching all of you.

Calvin
Your swim is pretty strong I will say. It's nowhere near bad. The timing of 28 minutes per 20 laps comes from the falter of technique.
Check the below points:
1) Your entry is shallow, i.e the whole arm is JUST underneathe the surface (so are your head and chest).

2) You over-reached in your recovery (Straighten arm before entry into water). This indirectly leads to that arm on the surface syndrome.

Add the above 2 points to those stated in the "Generally..." section above and you'll roughly know why you get a 28minutes 20laps and those girls on the other side of the pool despite being weaker in terms of strength are doing 22 to 24minutes 20laps. TECHNIQUE IS THE FOCAL POINT FROM NOW ON!!!! DON'T EVER CLOCK BLIND MILEAGE AGAIN!!!!!:)

Andy
Sadly, there's quite a bit to change in your strokes but they're very common mistakes.
1) Never fully extend arm backwards when pulling. Shortened pull = shortened distance travelled per pull. Read previous post about Swim Velocity.
2) Breathing is bad. Holding breathe, using chest to breathe all tires you out very quickly.
3) No concept of using your lung to float as you swim, your hips are sinking very badly.
4) Body are not stretched out and thus streamlining position is not that good yet.
5) Lack of body rotation, especially on the left side.
6) Bad catch position.
7) Head is too high out of water, i.e point 3.
8) No gliding.

My advice: Ask Wilson over MSN what I meant on those 8 points. If he can't answer, ask me and I will gladly answer. :)

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A word of caution for gym/weight training, also a sharing of what proper training did for me..

When training at gym, please use light weight and learn to zone in on muscular activation. When you can consciously activate and zone in on one muscle to contract fully, you won't be able to carry That much amount of weight. E.g: bicep curl, how heavy do you think that tiny ball on your arm can carry? 20? Doesn't make sense does it?

When you learn the activation of muscular contraction, make sure you ALWAYS work to the FULL RANGE OF MOTION. When you don't work to the full range of motion by contracting your muscle, (i.e instead of flexing that muscle fully, you use momentum to pull the weight down and towards you or heave the weight up and away)... your muscle will not learn the correct movement pattern and thus the range of motion will be lost through the improper forms in training.

E.g of such case is big guys in the gym that throws the weight around. How many times have you seen them pulling the lat pull down machine(the one with a bar on top that you hold shoulder width or wider to pull down to under your chin.) with loads of weight plates and all you see is they're jerking their body back and forth just to pull that damn thing down with momentum?

Since they're not contracting their lats as they should be doing, guess what?
It resulted in that "arms-cannot-close-to-body-side" symptom lor.. forever walk like gorilla cos the lats cannot be fully contracted. A normal human should be able to keep their arms by the side completely relaxed and now their arms have to flare out at all times! HOW MACHO? :S.. isn't trg suppose to help us become better and stronger persons? Now without that range of motion, they're worse than an untrained person!

If A fully contracted piece of lats muscle can give you 100% potential of its power, then those who can only contract half way would only give them 50%.. I learnt this through a very embarassing tug of war game (one on one with my shi fu).. he's 55kg, 55 yrs old.. i was 24 and 78 kg at that time.. I couldn't even make him move forward a single inch.

After training with the full range of motion + conscious contraction of muscles + light weight theory... I was able to squat 120kg 5 times with good form (compared to previous 95kg 5 reps) and I could do pull ups without swinging or much contraction from my arm muscles... Oh, stabilizer muscles improved too and I could stand sam(60++ kg) jumping right on my torso without budging a step back to balance myself.

Gym training, if done properly can give you an iron body.. But it can also destroy you if you choose ego and pride over wisdom. Stay wise. :)

Cheers
KK

ps: thank you Lawlaw for being so incredibly kind to send me and my cervie right to my "door step". And Wilson for sacrificing your rest because of the sending...