Monthly Archives: December 2009

So this week, I spent Monday night trying to get fishy.  Our swim workout was focused on generating power, which for me meant working on my catch and a strong pull.  Our swim coach Noelle had me working on accelerating through my pull, all the way to the end of my stroke.  When I swam and paid attention to how hard I was pulling, I was able to notice a clear difference as compared to how I’d been swimming.  My typical pull is more of a catch and start strong, but that power phase of my pull when I should be engaging the full strength of my shoulder and triceps…I guess that’s midway through the pull…I was sort of dragging through the end.  Oops, beginner’s mistake apparently.

Our toughest drill of the night was 8×25, where we swam the first 12.5 yards underwater in either a dolphin or flutter kick, then surfaced and sprinted the remainder of the pool length.  I was among those without Zoomers, so we were told to swim a bit less than half the pool, but the main objective was the feel the power of our kick underwater, then really push ourselves to the max for the next 12 to 15 yards.  We got maybe 30 seconds to a minute to recover between 25′s, though by the last few repeats we were all feeling it.

Like most people, I love the feeling of speed.  Whether it’s on the bike or in the water, for me personally, nothing beats putting the pedal to the metal and trying to move as fast as possible.  That’s not to say I don’t truly enjoy and love long bike rides, catching the scenery and reveling in the freedom of being on two-wheels, or the enjoyment of a good pool or lake swim and the endorphins that follow both.  But for me, there’s no getting around the fact that speed is fun.  It’s a kick (no pun intended) seeing how hard I can push myself and how quickly I can cover a specific distance.  On Monday, Zoomers would’ve been even more fun because my teammates that had them on were, quite literally, zooming.  I’ll definitely be picking up a pair so I get that same feeling of a more powerful kick, to better zip through the water and feel the power of a strong kick.

We also got the results of our initial test set from earlier this month, which was a 10x100y set.  Our directions were to swim at an aerobic, zone 2 pace (below a threshold pace).  However many of us, I think myself included probably swam closer to something just below our threshold, as we were all pretty beat up afterward!  In any case, my average was a 1:30 at 67 strokes.  So plenty of room to improve before our retest in approximately a month.  As I mentioned, I need to work on my pull as well as maintaining my hip rotation when I get fatigued, to maintain efficiency and ultimately to swim faster.

Also, found a cool article on the USAT site regarding the catch and pull…figured I’d share.  I’m swimming on my own tomorrow (no practice since it’s Christmas Eve), so we’ll see if I can apply some of these concepts a bit more.