Tomorrow I become a better swimmer

I share my excitement. Swim coaches do wonders! They make sure you're not crossing your body with your pulls, or you're kicking at the right time, or you're pacing yourself well
Can you picture yourself going 1:59 per 100? I can.

Good post, slow&steady. I swim with a masters class and yesterday I realized that I've just been phoning it in. While that is fine to maintain basic fitness, it sure isn't getting me any faster.

Let us know how it goes with your coach; you've already motivated me to do better.

Sound investment. I am planning on following that path next winter. Good luck!

I've had a few sessions with a local coach and it was helpful but I want to buck up for a TI workshop this winter.

I just found out my local township is offering adult swimming lessons (mainly improving stroke technique) and not only that, they will have triathlon specific swim workshops twice per week. Daily lessons for 3 weeks starting July 4th and it fits my schedule AND my 1st tri is July 17th.

Is that perfect or what??
can't wait to get started.

I am in the same boat as many, i try to swim freestyle and flounder around with my head out of the water because i can't keep my breath long enough to breathe properly. Just last week i figured out to slow down my stroke and at least now i can freestyle with my head in the water except to breathe every 2 storkes. what a diff that made - i cut about 4 minutes from my 1000 meter time and am about 300% less tired when i finish.

awesome that you made the move to get a coach on your own.

It's too bad that you can't make the masters team workouts -- whether or not they're theren for excercise or speed I enjoy my masters workouts just because there are people there, I find swimming alone difficult and easy to get distracted/slowdown/stop... (I'm used to being under the reign of a coach )

Good luck with it!

Let us know how it goes....Its something I'd like to do in the future but don't really have the time or money right now. Iam interested in how it goes today though.

Holy smokes - what a great experiance tonight. My coach had been standing in the rain for the past two hours working with a masters group when I showed up. I introduced myself, and he suggested I go warm up while he finished with his group.I warmed up with 300 yards of easy freestyle, fully aware that he was probably watching my painfully slow pace across the pool. Once he came over to my lane, we discussed concepts - i.e. two ways to get faster 1) Reduce drag 2) Increase Power. Initially, he had me swim a couple more laps, to fine tune what I was doing. First thing out the box is that my kick had some real problems. When I turn to breath (as instructed in TI) I was turning my entire body (including my legs). This made my kick very inefficient. This should be fairly simple to fix with practice.Second, he had me do a lap or two with a kick board. At this point he realized that my kick was not very good (it provides just a minor amount of actual forward motion). I had always heard that runners typically had "bad kicks" and he confirmed that. Once we get some of the other big issues under control, we will work on some stretching exercises, etc. to try to get my ankles in the correct position to actually provide forward motion, rather that just stirring up the water.Then we focused on "catch-up" drills. These force to you focus on your stroke, and only one stroke at a time. This was really enlighting to me, as I had never done these before. I had gotten very good at swimming, and doing it slowly, carefully, and without a lot of wasted motion - but somehow I had gotten the concept from TI that I was supposed to "grab" the water and pull my arm through. The coach used this drill (and one other one called the drowning drill) to demonstrate a different technique. Basically, the concept is to feel your stroke, and reposition your hand/arm to maximize resistance. When this is done correctly (as I did about 5% of the strokes) your shoulders get a real workout.Additionally, the coach convinced me to feel that resistance, and push against it. He encouraged me to push hard on the stroke, all the way through exit, to increase both fitness and speed. Amazingin, when I was able to hit the strokes correctly, and push correctly, It worked - I was moving faster through the water than I had ever done before (I could tell by watching the little tiles at the bottom of the pool). He also kept track of my strokes (which I can never seem to count that high) and told me that I actually had several lengths that I had a stroke count of 16 or 17. Previously, I had never been under 23 or 24.At the end of the session, I swam 4 laps using the new techniques. This left me completely frigging exhausted. Previously I had trained my body to be very conservative when swimming to minimize output order to swim farther, and with less thrashing action. What that did was teach me to swim a long distance, with minimal output. The new techniques will have a steep learning curve, and my upper body is going to have a rough few weeks getting accustomed to the new stresses and strains I am now putting on it. Bottom line, this was probably the best $25 I have ever spent. I can't wait to get back to the pool and reinforce some of the things we discussed. I will probably get together with him again in about 2 weeks, and see if we can fine-tune some of the stroke issues.Thanks for listening, I give you all an update next time we get together.Dennis

Great to hear that you had such a good experience with your new coach.  It souunds to me like he is focused on generating more power from your stroke rather than swimming more efficiently though.  All those things you worked on are important...catch, pull, kick...but they are typically something you focus on after fixing some of the basics like balance, body rotation, hand entry, and extension.  Did you tell him you are a triathlete?  I'm not sure I agree with his asessment of your sideways kick.  You will generate the same amount of thrust kicking on your side (TI sweet spot drills) as your front....as long as the mechanics of your kick don't change between the two positions.  I don't think it's possible to have p[roper body rotation without your legs rotating also.  It sounds like you coach just doesn't put as much emphasis on things like body rotation and efficiency.  Regardless, you'll definitely see improvements in your speed.  I would just be a litle concerned about the amount of energy you are using to generate that speed.  You said it yourself, you were exhausted after a few laps with the new technique.  Now imaging doing 20 laps like that and then heading off for your bike and run.

Good morning, Joel,To answer your question, yes, we did discuss that I am training for triathlons. I probably didn't give all the details of our discussions, in order to not sound like I was bragging - the coach was very impressed with my balance, head positon, and general mechanics of swimming - apparently TI did a great job there getting me to perform the basics correctly. Our overall goal is to reduce my stroke count (currently around 24) down to around 13. Once I get strong enough physically to maintain the more powerful strokes, then we plan further refining my technique, to maximize efficiency.Keep in mind this was my first lesson - I'm sure he saw lots of things that needed to be fixed, but he probably wanted to not overwhelm me the first time out of the gate.Now, looking back, the best analagy I can think of would be a bike rider, that only rides on the flat, at 12 miles per hour. He could ride that 12 miles per hour all day, but if you put him on a hill or forced him to go faster his body would revolt initially. I think that is the point where I am at now - I have to retrain my body that swimming requires more effort. Just like hill climbing on a bike, it is hard at first, but it should get easier with each hill that is climbed.Thanks for the comments, talk to you later,Dennis

Well that certainly makes a difference if he already thought your balance and such were looking good.  I was concerned that he was kind of old-school and just went right to work trying to make you power through the water by generating more force with a stronger catch and pull.  I still find that my shoulders get tired easily when I really catch and pull properly...it's not something I could maintain for 20-30min at this point.