So You Think You Can't Swim? — 8 Things I’ve Learned About Swimming This Year
One year ago my swimming regimen consisted of floating in the lake/ocean/pool, getting back to my kayak after cooling off in the river, and the occasional shower.
In the past year, I have gone from never swimming a lap to completing a half-Ironman and training for a full 140.6 (86 days away, but who’s counting). Of the three disciplines, running is the bane of my existence, biking is my best of the three, and swimming has become, by far, my favorite of the triathlon events.
Once you figure out how to do it, it’s easy. The best part about the swim compared to the other disciplines is that nothing hurts (I’m not including pain from any pre-existing injuries). Other than my lungs occasionally getting tired I never seem to have any pain in the swim.
On the bike your legs get burned out, your back hurts from the leaning over for 112 miles, your shoulders get sore, and don’t even get me started on the issues in the nether regions.
The run is hell! I mean it. On my dying day, if I am judged to be unworthy of spending eternity in the presence of the divine then my damnation will certainly consist of constant running. I find running to be one of the worst things I do. I keep injuring myself. I am not fast. My feet hurt. Other than the burned calories, and the fact that doing it helps me accomplish my goal of becoming an Ironman, I find no joy in participating in the exercise.
Dat swim doe……
To me the swim is peaceful, it is great exercise, and best of all it is pain-free.
I love the swim.
Ironically the swim is the discipline that keeps most people from trying a triathlon. Almost everyone I’ve talked to has said some version of the following, “I like to run, and I used to bike, but I don’t think I could ever swim that long.”
I didn’t know this at first, but it really is not that hard. Once you learn a few of the basics, swimming can become an awesome part of your workout regimen; even if you are not planning on participating in any kind of competition.
So without further ado, the following is a list of eight things I have learned this past year about swimming on my journey to completing the full Ironman.
1. Kicking Is NOT Necessary
One of the first things I was taught in swim class as a child was how to put my face under the water and kick. The teacher would tell us to hold onto the wall and practice kicking. Or, they would put us on a boogie board and tell us to kick our way across the pull.
Now, I hardly ever kick.
Yes, if you kick you will be faster. However, one of the fundamental assumptions you should know about my swim strategy is that
I am not currently concerned with speed. I know I am not going to win my age group (at least not on this first attempt — I’m coming for you Kona). Right now I am concerned with being able to do the exercise for the distnace required. In the shorter distance triathlons I will kick more, but I’ll save that for a different post.
If you are starting out trying to learn how to swim as an exercise kicking is not necessary. In fact, I’d suggest that trying to kick like my teachers taught me in kindergarten may actually impede your beginning efforts at distance swimming.
Our muscles require oxygen to function. Our legs are the biggest muscles we use. Therefore they monopolize the majority of our oxygen intake. If we take our legs out of the equation we can conserve more oxygen and energy, which will allow us to swim further for longer periods of time before getting fatigued.
Instead of kicking, I do a short flutter. Every time I rotate my body to glide (which we will talk about in a few minutes), my legs stay straight and give a slight flutter that emminates from the hips so that my hips and torso can rotate to the opposite side.
I let my arms, my torso, and my hips do almost all of the work. In doing so, I (1) do not constantly feel out of breath, and (2) I conserve my leg muscles for the following disciplines in the triathlon.
2. Down Not Out
Though I learned most of what I know about swimming from my mentors, and by trial and error, I am in no means an expert. Neither am I the first person to swim this way. I have been swimming for almost a year and a half now. However, unbeknownst to me at the outset of my efforts, most of the techniques I use are all part of a swim form called Total Immersion Swimming (or TI). A few weeks ago I learned about TI from Tim Ferris in his book “The Four Hour Chef.” In the book he describes how he went from hating swimming, to practically becoming a fish by using many of the techniques I also employ.
Down not out is a perfect example of something I’ve been doing this whole time that Tim, and the instructors of TI, articulate very well.
When we perform a swim stroke, the natural inclination is to reach all the way out in front of our heads and pull back the complete length of our torso. Though this works, it is not the most efficient way to swim. Again, you can swim fast by doing this and a combination of kicking; but you will get exhausted quickly.
My preferred swim stroke is to enter the water with a slightly open flat palm right above the top of my head (some prefer between the ear and the top of the head), with my elbow almost at 50-degree angle. My hand then extends underwater on the same trajectory past my face and out in front of my body roughly 1 to 1.5 feet under water.
Thinking down at an angle instead of an outward reach provides ample amount of propulsion with less water resistance that leads to muscle fatigue.
3. Glide…Glide…Glide…Glide
The glide is the key to the whole thing.
You want to think about your swim less as strokes, and more as a series of connecting glides.
As you arm is extending out in front of your body you want to turn your head, torso, and hips in the opposite direction of your arm (i.e., if your right arm is extended your face, torso, and hips should be facing the left wall, and vice versa). During this turn, you want to try to keep you body straight, so as to extend the length of the glide.
Another tip, try to keep your head underwater, and if you can, aim your eyes in the direction of your feet. This will help make you more hydrodynamic and help extend the duration of your glide.
Below is a video demonstrating the Total Immersion swim style. Whereas I do almost all the same movements, my hand enters the water closer to my head than the man in the video. Be sure to check out between minutes one and two to see the underwater video of him doing the body rotation and leg flutter.
4. Ambi-Breathing Is Optional
Once again I am not a swim coach. I am not trying to tell you how you have to swim, or even that the way I do it is the best. These are just observations I have learned over the past year.
One of the realizations that took me the longest time to come to grips with is that I am not an ambi-breather.
Like Ben Stiller in the movie Zoolander, I can not turn both ways. Well, at least I cannot breathe in both directions. Right now I still breath every other stroke, and it is always on the right. When I first started out, I tried really hard to breathe on the left and breathe every third stroke. However, it just felt too awkward, and I could never get a good rhythm while doing it.
I realize that learning how to breathe on both sides will likely make me a better and faster swimmer, but I am not there yet.
Triathlon is a three-discipline sport, which means I am only swimming two days a week, three at the max. Right now I solely focused on getting my total distance. In the off-season I may try to work on my breathing technique. For now, I feel most comfortable only breathing from one side. And it is working just fine. I can now swim two miles non-stop, breathing every other stroke, all from the right. I am swimming right at 1:50min/100 meters, which isn’t setting any records, but is not too bad in my book.
4. I Hate Drills
Warning: Swim coaches, and people who are much better than me at swimming skip this part — it will just make you mad.
This is an example of what most people’s swim workouts look like
10 min choice swim
6 min kick (:30 FAST!, :30 easy, repeat)
20×50:
#1–5 Catch-up w/stick or single paddle on :50
#6–10 25 right arm/25 left arm on :55
#11–15 25 scull/25 swim on :60
#16–20 25 non-free/25 free on :55
5×100 on 1:40 (50 kick/50 swim)
3×400 pull w/:20 rest (3/5 breathing pattern by 50)
12×25 w/fins on :30 (1–6 underwater kick, 7–12 FAST!)
400 choice with fins
*4200 total*
This is an example of my workout.
Swim 3000 yards
That’s it.
Not the most conventional, and I am sure a swim coach would be appalled and tell me that I’m not getting the same type of workout everyone else is. But when I am in a triathlon I will not have a pool buoy between my legs, paddles on my hands, or a boogie board to do tombstone drills (which are my least favorite btw).
Sure, I will do drill workouts every now and then, either when I am with a group or if my wife tells me that’s what I am doing. I just never seem to find them super helpful — and I hate them.
I am improving my swim times, my stroke, and my lung capacity all by simply swimming until I’m done.
You may love drills, or find them super helpful. I do not. And if you love them I do not think any less of you, so I hope you won’t think any less of me for not doing them.
5. How To Be Alone With My Thoughts
I am an extrovert. Excuse me let me rephrase. I am an EXTREME extrovert.
By that, I mean on the Myers-Briggs personality test with zero being in the middle between extroverted and introverted, I am 95% extroverted.
Alone time is not my thing.
When I spend a whole day in my office by myself, I come home more tired than if I had of been running all over work for eight hours straight. Being with people gives me energy.
This was a problem when I swam, because you cannot talk to anyone.
That is the one (and I mean one) redeeming quality of running, you can at least give a passing runner the “hey how are ya.” Not in swimming. It is just you, a pair of goggles, a tight garment that makes you almost look like a Ken doll, and a hole filled with water.
At first, it was miserable. Boring. A place where anxiety built up because I was alone with my thoughts.
Then over time it began to change. It became a place where I could process my day. Where I could think about what was happening tomorrow. I began to pray while I swam. I worked on sermon outlines in my brain. Even planned our evening meals.
I never thought I liked being alone with my thoughts, possibly because I rarely ever tried it for more than a minute at a time. Now I find myself yearning for that time. So much so that I now meditate and sit in mindful contemplation every morning.
Swimming is no longer something I dread, but a place where I am forced to think reflectively. Once you have your swim stroke down, that’s about all there is to do — think.
7. Flip Turning Is Not As Easy As It Looks
I still cannot do it. These Olympic swimmers on the T.V. make it look so dang easy. They are like graceful acrobats in the water, gliding headfirst into a wall and then making this fluid turn and twist at the last minute (pun intended).
I on the other hand look like a one-year-old who found a piece of candy on the ground, and upon bending over to pick it up did an accidental forward roll and commenced to cry.
I do not know how they do it.
Sometimes when I get close to the wall I will try to do the flip only to realize I am not close enough to the wall and start flailing like a newborn dauphin learning to swim. Also, every time I try to flip I get enough water up my nose that they have to turn the hose on and start refilling the pool.
So I just don’t.
I get to the end of the pool, grab the wall and turn. This is actually one of the fatal flaws of my swimming because it is teaching my body to expect a momentary rest and extra breath every 25 yards….which does not really happen in the open water. So one thing I have been doing recently is trying to turn around before I get to the wall. This gives me a little extra workout and also forces me to work on my startup muscles.
Perhaps one day I will be able to flip turn with the elegance of a water angel. For now, though, I will just stick to my super lame turnarounds.
8. It Is Not That Hard
It really isn’t. For all the talk of technique, glides, and strokes, it really comes down to the same thing everything else does.
Practice.
The more you swim, the easier it is, and the better you become.
Brianna and I have a rule in our house that we cannot say we don’t like something unless we have actually tried it.
She knows she does not like scallops because she ate one.
I know I do not like bubble baths because I tried one.
I hope you will not say that you don’t like swimming, or cannot swim until you try it. Swimming is a great exercise. Also, almost every town has at least one pool — most towns have multiple pools.
Once you get the basics, it is really not that hard.
Don’t be afraid to ask people at the pool for tips. I have found the swimming, biking, and running communities all to be incredibly friendly and willing to offer help. There are also a ton of videos on youtube, and books out there than can help you learn how to advance your swimming abilities.
So find a pool, a lake, or an ocean. Get out there and swim.
