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"Inside
Out" Swimming Most swimmers focus on working more or harder in order to swim better. But even those few swimmers who recognize that swimming is 70 percent form and 30 percent fitness, usually attack technique from the wrong direction. They focus first and almost exclusively on what their arms and legs are doing. And why not? It seems pretty clear, doesn't it, that since your hands are what pulls you through the water, then that's where your attention belongs. If something's wrong with your technique, then it must be your pull that needs fixing. Certainly coaches reinforce that idea. Nearly every swim coach or instructor teaches swimming the same way, by telling you how your arms need to pull and legs need to kick in order to move your body down the pool. But the armstroke--where the hands go, how deep they pull, which direction the palm is facing, etc.--actually has only a minimal impact on how fast you swim. If a swimmer with a totally incorrect pulling pattern learned a nearly perfect pull, they might see a 5 to 10 percent improvement in their time. But because water is 1000 times denser than air and can throw huge drag forces against a swimmer who doesn't know the tricks of becoming slippery, learning how to minimize drag has a far greater impact than maximizing propulsion. A swimmer who learned to significantly improve their body position or alignment might see an immediate 20 to 30 percent improvement in their speed or stroke efficiency, a phenomenon I see occur over and over at my swim camps. Improving drag reduction starts with what I call "Inside-Out" thinking. Get the head and trunk centered and balanced first. Don't worry about perfecting the armstroke until much later in the process. If your body isn't balanced, streamlined and stabilized, even the most powerful and effective pull will go to waste trying to overcome drag forces that could be easily eliminated with simple adjustments in body position. Moreover, you can't maximize the power in your armstroke unless the body is balanced and stabilized first. So the keystone to the whole enterprise is getting the body in balance. Nothing else you can do in the pool will make as much of a difference for your efficiency and speed. Getting balanced in the water is a matter of overcoming a physical fact of life: The human body is adapted for balance and mobility on landlong legs and lots of mass below the waist, mostly volume above it--the lungs, after all, are just bellows. (Fish have the opposite problem--designed ideally for balance in the water, but consider what would happen if you tried to stand one up on its tail.) In the water, we're pretty buoyant between the armpits, rock-like below the waist. Naturally everyone's longer, heavier end wants to fall, not just yours. And it has less to do with body fat than you think. I hear from a lot of triathletes and cross-training runners that they think they'll probably never learn to swim well because they have so little body fat. "I'm a sinker; I'll never have good body position," they say. But Olympic swimmers are just as lean as runners and triathletes and they have perfect body position. They'll ride higher in the water than most of you because they swim faster, but any swimmer can learn to be just as well balanced, and swim much faster with much less effort as a result. Most novice swimmers try to compensate by kicking harder. Wasteful. Especially if you're swimming the first leg of a triathlon. The last muscles you want to tire while swimming are the ones you'll use to pedal or run. But what if you could balance the body just as you do a see-saw, by lengthening and adding weight to the front end to effortlessly lift the back end? That's "Pressing the T." Follow instructions and your butt will soon be gliding effortlessly along the surface, not dragging you down:
That's usually all it takes to get the body in balance, usingno extra energy and eliminating annoying lead-butt. Use thefollowing partner drills for learning how to press the T beforegetting into the water. Stand facing each other on deck, arms at your sides, yourpartner's inside wrist against your chin and the inside of yourpartner's elbow against your sternum. Lean forward trying todistribute pressure equally between chin and sternum, your partnertelling you how well you're doing. Keep straightening up andrebalancing until you get it right. Remember how it feels on deck because you want the samefeeling in the water. Leaning on your chin while you swim soundslike a demonstrably silly thing to do, but steady pressure there,just as you practiced it on land, is the key to in-water balance. Now, use it to release your hips and legs to the surface wherethey belong, with just the skin of your suit at the buttocks at thesurface. Your partner watching to help you adjust position, kicklightly on your stomach, arms at sides, head in line with spine andhips, leaning on chin and sternum. It's an alien feeling at first,so you'll probably need to press harder than you think you should.Just don't bury your head. Now you're ready for balanced kicking for short distances (25yds. or less) on your stomach, holding steady T-pressure. Everytime you lift your chin to breathe you'll lose T-pressure andbalance, and get the chance to practice re-balancing. Practice thisfor at least 10 minutes before experimenting with it in yourstroke. Finally, once you're a T-pressing ace, alternate kick and swimlengths with it, thinking of nothing else but getting the forceright. Short distances (25 yds.) only. Your hips should now feellight and your legs relaxed. The main sensation you should get whenswimming with "t-pressure" is that of swimming downhill. (Onetriathlete described it as similar to the feeling of leaning intothe wind while running into a strong wind.) Keep the pressuresteady as you swim, as if someone was pressing down on your backbetween your shoulder blades while you swim freestyle. And ifyou're swimming on your back, then you lean on the back of yourhead and shoulder blades, but without putting your head back--keepyour chin slightly tucked while swimming on your back.
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