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发帖数: 19210 | 1 Bigfuzzydoug’s Ten Points to Swimming:
http://www.beginnertriathlete.com/discussion/forums/thread-view
The key to swimming is reducing drag, not endurance or powering through the
water. This is not just my opinion; it is the law of physics. I’ll
explain it in a simple way: When you bike, you have to push air in front of
you out of the way. The bigger the frontal section of your body and bike,
the more air you have to move. What’s worse is that it’s not a one to one
relationship. An increase in speed requires the square of increase in
power to move that air! The faster you want to go, small increases in speed
requires exponentially more power to do it. That’s why we’re all so big
on getting “aero” for cycling. If we can reduce that amount of air we
have to push out of the way, it makes cycling drastically easier. While it
might take Lance Armstrong 300 watts of power to bicycle at 30mph, it would
take big, broad-shouldered, me, 500 watts of power to maintain that same
speed. And while Lance can still ride 10mph faster, I’m pretty much at my
aerodynamic limit.
Now here’s the bad news. Since water is much denser than air, it requires
THE CUBE to overcome hydrodynamic drag as you go faster! There is a massive
difference between the power output while swimming at 1.5 mph and 2 mph.
As you get faster, it gets (X times X times X) more difficult! Approaching
4 mph is close to the maximum and very few humans can sustain swimming at 5
mph. Beyond that, it’s virtually impossible. Our bodies are just not
hydrodynamically shaped to do it. The current World Record (in the 50m
freestyle) is 5.37mph by Duje Draganja (2.4m/sec, 50 meters in 20. 81
seconds). No matter how strong a swimmer’s muscles and how aerobically fit
they are, it is theoretically impossible for a human to power-swim at
speeds beyond this. I highly doubt any human will ever be able to swim
faster than a mere 6mph. We just don’t posses the wattage required to
overcome the drag. Nature just didn't design us to go fast in the water
like say, dolphins that can do it at more than five times faster than us...
good hydrodynamic shape to them!
So rather than focusing on power and endurance, the first step is to
minimize that drag. This is the most crucial part in learning how to swim!
So let’s get to those ten tips:
1.) Abandon any and all thoughts of pride and image. When you go to the
pool and see other swimmers seemingly doing effortless lap after lap, do not
get caught up the idea that you need to be doing the same. You have to do
your exercises and not care about what anyone else may be thinking when they
see you. Everyone practices drills, even the pro’s! So if you’re just
going to be doing balance drills, so be it. In order to do flip turns, you
have to practice the steps in turn and in order. If you ever see someone in
the pool just doing forward summersaults from a standing position, they’re
not weird – they’re practicing their flip turns! So just do your thing
and don’t worry about what other people think. More than likely, the truly
experienced swimmers will recognize what you’re doing and respect you for
the drills you're doing.
2.) I would recommend that you get the book or video Total Immersion's "
Swimming Made Easy" or "Triathlon Swimming". If you do, practice those
balance drills. Practice! Practice! Practice! I've been swimming for
years and I still do them all the time! I practice my balance before every
swim session. IN ORDER TO SWIM, YOU MUST BE BALANCED AND COMFORTABLE!
These are the basic balance principles:
Master the side-balance drill. When you do it, do it with your hands in
FISTS! This will take away a 'feeling' of support. You'll only have your
core to balance on. Stretch long, bottom arm stretched out, nose in your
armpit (YES!), top arm on your hip and your legs as straight as they can be.
Point your toes! Close your eyes and RELAX! Gently exhale and let the
water support you. You should feel your top hand on your hip out of the
water. If you want to, you may kick a little, but keep your toes pointed
and DON'T BEND YOUR KNEES! Kick very lightly from your butt. If you move
backwards, that's OK. Forward or backwards motion isn't the goal here.
Also, if your legs start to sink, that's only natural. Drive your head down
and put your ear against your armpit. This will bring your legs up a bit.
Let's not kid ourselves here - having strong abs, obliques and back (a
strong core) is paramount here! Strong core muscles will help to keep you
straight. The off-season is the perfect time to get into Pilates. It is
without a doubt, the best "strength training" you can do for your swimming!
So how do you breathe? It's easy, and yet, rather hard. SLOWLY rotate your
head up (AND ONLY YOUR HEAD), by the neck alone, and take a breath of air.
Then SLOWLY rotate back down again. NOTHING ELSE SHOULD MOVE! Keep your
hands in fists (FistGlove trainers really help). The temptation will be to
use your hands to press down to support you as you rotate your head up. But
this is exactly the thing we are trying to avoid and correct here! And
what happens if you don't get the balance right? You'll probably sink. SO
SINK! It's better to go under in the shallow end of the pool while
maintaining the side-balance position than to lose it and use your hands to
breathe. If you have to drown, THEN DROWN! You won't actually drown; you'
ll just stand up, breathe, say "damn!" and try again. Proper balance form
under water is far better than poor form above it. Keep practicing (on each
side) until you can maintain the side-balance position with NO BODY
MOVEMENT for about 2 minutes. This is the foundation for all swimming.
3.) “Displacement bodies in the water go faster with a longer hull.”
This means that the longer you make your body (tips of your fingers all the
way to your toes) the less drag your body will create. Long skinny
sailboats are faster than shorter ones. How do I know this? I’m also a
sailor! You are not a motorboat which goes so fast that it can plane up and
above the water’s surface. You are a displacement boat and you need to
move water out of the way in order to swim forward. SO LENGTHEN YOUR BODY!
How? First, make your reach as far as it can go. Think of getting
something off of the very top shelf of the kitchen cabinet. Do you face it
shoulder square and reach up? No. You twist your body to one side and
extend your shoulder. There you go - now you can reach it. Swimming is the
exact same way. It's that twist (or roll) and the extension from you
shoulders and lats. For an extra inch or two of reach, twist your hips in
much the same way that a belly dancer would, one hip higher than the other.
It’s from this ‘core’ that comes great swimming. So don’t ignore that
Pilates class at the gym! Swimmers don't have huge arm muscles or triceps;
they have great back, abdominal and oblique muscles! So makes sure that
each and every reach is as far out in front of you as you can. It's a good
stretch to. Go into the weight room before your swim and go to the chin-up
bar. Grab it with one hand, twist, and let your body hang for 20-seconds.
Do your belly dancer hip twist and see how far down you can go. It’s a
great pre-swim stretch.
4.) “Torpedoes move faster than oil tankers.” You have to try and
maintain a slim, sleek, torpedo shape. Back and legs straight as a board.
Think of your body swimming through a narrow two foot-wide-tube. Most
swimmers legs tend to sink. You need to overcome this by two things: First
, improve your back, abs and oblique core muscles. I can’t stress enough
how good exercise like Pilates are for swimming! And second, “press your
buoy.” By lowering your head and pressing your chest down, you raise your
legs. This is known as “downhill swimming”.
Unusual Training Tip: Try to look at your feet! That's right. As you swim
, I want you to try and look under and behind you. This is going to drive
your head down, get your feet up and make you more streamlined in the water.
Your chin should be against your chest. Not so tightly that you can't
breathe or that it's uncomfortable, just so that you're leading with the top
of your head, not your forehead and driving your head down. Again, the
goal is to raise your legs and look like a flat, horizontal torpedo in the
water.
Throughout this article I'll have some "Unusual Training Tips" that over-
exaggerate body motions. Why? BECAUSE YOUR SENSE OF BODY POSITION IN THE
WATER IS WAY OFF FROM WHAT IT ACTUALLY IS!!! The only way to know for sure
is to underwater video yourself and then watch it. The initial reaction
is always the same, "THAT'S how I look?! I thought I was flatter/longer/
better than that?!” Sometimes you have to over-exaggerate a position in
feel to get it to where it's really supposed to be. Once you achieve the
correct position and repeatedly do it and then get the feel for the proper
positioning, then it becomes second nature. But in the beginning you'll
have to accept that how you think it feels right, more than likely isn't
right.
5.) “Be a front-quadrant swimmer”. So if a longer displacement body is
faster in the water, always be a long body. Always have one arm full
extended out in front of you. If one arm is out of the water in recovery
and the other is under you pulling back, then you are only as long as you
are tall. You will slow down as compared to always being 3 feet longer with
one arm always extended. How do you do this? A good drill is called the "
thumb to hip drill". Before you bring one hand back in a stroke, make your
thumbs touch in front of you. Feel the water flowing past your body. Then
as you do your stroke, bring your hand ALL THE WAY back; make it touch your
hip. This practice technique forces you to always be fully extended in the
water. Later, as your swimming improves, the drill is called the “catch-up
drill”. My personal style of swimming says to NOT move your arms like a
kayak paddle. One arm is always fully extended. In order to do this, the
recovering arm (out of the water, coming forward) moves twice as fast as the
arm in the water pulling. The recovering arm has to “catch up” in order
to keep one arm always fully extended out in front of you. Yes, your arms
do not move at the same speed. The key is to think, “as soon as my thumb
hits my thigh, get it fully extended in front of me as fast as possible and
touch my thumbs.” But keep my pulling arm at the proper pace. Don’t pull
too fast or too hard. You’ll waste more energy trying to pull yourself
faster through the water than you will efficiently overcoming the drag of
going through the water.
Take a look at these time pictures of World Champion Ian Thorpe, the “
Thorpedo”: http://www.cruciblefitness.com/images/thorpe400.jpg
Ian Thorpe stroke series
Look at his LEFT hand in pics 5 through 12. The leading hand (right) is
extending WHILE the pulling hand (left) is moving back. Only in #6 does he
not have an extended arm. It takes 8 whole picture frames for the pull.
Now look at his RIGHT hand in pics 5 through 7. It only takes 3 picture
frames for the recovery hand to go from full back, to fully extended! His
arms move at different speeds. 8 frames for the pull and ONLY 3 for the
recovery!!! In fact, his recovery is more than twice as fast as his pull.
In every single picture except for #6 and #15, he has an arm fully extended
in front of him. Catch-up, front quadrant swimming – long displacement
body!
6.) Breathing – Oh boy! The tough one. When you swim, you roll to
breathe. When you breathe, your chin should be up against your shoulder and
your eyes looking back at your shoulder. Keep that chin in! Don't lift
your head. The moment you lift your head, you create a massive drag wave
that slows you down. You might as well tow a parachute! If you keep your
chin in tight to your shoulder, you'll have to roll your body to breathe.
Your mouth will be right at the surface of the water and yes, you may get a
little water in your mouth - so just get used to it. You'll find that you
can breathe just fine with a little water in your mouth. When you roll down
again, just spit out with the exhale. Be an ambidextrous swimmer.
Practice breathing from both sides. That's how you see where you are going
and how you can see the people swimming on both sides of you. In an open-
water triathlon with waves or sighting buoys, it's ok to occasionally lift
your head to sight your bearing. Just don't do it too often - just enough
to swim straight. If the water is choppy and has waves, your form won’t
matter as much and you’ll have to lift some in order to site and breathe.
But this is OK. But swimming and breathing from just one side usually makes
people swim in a circle in open water without a big black line on the
bottom of a crystal clear pool to help guide them. Practice bilateral
breathing and learn to swim straight.
Unusual Training Tip: At the pool, count how many strokes it take to get
from one side of the pool to the other. When you have that number, swim
the next length with your EYES CLOSED! Open your eyes when you're 5
strokes before that strokes-per-length number. Can you do it without
hitting any lane lines? Do you continually hit the same side lane line?
Does your balance tend to drive you off-line in the same direction all the
time?
Some more on breathing:
In order to maintain that head-in position, as your roll to breathe, your
chin has to stay in tight towards your armpit. Baseball players often have
a big problem of pulling their heads up and away during their swing. This
pulls their eyes away from the ball at the last moment and they often miss.
They have a classic training technique to keep their heads in throughout a
swing to keep their eye on the ball. They put a tennis ball under their
chin and hold it during the swing. If the ball falls out, they're pulling
their head. We can't swim with a tennis ball under our chin, but we can
think about it and use the imagery to keep our heads tucked in tight. You
have to think about keeping your chin in tight as if to hold a tennis ball
in place.
The stroke: Let's do the breathing as an example from the RIGHT side. You
can do this right now, sitting at your desk. Both arms are extended in
front with your thumbs touching. As you start the right side pull, you
begin to roll towards the right (left shoulder down). Now your left arm is
fully extended with your shoulder extended (as if reaching for the mug in
the back of the very top shelf) never flat to the bottom with your arm out.
As your right thumb touches your thigh, your right elbow bends and begins
to rise out of the water. Since you are rolled to the right and your head
is down with your chin towards your chest, the only place for your chin to
go is towards your armpit. As your right elbow comes up high out of the
water you find your face looking almost behind you. This is how you sight
the swimmers BEHIND you trying to catch you! You'll also find with a good
roll, a high elbow and your chin in your armpit, that a big space of air at
your mouth has been created. Now you breathe in! Make sure you've been
exhaling through your nose while your face is under water. Do not waste any
time exhaling with your mouth in the air. This is for intake only!
Now for the most important part! Remember, you’re not a planning motorboat
. You can't rise up and plane over the water, so don't try to! We talked
about the right arm during the pull, so what do you do with the left? IT
STAYS FULLY EXTENDED OUT IN FRONT OF YOUR BODY! The most common thing
beginner swimmers (and even experienced swimmers) do during the breathing
stroke is to begin the pull on the other side too early. They do this not
to pull water back and propel them forward, but rather, to push water DOWN
to push them up and out of the water to breathe. It's a natural instinct to
want to push yourself up higher out of the water to breathe, but don't do
it! That's what will slow you down and ruin your rhythm. Not pulling
during the breathing stroke with the extended arm is a very difficult thing
to do. In order to do it - you have to have balance in the water. That's
where your drills come in. You have to do those side-balance drills so that
you can breathe with that left arm fully extended and not pushing down to
raise you up. Achieving this one thing is the most important and dramatic
portion of your swimming stroke that will make you go faster. We'll address
this again in #9. It's THAT important!
7.) Never hold your breath! As soon as your face goes back under water,
start exhaling and continue until you empty your lungs. This does two
things - It allows you to completely blow off the carbon dioxide in your
lungs, thereby preventing the build-up of lactic acid in your muscles and
keeping you from getting tired. And it makes breathing faster and easier
because you're not wasting time exhaling with your mouth out of the water
when you should be inhaling. See if you can practice swimming with this
pattern: breathe in on the left, left stroke, right stroke, left stroke,
breathe in on the right. If it's close to your normal breathing rate, great
! Those two strokes with your head down and streamlined is what will really
make you go farther and faster.
Here's a little experiment you can do right now. Take in a deep breath and
hold it. How long can you hold your breath? What does it feel like? Now,
hold your breath again but this time, take in a deep breath and blow it all
out, entirely. Then hold on and see how long you can go until you have to
take in the next breath? What does it feel like? It feels easier the
second time because your lungs autonomically feel the urge to take a breath
when there is a build up of CO2 in your lungs. If you exhale all of that
CO2 out, you can trick your body into going longer.
8.) "SWIM SLOWER TO GO FASTER!” You don't push the water back towards your
feet; you grab the water and pull your body through the hole in the water
that you made. The slower you try to swim, the more you have to concentrate
on your form. There's a reason that those early morning Tai Chi people
move very slowly. Spiritual enlightenment comes through proper form, not
speed. When you try to swim faster, your form and stamina will fall apart.
I guarantee it! If you can swim slowly and feel the "underwater glide",
you've got it! When it happens, you'll know it and it feels really cool.
You're like, "Am I coated in Vaseline? I'm just slipping through so easily
and fast! Awesome! “It only happens when you swim smooth and SLOWLY.
9.) Swim forward, not up. Your swimming stroke is not meant to push
yourself up and out of the water. It is meant to propel you forward. Keep
saying to yourself "forward forward forward". This is why the pull-phase
of the stroke does NOT HAVE YOUR ARMS STRAIGHT! You're not taking straight
arms down and back from your shoulder. Because the entire beginning part
of THAT pull has you pushing water down, not back. If you bend your elbows
and immediately pull water back towards your feet (the same motion as
climbing up a ladder)... Let's practice that right now.
Hold your arms straight over your head and with your elbows locked, bring an
arm down and rotate from the shoulder until your hands touch your thigh.
Now do it again, but this time pretend you're climbing up a ladder. Bend
your elbow (hand a little away from your body) and your hand goes straight
down to your thigh. The second way has all the energy going straight down
- nothing wasted - everything to power - very efficient. And that's what
triathletes are all about, EFFICIENCY!
The most common mistake by amateur swimmers (me not excluded) is that they
convert their breathing stroke into a vertical support stroke to push their
heads up and out of the water further. It doesn't work and it's wasted
energy. It slows you down (dramatically) and creates bad habits. Keep that
chin in tight to your shoulder and use that stroke to go FORWARD! Why?
Again, I have to go back and talk again about displacement bodies in water
and how length of waterline/wetted surface affects speed. Unless a boat can
plane above the waters surface and eliminate drag all together, it has to
push water the water out of the way to move through it. That's YOU! Going
through the water and pushing it out of the way. You have no choice, you're
displacing that water. The fastest sailboats are those that are very long,
100-feet, and very narrow, less than 15-feet. That's a long, thin,
displacement body.
The moment that length is decreased, you create "wake turbulence" behind you
which is like little whirlpools. These areas of twisting, turbulent water
act like suction and hold you back. So it is imperative to maintain the
maximum length possible at ALL times while in the water and displacing that
water. That's why the thumb-to-thigh or catch-up drill is so important. It
forces you to always have an arm fully extended. This actually allows you
to glide through the water longer and easier making it easier and faster to
swim. Most professional swimmers will have a blazingly fast catch-up phase
to their stroke. Their recovery arm comes forward to meet their extended
arm to where they always have an arm up front. The actual pull can be
slower. It doesn't need to be that much faster than the moving water
because you can't use raw power to go that much faster. Now go back and
take a second look at that picture sequence of Ian Thorpe.
Most people suffer in that as they're recovering an arm, turning up, getting
their mouth out of the water to take a breath, they begin the next pull to
push down and keep their head up to breathe. They've immediately decreased
their length of waterline by two feet or more and this immediately creates
wake drag. You have to be able to put your ear on your bicep with a fully
extended arm and keep it their throughout the entire breath. Recovery arm
meets the extended one, rotate back down and THEN begin the next pull.
… A simple thing to write. A considerably more difficult thing to do
practice and perfect in the water! For me as well. THIS more than
anything else, will probably improve your swimming distance and speed by a
huge amount!
10.) Aids and Tools:
My favorite is FistGloves: Swimming with your hand in a fist feels really
strange! It forces you to have good balance because you can't use your
hands to push yourself up out of the water. I usually do 5 warm-up laps
with the gloves on and then take them off to do my training. Wow! It feels
like someone has glued dinner plates to my hands! You'll feel like you're
going as fast as a dolphin! I then do my 5 cool-down laps with the gloves
on to make sure my body remembers proper balance in the water until the next
swim.
Hip fins: These are fins on a belt that you wear around your waist. They
do two things; they force you to roll. If you’re not rolling, your hands
will hit them on each stroke. And they also provide some resistance during
that roll and twist which will strengthen your core.
Pull buoy: This is the buoy that you hold between your knees to help keep
your legs up. This helps to isolate your arm-stroke to work on perfecting
it. While I find that a pull buoy is good for isolating the arms for
correcting issues, I think swimming with a pull buoy too much can be bad
because it gives you a false sense of balance.
Fins: The same with fins. They are good for helping to isolate the arms,
but using them too much gives you a false sense of speed and balance. Use
them until the issue is corrected and then stop.
Hand Paddles: Meant to create resistance during the pull to improve lat
strength. I say, forget them and concentrate on form and balance. Spend
some non-swimming-day time in the weight room on the lat bench to work on
building strength. We're all about balance and form here.
Kick board: While a kickboard is a good tool for getting the feel of
forward kicking power, I prefer to do “vertical kicking”. Go into the
deep end of the pool, keep your arms around your chest and using only your
legs, and try to maintain a vertical position by kicking alone. This will
quickly let you feel what is the optimum way to kick.
Speaking of kicking: While sprinters may use a strong kick, we are
triathletes. Our goal is to get through the water as quickly as possible,
while saving enough energy (especially in our legs) for the upcoming bike
and run. I believe in a small kick which keeps the legs within that two-
foot-tube that I wrote about earlier. Once your legs go outside that tube,
they increase drag and slow you down. So your kick comes from your butt,
not your knees. Try to keep your knees relatively straight and use your
glutes, quads and hamstrings to do the kick. Don’t worry so much about a
strong kick or the rhythm; it will naturally fall into place. Just
concentrate on not bending your knees too much and keeping your ankles
within 18 inches of each other.
Unusual Training Tip: If you're really brave, tie your ankles together (
leaving about 10-inches of slack between them) with a short piece of cloth.
This will force your kick to be small! If you choose to do this - please
don't panic and drown! Wink
BONUS Extra on Endurance: Why do I get so tired and can only do 2-4 lengths
before stopping from exhaustion?
Everyone has an initial plateau from a mind-body connection when it comes to
beginning exercise. Let me explain. When you begin running or biking,
your muscles send a signal to your brain saying, "we need more oxygen and
glucose fuel!” Your brain's first and foremost reaction is to want to
conserve as much energy as possible and not burn it, so it says in your
subconscious, "then we should stop.” But since most people have biked and
run much more than they have swam, they can push that initial subconscious
thought to the side and keep going. Also, while biking and running, we have
a constant and endless supply of air to always breathe. After a few
minutes the body establishes a working exercise rhythm, the brain & the
subconscious accept it and you establish your "pace". I can bike at an
average 21mph for six straight hours. I can run a 9-min/mile pace for three
hours (yeah- pretty slow). The point is that I have trained my body and
mind to break through that initial plateau and establish an efficient and do
-able exercise pace. The same thing happens when you swim. Except for two
differences; you haven't been swimming as much and as regularly as you have
biking and running. And you don't have that constant and endless supply of
air. You need to pace your breathing and roll up to the air to get it.
But that's just a function of form. You still have the same subconscious
plateau to get over. And there's no other way to do it, other than to just
do it.
Go to the lifeguard and tell him/her that you're going to do an endurance
set of 15 laps (endurance for you that is) and to please keep a close eye on
the lane you are in. Then SWIM 15 LAPS NON-STOP! Keep your pace slow and
steady and remain as relaxed as possible. At some point in the first 3 laps
, you will feel tired and begin to get nervous. That nervousness may even
become anxiety or fear. Stay slow and steady and KEEP GOING! DON'T PANIC -
YOU HAVE NO CHOICE! You have to keep going! You can not stop! It is not
an option! The lifeguard is watching you and they won't let you drown.
Just keep swimming. You're forcing your body to establish a swimming pace
and teaching your subconscious to release the anxiety and fear.
You'll begin to notice something around the 6th to 10th lap. IT STARTS TO
GET EASIER! Your heart rate will lower, you'll smooth out and the swimming
will even begin to get boring. That's the goal! You may want to instead of
counting laps, just keep mindlessly swimming for 15 minutes and glance at
the clock every once in a while. Sing a song in your head. Think of
something else other than swimming. Transport yourself to another place.
Your body will adapt and your mind will relax and accept it. Lots of
competitive swimmers here often complain about doing endless, boring laps.
They're constantly doing different drills to put some fun back into the
training and they're the ones posting, "How do you keep track of your laps?
After 50, I lose track. “These people have trained their bodies and minds
to swim past that plateau and establish a swimming pace. And you can too!
One final note: Nobody EVER got better at swimming by practicing once or
twice a week. If you want to get better, you've got to get wet! So be in
the pool 4-6 times per week! 5+ hours a week is a MINIMUM to get anywhere.
Be consistent and practice practice PRACTICE! You practiced walking and
running for three YEARS before you got truly good at it. It took you two
whole summers before you could comfortably ride a bike. So don't think that
two days a week is going to get you through an Olympic swim that's four
months away. Sorry. There's just no other way of doing other that to get
doing it.
Some great additional FREE swim training videos can be found here: http://www.goswim.tv/pages/5/videos.html
I hope you found this free advice helpful.
[And for any anti-BFD-nay-sayers out there, a disclaimer: I am not a
professional swimming coach. I do not take credit for discovering or
formulating these swimming tips. This is simply a collected collaboration of
other people's work, condensed into a single article/post. I do not take
credit for works that Terry Laughlin and others have created. These are
just free tips for beginners and newbies and many people quickly grow beyond
this advice. Again, this is not advice for MOP or advanced swimmers. This
article/post is not meant to take the place of an actual coach, video, book
or training program, all of which are probably better. This is free advice
from the biggest BS-artist in the world, so take it all with a grain of
salt!] Wink |
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