All three of the activities that comprise triathlon involve balance. Transition too, if you count standing on one foot. What makes swimming different from the others is the lack of contact with the ground. Floating in water, your body can be going in any direction. The only thing that keeps you level is balance.
Terry Laughlin identified three major components of swimming: Balance, Streamlining, and Propulsion. I put balance first, because without good balance the other two suffer.
Every sport requires practice, and none more so than swimming. To emphasize this point Laughlin borrowed a term from yoga, mindful practice. In Total Immersion swimming we do not just swim laps. We constantly scan our body to root out problems, then set focal points to address them and monitor the results.
This process is on-going and without end. Laughlin borrowed another term to describe this habit of continuous improvement, the Japanese word kaizen (kai = change, zen = good). To me this does not mean change is good so much as that improvement requires change. Why does this require special terminology? Because to change what we are invested in is scary.
Currently I set aside my Monday swim as drill day. A time to reflect on what was not going well on the weekend long swim, and address it with short, focused lengths of twenty or thirty yards. Lately I have been focused on balance. Saturday’s swim exposed a flaw I have felt before, where my feet swing side to side in a “U” shape. I must have spent a good fifteen minutes this morning focused on my legs, my kick, my quads and abs engagement. I felt improvement, but it was fleeting.
For some reason my lack of progress triggered a memory. The great running coach Bobby McGee was talking about gait issues and pointed out that often the cause of a movement issue in the legs is caused by something not right in the upper body. I recall he used the phrase “look further up the kinetic chain.” I realized that just maybe my legs are swinging around in response to what is going on above my waist.
The first place I looked was my head position. Sure enough, I was lifting. Not a lot, but even a little will cause your legs to sink. Next my arms, and sure enough, my elbows were not bent enough during recovery and my right arm was entering the water too far from my center line. What about rotation? Yep, over rotating to the right, trying desperately to balance that arm flailing around.
As soon as I got my elbow at a right angle the entry point was easy to correct. I worked on rotation by breathing every four strokes. On the cycle when I did not breath I paid close attention to where my shoulder ended up, then made sure it went no further during the breath. Of course it did, just like a kid told not to eat any cookies. But I sensed improvement and a significant reduction in leg swing.
On my website I talk about getting started with Total Immersion swimming. Like anything worth doing there is a skill set involved, and with it a specialized vocabulary. Eventually you reach a point where you no longer need structured workouts. Learn to feel what your body is doing, pick a focal point that should address the issue, and practice.
I notice that swimmers at the beach like to go long. For triathlon training there should be one long swim per week. Biking and running demand their own time, so it is hard to fit in more than three swims a week. The issue is not just time, but fatigue, and the older you are, the greater the challenge. I have those other two swim workouts focused on a particular aspect of swimming, and break the session into multiple short segments. Swim a bit, notice what needs work. Stop. Think about it. Start again. Do not practice bad form. Find and fix what needs fixing, then repeat the improved form. When you lose it, stop, think about it, play with it, start again. Do this in waist deep water so you can stand and rest as you think about what just happened. Mindful practice.
One more favorite Terry Laughlin quote, “Do not practice struggle.”
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