… as the great philosopher, Yogi Berra once said. Walking into the Joe Perkins Natatorium on the campus of SMU last weekend for the Republic of Texas Masters swim meet, I felt like I was walking into a time capsule. Not much had changed there in the 43 years since I swam my very first AAU National Championships in 1967. Jim Montgomery, a teammate from the 1976 Men’s Olympic Swimming Team, and head coach of the Dallas Area Masters Swim Team, had invited me to give a clinic to the swimmers.
There are certain events in our life that remain vivid in our memories. What we were doing when we watched in horror the events of 9/11 unfold before us, where we were when JFK was shot (for those of us old enough to remember) and for me, sitting in the bleachers awestruck over Mark Spitz breaking American records in this very same pool. It was as if it had happened yesterday, and frankly, other than moving the blocks from the shallow end to the deep end, the place looked identical.
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What does that mean, exactly? To many coaches, swimming efficiently is analogous to distance per stroke. But that is not quite right. Swimming efficiency is really more appropriately defined by the body’s speed in the water versus the energy expended to reach that speed. Here are some examples of what I mean.
In the 200 meter freestyle, former world record holder Pieter Van den Hoogenband would take 38 or 39 strokes per 50 meters, while Ian Thorpe or Michael Phelps would take around 34 strokes per 50 meters. Obviously, Thorpe and Phelps are getting greater distance per stroke, but are they also more efficient?
In the 50 meter freestyle, world record holder Cesar Cielo would take about 34 strokes while former world record holder, Eamon Sullivan would take about 38 strokes for the same distance. Same question.
When we examine efficiency more closely, we see that it really boils down to the same three physical properties that govern all of our swimming techniques, laws of drag, motion and inertia. At The Race Club, we refer often to these three fundamentals. Ultimately, our swimming speed is determined not just by technique, but by fitness, power, mental toughness, fatigue, among other things, so we cannot say that efficiency is based on technique alone. But if we assume that we have a given level of fitness, power, mental toughness, etc at any moment in time, our technique then really becomes the key factor in determining our efficiency.
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In The Three Styles of Freestyle, former Race Club coach Mike Bottom describes three distinctly different techniques that are frequently used today by top freestylers. One, called hip-driven freestyle, depends on having a strong kick and results in a longer hold of the arm/hand in the front lift position, and a larger rotation or counter-rotation of the hip to generate more of a stabilizing force. This technique is used more commonly in distance swimmers who rely more on their legs to sustain speed. Examples of hip-driven freestlyers include Grant Hackett, Ous Mellouli, Ian Thorpe, and Katie Hoff. A shoulder-driven technique relies on a higher stroke rate with a more immediate catch in front in order to sustain the speed. Shoulder-driven distance freestylers would include David Davies, Ryan Cochrane, Kieren Perkins and Federica Pellegrini. The third technique coach Bottom describes is the body or core-driven technique, which he also teaches with a straight-armed recovery. This technique teaches a symmetrical rotation of the body, connecting both the hips and shoulders uniformly and equally in motion.
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When you think of summer swim-training camps, what may come to mind is lots of campers crowded into lanes, assistant coaches or summer coaches supervising, appearances from a few swimming stars and a week of hard work.
At The Race Club summer training camps, we want to introduce you to a new concept in summer camps. First, all of your coaching sessions will be with either Christie Shefchunas, head coach of the Univ of Miami, or three-time Olympian, Gary Hall, Sr., technical director and coach of The Race Club. Assistant coaches are there to assist, not to coach you.
Second, we will expose you to several different types of training. In swimming, you will learn aerobic conditioning, lactate training, cross training and anaerobic training. You will also learn methods of strength training, mental training, nutrition and recovery, all vital to achieve your maximum potential. You will see great videos and study some of the fastest swimmers in the world.
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1) Everyone needs help.
No one has a perfect stroke. Not even Olympians. In fact, far from it. Everyone needs help on technique; partly because most coaches view you from above, not below the water, and partly because in a crowded workout, no one has time to focus on your technique. Once you begin to understand the best technique for you, you will need to work on it every day.
2) You can’t help yourself.
Trying to teach yourself proper swimming techniques is not a good idea. While swimming, what you do and what you think you are doing are very different. Someone who understands stroke mechanics and the subtle differences between good and bad technique needs to evaluate and help you.
3) You likely need more help than just swimming technique.
Chances are we can help you in more ways than just by improving your technique. How about nutrition, strength training, mental training and recovery? All of them can help make you a faster swimmer, and they are all important.
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In breaststroke or backstroke, breathing is not an issue. One will take a breath each stroke, because that is the fastest way to swim those strokes. (Yes, you old-timers who still swim breaststroke sprints with your head down, it IS faster to swim breaststroke by elevating your shoulders and getting your head streamlined under water). But what about butterfly and freestyle, when are we supposed to breathe then?
Breathing in butterfly or freestyle requires either lifting the head and/or shoulders or turning the head to the side, both of which cause us to slow our speed. The reasons may be different, however.
Lifting the head in fly in the front breath always results in some elevation of the shoulders, no matter how flat one tries to remain. The best butterflyers are very good at letting their necks do the lifting and keeping their shoulders flat on the water. Nonetheless, each front breath results in some elevation of the body angle and an increase in drag. As a result, most front-breathing flyers will choose not to breathe every stroke, opting to get a bit of surge in speed when they hold their breath. In the 100 meters, breathing cycles vary from every stroke to two up, one down, to every other to down two and up once. The breathing pattern will often change on the second 50 to include more breaths.
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Technique is important in nearly every sport; golf, tennis, baseball, basketball, track….all the way down the list. For one big reason, the relative importance of good technique in the sport of swimming seems to outweigh all other sports. That reason is water.
Because water is a totally different medium than air, the effects, good or bad, of stroke technique are magnified. Take, for example, the fundamentals of fast swimming, which are governed by the physical laws of drag, motion and inertia. At the speeds of human performance, drag forces are much greater in water than they are in air. Since our bodies are partly in air and water while swimming, there is a third component of drag, called surface drag that is not relevant to land sports.
When the human hand first touches the water after the racing dive, the body is traveling about 15 mph. Yet within one second, even in the most streamlined body position we can manage, our speed diminishes to about 3.5 mph under water. The reason is drag. You can imagine how long it would take you to reach a complete stop if you held your arms out to the side while diving in. Not long.
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Many people feel that the introduction of the high-tech, full-body suits did more harm than good to the sport of swimming. At the very least, they devalued the World Record and perhaps worse, they erased some records that might have stood a long while otherwise. If there is one thing we should all have learned from this experience, it is the relative importance of fluid mechanics in swimming.
Think about it. 180 or so World Records did not fall in 1 ½ years due to some miraculous breakthrough in training, nor in nutrition (even banned performance-enhancers would be hard pressed to match that). Nor is it conceivable that so many swimmers got faster in such a short period of time for any other reason but one. The new suits reduce drag….significantly.
There is no doubt about that. Research has shown that the suits reduce both friction and pressure drag, just by changing the material and compressing the body inside it. I don’t think anyone would have predicted the dramatic effect these suits would have on times when they first appeared. What we now have learned, if we didn’t appreciate it before, is that for the human body in water, little changes can make huge differences in drag….and speed. The lesson to be learned is to not focus on a better suit to make the human body more streamlined, but how to reduce drag on the human body without using the high-tech suits. In other words, we need to focus much more on improving stroke technique to reduce drag, not just on improving aerobic fitness and power.
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Well, after a 2 year layoff from competition I donned the competitive swim suit again this summer for a couple of great meets; the Senior Games at Stanford and the Master’s Nationals at Indy. This time, putting on the competitive suit was more challenging as 3 or 4 people assisted me in squeezing into my new Speedo Lazer. Was all of that effort getting into today’s latest swim technology worth it? Of course; even if the suit developed a nice hole in it by the fourth day and even if the new suits will be banned by Jan 1 next year, it was fun while it lasted. The question is will they put an asterisk next to the three World records I set? Perhaps they should, but after 43 World records were set at the World Championship earlier, what is a World record worth these days anyway?
I don’t usually compete every year, saving those efforts for special occasions. This year, I had a compelling reason. Four of my former teammates from Indiana convinced me to help try to win a national championship for Doc Counsilman, our legendary coach who passed away a few years ago. Turns out, all four of them bailed out at the last minute for various reasons, leaving us with the formidable task of beating local rival Indy Y Swim fit. I don’t want to name names, but where the H____ were you Charlie, Brock, Bruce and Tommy? Without you we felt like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid attacking the Bolivian army!
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This week, America lost one of its greatest swim coaches, Flip Darr. Though you may not have heard of him, any coach who has been around for a while knew about Flip. In the 70’s and 80’s Flip was responsible for putting many athletes on our Olympic Teams, including Shirley Babashoff, Steve and Bruce Furniss, Steve Gregg and John Mykannen. He is the coach who got me to Mexico City as a young 16 year old and again to Munich four years later. He was an extraordinary coach with a style that was uniquely Flip’s.
The first day I met Flip I was a despondent 15 year old who had just been told he could not transfer High Schools to swim for the great coach, Jon Urbanchek at Anaheim High. Flip had just been hired at my school and, frankly, I had never heard of him and had little confidence that he would ever turn me into an Olympian. He quickly changed that.
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