Nov 15-Dec 15 "Swim Speed Secrets" Book Club (Page 10)

Great!  Welcome to the group    I think we have people kind of all over the place with the book and the workouts.  So just jump in when you're ready.

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Actually, my pool was closed for the week of Thanksgiving, and I didn't make the effort to go to one of the other ones (their hours are really hard for me), so I'm kind of starting back at square one this week with Sheila's workouts. 

How is everyone doing with the book?  The workouts?  The bands? Any questions?  Comments? 

I have been watching this talk by Gerry Rodriguez on youtube about swimming for triathletes.  He is a big fan of snorkel plus buoy plus band.  He stresses that alignment and "tautness" are things that are necessary for good swimming and that most triathletes don't have them.  Anybody have thoughts on this or do regular snorkel plus buoy plus band work?  I've never even tried a snorkel...

Seemed like it might go hand-in-hand with Sheila's discussion of tone.

I bought some Stretchcordz and they should be here soon.  I was ordering other gear and had to go over a certain amount to get free shipping so that's what I threw in.  

That's a LONG video series  What the hell is that cameraman doing on the first couple of vid's?  I got a headache watching it.

"Triathletes do not train enough, or hard enough"  OUCH!!!  Was he looking at me??? 

His recommended workout sounds fun:

20' min WU (10' easy swimming, 10' technical stuff - NOT DRILLS)
4 x 250 w/ buoy, snorkel, and ankle bands, 20" RBI
10 x 100 on interval where you are getting 3-7" rest @ 85-88% effort
2 x 500 w/ buoy, snorkel, and ankle bands, 30" RBI
10 x 100 @ 90%, 30-60" rest (not quite all out, but hard)
10' CD

"Swimming fast is the best thing you can do for your swimming mechanics."  I've heard this before...he's basically saying your body position is at its best (you are "taut") when you are going fast.  I would tend to agree with it.  And I agree I think you can relate "taut" with "tone"

I've never tried a snorkel either.  My spine surgeon (of all people...) recommended one to remove some of the stress from swimming.  Of course, as with all medical advice, I ignored him.  I do use the buoy for maybe 20% at most.  And I occasionally use paddles...oops.  This is now the third swimming coach where I've read about using the bands...maybe I should splurge on the $20. 

I haven't watched the whole series yet.  I couldn't figure out how to track which ones I'd seen and which ones I hadn't--did you see a numbering system Mike?  I like him (GR) though. Sometimes I watch coaches talk and I find them hard to follow, hard to believe, or just downright annoying. 

Ben was just talking about that fast set of 50 x 25, and Bo mentioned the 3 (20 x 25).  I'm hoping to try one of these sometime soon and see how it goes.  As I mentioned in the STFU thread, my swimming has felt very lackluster after a week off--technique seems excellent (feeling really good connection, over the barrel, lat engagement, holding the water, etc) but I just can't maintain it for long sets. 

I'm thinking this might be one of those two-steps forward, one step back things (better technique is getting me more fatigued and more properly fatigued).  It also could be that I'm flirting with sickness and/or underestimating the stress of a big (for me right now) week of cycling and running last week. 

Mike, have you gotten back in the pool?

I STILL need to watch that series. And Mike, an ankle band should be $7 or less. You can also make one from a spare bike tube. Stretch cords or bands are something else.

That's what I meant.  The Sporti ones are about $8-10 on swimoutlet.com, so that seems like a low risk trial.  I'm going to see if they have them at my pool; there are both youth and Masters swim teams training there so maybe they have them.

My 2nd time since September will be today, so I guess that qualifies as "not really".  I plan on 2x/week starting this week, gradually increasing my volume to where I can handle our 90-120 min Masters practices.  I figure maybe a 8-10 week ramp up.

The way to watch the videos is by letter...they all start with A,B,C, etc.  There are about a dozen of them.

THANK YOU!

There's some good stuff in there, Ben.  I think you've probably heard most of it already, but he'd a good presenter and makes some good arguments for his ideas.

FWIW, I use an old spare bike tube, and it works well--I still can't swim well with it on, but it does its job;)

Anybody have a snorkel recommendation?

My pool was closed the week of Thanksgiving too, and I've been off/slow/sluggish since coming back.  Why don't you get back in your groove this week and then retest?  I bet you'll see different numbers.

As for the pause/pace question, I would take the pause out and try to build back up from there.  Are you finding your hip rotation still linked up?  How about your breathing?  It could just be a matter of finding your timing again. 

I liked the way Sheila wrote about this on pg 103:

Top swimmers never remain static on the rotated side, gliding.  Once the hips finish the drive to one side, the swimmer immediately switches direction to accentuate the drive to the other side.  The drive and change of direction are only possible when the pulling hand has traction on the water and when the core muscles have been loaded with the correct amount of tension and tone.

I also use an old bike tube when I'm not swimming with the swim team.  They don't use anything commercial either though, they have a bunch of cut up wide rubber bands.  I'm not sure what it used to be but it works.

I've never used a snorkel either.  Swim team kids started using them a bit this year but I haven't tried it yet.

I guessed and went with the red which is the second highest resistance.  I posted a question on ST about it and got a few different responses.  One of them was TJ Fry and he said they sell lots of them but green was by far the most popular.  The store I was buying from didn't have green so I went one harder with red.