FINE POINTS

By Glenn Mills

I've started swimming again! At least a few times a week… nothing major, but simply to get in better shape, and to have some fun. I thoroughly enjoy swimming really fast, but it seems I can't find the time to get completely back into fighting shape, so I'm going to have to depend on other things to help me out.

Push Offs
Getting streamlined when you push off is the simplest way to go really fast. It’s also the best way to learn what you really want to feel like when you are swimming. By making sure that you have a tight, streamlined body position when you drive off the wall, you'll get a better sense of what elite swimmers feel with the water rushing past them. Make sure you squeeze your arms tightly to your head, and also point your toes. Think of yourself as a torpedo; from end to end, it's point to point.

Break Outs
Most people love to start swimming as quickly as possible after the push off. Not me! With age comes wisdom. Maintaining speed for as long as possible off the wall is much more important than how soon I start swimming. Keeping my head in exactly the same line during the first stroke as it was while I was streamlining off the wall allows me to maintain my speed for just a little bit longer than the person in the next lane. Try not to lift your head for the first breath. Try, instead, to stay low and keep moving forward, not up.

Swimming
Oh boy… the work part of going fast. The question is always, how do I go the fastest the soonest? Try focusing your mind on the senses usually ignored. Take off your goggles for your sprints. Close your eyes and try to feel what's happening to your body at its highest speeds. As swimmers, we have a real desire to see where we're going, so our focus is constantly drawn away from what's really important: what's happening behind our head, not in front of it. Besides, it's not like you're going to get lost.

Turns
STOP LOOKING AT THAT WALL! Again, our eyes sometimes can cause us to fall apart. We all have such a strong psychological need to see where we're going that we constant lift our heads, just to make sure that the wall at the other end – something that probably hasn’t moved in ten years (unless it’s a moveable bulkhead) – isn’t somehow moving toward us. If you know that the wall isn’t going to move, then use the other parts of the pool to key in on when you’re going to hit the wall. In freestyle, during your stroking, look across the pool at an angle to see the wall coming up a couple of lanes away, or in the lane next to you. In breaststroke and butterfly, look for where the floor of the pool joins the wall, keep your head down, and stretch for the end. On backstroke… oh stop it, you should have this down cold from counting your strokes from the flags. It’s just stroke, rotate, and flip!

Support
There's nothing better in swimming than having someone to race. And one of the best ways to make sure you have swimming friends who keep you on your toes is to become the team cheerleader. Not in the RAH RAH sense, but in the sense that you are always the one letting everyone know that you saw what a good job they did on that last set. That you noticed their tight turns, and that great time they just did when everyone knew how tired they were. The whole point is simple: Having faster people next to you gives you something to go after. The goal for most competitive swimmers is to have no one to race, to be the best, to be the one that everyone is chasing. Until you get there, make sure you have not left any stone unturned. Build up your teammates to excel, and you'll cover more bases than you can imagine.

Now stop reading and get to the pool and get thinking!