The Race Club Column

Why You Need to Take Thunderbolt... Every Day

2008-12-03T10:23:00.000-08:00

by Gary W. Hall, M.D.

If you want to swim at your very best, there are two very good reasons why you should be taking Thunderbolt daily. They both have to do with Thunderbolt's primary ingredient, ATP.

You may have heard of ATP (Adenosine Triphosphate). Cellular functions of the human body, including muscle contraction, depend on it. This high-energy molecule is the equivalent of premium fuel for our muscles. Without it, our muscles don't work. With it, we generate power to swim fast. So how do we get more of this important 'fuel' into our bodies? There are only two ways. Our bodies either manufacture it or we ingest it.

Inside our bodies, ATP is generated in three ways. Each of the three ways of generating ATP is time dependent. The earliest available ATP in the muscle comes from the ATP that is already available within the cell. Once physical exercise begins, this ATP works instantly. Creatine Phosphate is also stored in the cells and is readily converted to ATP. In either form, with maximum exertion, all of the available cellular ATP is used up in less than thirty seconds.

The next available ATP comes from the process called anaerobic respiration. In an oxygen-breathing mammal, anaerobic respiration is a stopgap measure to produce ATP while waiting for oxygen to come to the rescue. It is not a very efficient way to make ATP, but during maximal exertion, after we've used up all the available ATP, and until more oxygen arrives on the scene, it is the only system we have for about a minute or so to produce ATP. How inefficient is it? Without oxygen, for each molecule of glucose (required to produce ATP) we manufacture 2 molecules of ATP. With oxygen, one molecule of glucose will produce about 30 molecules of ATP. In other words, ATP is produced about 15 times more efficiently with oxygen than without it. What is worse, without oxygen, a byproduct, called Lactic Acid, is produced. Too much Lactic Acid will cause the muscles to tighten and reduce their power, otherwise known as 'the monkey on the back' syndrome.

Finally, once oxygen becomes available to the muscle and remains available to the muscle, ATP is produced in the most abundant and efficient manner (aerobic respiration... also known as the Krebs Cycle). Swimmers who can continuously deliver very high amounts of oxygen to the muscle during maximum exercise have what is called a high VO2 Max. These are the most conditioned and/or the most capable endurance athletes.

One reason for taking Thunderbolt capsules daily, from which the ATP is readily absorbed into your bloodstream, is to store as much ATP in your cells as possible. Doing so will avoid building up Lactic Acid while waiting for the aerobic pathway to kick in. So far as we know, there are no side effects from taking too much ATP, yet the cells will only hold so much. Having extra ATP in the blood, however, has another benefit.

At least one study has shown that ATP in the blood will cause an increase in blood flow to the muscles (peripheral blood flow). Of course, the more oxygen-carrying red blood cells that can get to the muscles, in theory, the higher the VO2 Max and the less time or need to produce Lactic Acid. So the ATP in Thunderbolt provides you with two advantages during competition or training and helps you perform at your best.

Thunderbolt should also do well in combination with our Race Club product, liquid Oxygen. When you take the liquid Oxygen prior to competition, your blood will be saturated maximally with oxygen within seconds, preparing you to race with less need to breathe. Taking Thunderbolt and our liquid Oxygen in succession, the extra oxygen should get to your muscles that much faster.

Finally, just to put a little extra kicker in the Thunderbolt formula, we added three of the most important amino acids. These are not just building blocks for muscle protein but are also precursors of dopamine that helps keep you stay alert and ready to race.

What all of this means is that Thunderbolt should help you swim faster by providing more immediate muscle fuel and more oxygen to manufacture more fuel for your muscles. Thunderbolt should also help your recovery by restoring your fuel supply quickly. Unlike with some products that take a long time before any effect is noticed, you should immediately feel and see the difference Thunderbolt makes. Order it today on line and let us know how it is working for you.

Race Club Vitamins

2008-10-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

What's been going on with the Race Club? Good question. Since the Olympic Trials in July I have taken time away from swimming, and a break from all things swimming related since Beijing. That means I have not been checking in on the message boards.

First I'll let you know what's been going on with me. It wasn't an easy thing to do, breaking away from the habit of checking the boards a dozen or more times a day. I needed a vacation. It had been close to three years since my last vacation.

My wife Elizabeth and I toured the Pacific Northwest with our two kids. It was very nice.

Race Club Vitamins and Supplements

During the break hands have not been idle. The Race Club is producing it's own line of vitamins and supplements.

It seems nearly every company represented in a Vitamin Shoppe or GNC is either owned by or endorsed by a body builder. Bodybuilding would be the dirtiest sport in the world, if it were a sport.

I am a biased swimmer, it's true, but if given a choice between a body builder brand or a brand developed by a group of tested Olympic athletes I'm going with the non-body building brand. I think that a lot of other people would too.

Resources for tested athletes to find out what is okay to take, why you should be taking vitamins and supplements, and how they help you are not readily available or even wholly reliable. Unfortunately, every question that I have ever asked the anti doping agency regarding a product has been replied to with a standard "Take at your own risk" automated response.

Of all the swimmers that are taking a protein supplement how many do you think can tell the difference between a whey protein and the other kind of regular protein? Most know that protein is supposed to help with recovery but how many know exactly how it helps? What's the difference between a very good whey protein and a not so good whey protein?

Protein is perhaps one of the most commonly used supplements among swimmers yet the lack of answers among those taking it is shocking. When newer products like Dara Torres' amino acids (another protein) are commonly talked about where do you go to find out about it? Is it legal? Is it safe?

Rather than stand by and mope about the fact that unscrupulous athletes are cheating the Race Club has decided to get involved to offer clean athletes the best options when choosing a line of supplements that will assist you in achieving your own goals in sport.

You don't need to be paranoid to think that there are performance-enhancing substances (plural) being abused in sport (our beloved sport of swimming too). Using legal supplements is our only way to make up some of the lost ground the cheaters have on us.

The Race Club will create an online resource for those that are interested in taking vitamins and supplements.

Today every athlete should be taking supplements. We want to offer our input, gathered from the experience of many Olympic athletes. We want to share the formulas that we have used and seen results from.

We are pleased to announce that our first original formula will be available in the coming weeks. Thunderbolt is a pre-workout/pre-competition formula. We encourage you to give it a try and tell us what you think.

The Elite Team

Mike Bottom decided to leave us for a better offer that we could not match from the University of Michigan. We wish him and the Wolverine team well. The announcement came about three weeks before Olympic Trials.

Mike's departure left us with the problem of finding a suitable replacement for our elite program. We have now narrowed down our search to a couple of unbelievably talented coaches. We will be announcing our plans for the elite team soon.

When we resume the elite team we will be headquartered out of the University of Miami pool, a move that we are very excited about.

Your friend in swimming,
Gary Hall Jr.

Thick as a Brick: Part Two

2008-09-15T10:55:00.000-07:00

By Gary Hall Sr.

The other day I was talking to Budd Termin, who coached at University at Buffalo and is one of the most technically saavy coaches in our sport. He told me about a talk he had given in Portugal entitled Simultaneous Recordings of Velocity and Video During Swimming. He reported for the first time his discovery that all breastrokers come to a complete stop when they bring their arms forward on the pullout. What? A complete stop? Even Brenden Hansen or Katijima? Can it be?

I couldn't wait to get to practice the next day and see for myself. Though I didn't have the sensitive velocity testing device or camera that Budd has, I could focus clearly on the small black tiles on the line on the bottom of the pool. Each time I brought my hands forward, no matter how tight to my body, no matter how hard I pulled back or thrust with a good dolphin kick, I saw the same thing; the little tile squares stopped moving. Budd was right. Wow, we really are bricks.

One of my new hobbies in the Keys is Paddleboarding. Standing upright on a large surfboard, I reach forward and dig into the water with a single paddle and pull the board forward. The exercise uses similar upper body muscles to swimming and believe or not, I can get going pretty fast down Tavernier Creek. But if I ever want to stop, I merely stick the paddle into the water and presto, I come to a dead stop. So if the Paddle Board comes to a dead stop so quickly, why should it surprise us that our brick-like human bodies do the same when we drag our arms forward on the breastroke pullout? It shouldn't. Then I had a revelation.

I could not help but marvel (like everyone else) at Michael Phelps accomplishments in Beijing. But why can he make the best of the world in the 200 freestyle look like age-groupers? How does he do it? OK, there is not a simple answer. Yes, he has a super long torso and yes, he has Lance Armstrong-like aerobic capacity. But is there more? I think so. Michael Phelps has managed to make his body less like a brick than anyone else. He has mastered the art of minimizing resistance and drag of the human in water. And I am not just talking about his streamline off the wall or head position (read my blog Thick as a Brick from a few months ago) or his Lazer swim suit. One of the things I was most intrigued about was the height of his elbows on the underwater pull in freestyle.

Of course, we have all heard our coaches preaching at us for years to keep our elbows high on the underwater pull. Until Budd told me about the zero-velocity underwater pullout, I never really understood why. I always thought that having the elbows high put our arms into a stronger position for the pull. Wrong. Keeping our elbows high doesn't put us into any biomechanically better position for a stronger pull. It puts our arm into a position of less drag, less resistance.

Years ago, my coach at Indiana University, Doc Counsilman, was the first to film the position of the hand in relation to the water during the underwater pull. He made a startling discovery and that was that the hand really didn't move forward or backward in the water during the pull, but rather side to side, like a sculling motion. We know that the human swims through the water at a top speed of just over 2 meters per second. That means that the hand is moving backward (in reference to the body) at the same speed to result in a net-zero velocity in the water. Yet we know that the hand is attached to the body by the arm at the shoulder. The shoulder is moving in the water at 2 meters per second and the hand is at zero. That means every part of the remainder of the arm is also moving forward in the water with a velocity that diminishes from 2 meters per second at the top near the shoulder down to near zero at the wrist near the hand. But the important thing to remember is that except for the hand, all parts of the arm are moving forward in the water. Anything that moves forward in the water creates drag, and for anything non-streamlined like the human body or arm, pressure drag is the most significant (as opposed to friction and there is no surface drag on the arm while it is under water). Now let's go back to the Paddleboard.

The Paddleboard is a relatively streamlined object, especially when compared to the human body. It offers very little resistance in the water as I churn my way down the creek. Yet, even though the board is streamlined, when I stick that fat paddle in the water and don't pull back with it, boom, I come to a dead stop. The motionless paddle is moving forward in the water (because the paddleboard is) and the drag on the paddle brings everything to an abrupt halt. So if that happens on a streamlined Paddleboard, you can imagine what would happen if we stuck out a paddle from our brick-like human bodies. You guessed right… the same as the breastroke pullout; zero velocity. The human arm is not shaped a lot differently than that paddle. It is pretty big and long and if it is pointed in the wrong direction, ie down instead of forward, boom, we start to slow down. It acts like a motionless paddle in the water.

All of this buildup is to point out that the reason Michael Phelps keeps his elbows super high so that at least the upper part of his arm, the part of his arm that is traveling the fastest in the water, and the part of his arm that most resembles a paddle, will be pointing forward, not down, and creating minimal drag. He is not to doing it to gain some mechanical advantage for the pull. He is being less like a brick and so that given the same power as anyone else who might drop the elbow down, he will go faster.

Thanks Budd. Now I get it.

The Three Styles of Freestyle

2008-09-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

OK. I know you are not supposed to fall in love with your own product, but after watching this newly released Race Club DVD for the third time, I can't help it. I love this DVD. Let me tell you why.

First, you get to see first hand what one of the world's leading sprint coaches, Mike Bottom means when he defines the three different ways one needs to use the body to motor down the pool. It was Mike who first coined the term 'three styles of freestyle' in a lecture at the ASCA convention last year. If you missed that talk, here is your chance to not only hear it, but also see what he is talking about with some of the fastest swimmers on the planet. And, of course, you will learn when to apply each style of freestyle to your own race.

Next is the photography. This is not the usual underwater video stuff. This is slow motion underwater 16 mm film, converted to DVD, the likes of which has never been seen before. You want to learn how to hold water? Check out Mike Cavic, Nathan Adrian and Gary Jr at 150 frames per second in color! You can count the number of air bubbles on their hands (not too many, by the way). Want to learn how to do the starting dive correctly? How about slow motion shots taken from below and above the water with Agata Korc or George Bovell coming right over the top of the camera. Breathtaking! And there are plenty of other above/below water shots too. Just watching the out-of-the-box dryland routines is worth the price of the DVD.

Besides the technical quality of the DVD, what I really love is that it spares the boring, clinicy stuff. It is 45 minutes of pure entertainment... some of it Florida Keys fun and all of it artistically done. The primary producer is Manny Miranda of NYC who is one of the most respected fashion video producers in New York (check out www.mannymiranda.tv to see why). The blond guy running out of the house with the stuffed fish at the end is Richard Hall (son #2), the co-producer who did all of the editing plus more.

Finally, I have to say that in my opinion the music makes the DVD, and this one has all ORIGINAL scores! That is right. The music on this DVD has never been released before and was scored by Honest John Odyssey and Obskuria just for the theme of the DVD! Wow. I am trying to think of another swimming DVD that has all original music. Hmmmm.

My hat is off to Manny, Richard, Mike Bottom, Bebe Hall (who shot some of the video) and of course the main players, The Race Club swimmers. Check it out soon!

- Gary Hall, Sr.

Busting 10 Myths About The Race Club

2008-05-28T16:43:00.000-07:00

By Gary Hall, Sr.

Myth # 1: The Race Club is interested in only world-class swimmers.

The Race Club takes pride in training some of the fastest swimmers of the world (the World Team), but we offer three types of programs. The first is The Race Club Camp. This is a one-day, two-day, three-day or six day program designed for any level or age of swimmer and customized to fit his or her needs. The second is our Level II program. This program is integrated into our World Team program, yet is designed for the high level swimmer, whether high school, college, post-graduate or master, who wants to take his or her game to another level. The length of this program is flexible and can be arranged for weeks, months or years. The third is the World Team program designed for elite athletes aspiring to be among the best in the world.

Myth # 2: The Race Club trains only sprinters.

OK, we admit our reputation is mostly about sprint training, but we currently have several middle distance swimmers on the World Team, as well as breastrokers, backstrokers and flyers. In fact, Mike Bottom teaches three different types of freestyle, hip-driven, shoulder-driven and body-driven, depending on the distance you want to race. Our campers come from all different backgrounds and ages and have many different goals. Some are triathletes trying to learn the fastest way to get through 2.5 miles of ocean without wasting their legs, while others are age-groupers or masters trying to improve all four strokes. Our focus is to make you better at what you want to do.

Myth # 3: The Race Club trains only men.

Though Mike Bottom was the co-head men's coach at UC Berkeley for many years, he has coached many women in the past and continues to coach women. We currently have one woman on the World Team and one on the level II team. We are looking for more and if you want to know what a great experience it has been for our women (training among some of the most talented and sculpted men in the world), just ask them. Over half of our campers are female.

Myth # 4: The Race Club is a team.

The Race Club is a club, not a team. All Race Club swimmers from anywhere in the world compete for their own club or team or country or else they swim unattached. By being a member of The Race Club, each swimmer shares in our passion and love for the sport of swimming. The World Team is called that simply because it is a team in training, not competition.

Myth # 5: You join The Race Club by invitation only.

Anyone can become a member of The Race Club. By simply wearing an official Race Club hat or suit or shirt (check out all the new Race Club gear), promoting the sport of swimming and sharing in our passion, you become a member. However, by coming to Islamorada in the Florida Keys and experiencing The Race Club camp or level II program, you become a special member of The Race Club. You become part of our family and are assured of having one of the greatest experiences of your life. Recently, we initiated The Race Club Brazil and hope, someday, to offer the same type of Race Club experience in facilities and programs around the world.

Myth # 6: The Race Club Camp is like every other camp out there.

The Race Club Camps are different than most in several aspects. First, we are very hands on (we never have more than 10 campers in any week). We do not believe any coach can effectively analyze the strokes of any swimmer when the pool is full of them. In fact it is hard to do so with more than three or four in the pool at a time. For this reason, we often break our small groups into even smaller ones. Second, we offer the advice of several outstanding coaches, not just one, who are all disciples of the Mike Bottom proven techniques. Depending on your length of stay, you may experience up to four different coaches instruction. Third, we spend a lot of time emphasizing the strength, flexibility and quickness dryland exercises that are essential to optimum performance. Most of these exercises you will never have experienced before. Fourth, we video all of our campers from above and below water and analyze them on deck using Dartfish software by one of our expert coaches. Fifth, we run our camps year round, so you can choose the time convenient for you. Sixth, our camps are designed for all ages, starting around age 7 or so on up. Finally, who else can offer the environment of two outstanding swimming facilities in the beautiful Florida Keys and with one of the world's finest coaching staffs available?

Myth # 7: The Race Club World Team is by invitation only.

Mike Bottom makes the final decision about who trains on The Race Club World Team. He will never coach more than 15 to 20 athletes at any given time. All of the World Team swimmers currently training here are in the top 25 in the world in their specialty event. Some of them were invited to come. Others invited themselves and were accepted. Some train a few weeks or months per year here while others train all year round. We have only asked two swimmers to leave the program (one World Team member and one level II swimmer) and that was purely on the basis of a negative attitude; something we don't tolerate well. All World Team and level II athletes pay training fees.

Myth # 8: The Race Club Camps are too expensive.

When we began The Race Club camps in 2005, we used one high-end hotel and built the price into the camp. The cost of the hotel was far greater than the camp and the entire package was expensive. We have since changed the model so that you can pick your accommodations from a wide range of hotels, from bare bones to luxurious, which makes the entire Race Club experience more affordable. You can also pick the time you want to come, which can mean fewer days of missed work.

Myth # 9: The Race Club experience is a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We have been pleasantly surprised by how many of our campers, level II swimmers and World Team members have come back; many several times. Each time is a unique experience where many fundamentals are relearned or become more natural or instinctive. In fact, most of The Race Club swimmers cannot wait to come back. So if you decide to come down here, do so at your own risk. You will probably be back again soon. But that is our pleasure.

Myth # 10: The Race Club is not supportive of USA Swimming.

The Race Club embraces the Olympic ideals. We believe in training the most motivated and talented athletes together, regardless of where they are from. It is true we have made some foreign swimmers better; some who have won Olympic medals. The Race Club swimmers from America have won 14 Olympic medals (and counting) and some of our foreign athletes helped them achieve those awards. We, like Peter Uberroth, Chairman of the USOC, will welcome athletes from all over the world to train here. It is the Olympic way. We believe staunchly in helping people who want to learn to swim faster or easier, without using performance-enhancing drugs.

Swimming With Your Body

2008-05-17T13:24:00.000-07:00

By Gary Hall Sr.

When Tiger Woods drives a golf ball well over 300 yards, he does so not simply by using or swinging his arms. He uses the power, weight and force of his entire body. It would be easier for him just to use his arms, but by unleashing the transferred power of his hips, core and shoulders moving through swing, the ball travels much further.

It is also easier for us to swim just with our arms and legs, as if they were attached to a surfboard. But our bodies are not surfboards. They behave more like bricks and require a tremendous amount of force to move rapidly through the water. We can generate some force purely from our arms and legs. In fact, one can usually generate enough force this way to get through 10 x 400 meters with short rest and still live to swim another day. This type of flat, paddling, mostly arm-and-leg-driven stroke is what we call the 'survival stroke'. It enables one to survive the long, punishing workouts, but not to swim fast...or at least as fast as one is capable.

To swim really fast, one must use more than the arms and legs. One must transfer the energy of the core of the body, including the shoulders, abdominals and hips into every arm stroke to maximize the power for speed. This does not happen naturally or easily. That's right. It takes more work and more effort to swim fast than slow. I am not talking about just pulling harder or kicking harder. I mean getting the entire body into the act.

So how do we do that? Mostly, swimming freestyle or backstroke with our bodies means rotating our shoulders from a near vertical position above the water on the recovery to a near vertical position below on the under water pull, while keeping the hips relatively flat. However, this rotation is not done slowly or casually. It must be done with force and speed. It must be done with conviction.

I often tell the campers who are learning the shoulder rotation for the first time, that one doesn't rotate the shoulders as if they are a rotisserie chicken on the grill. Rather, one must snap the shoulders from side to side, much like Tiger snaps his shoulders through the swing, following his hips. It is not just the degree of movement of the shoulders, but the speed of the movement of the shoulders that transfers more energy into propulsion. A bullet or torpedo moves down the barrel in a spinning motion and so we too must move down the pool by not turning, but snapping our shoulders from side to side.

Of the three fundamentals of fast swimming, the shoulder rotation is, for many, the most difficult to grasp for two reasons. First, most have been swimming flat like a paddleboard for so long that it seems very odd to be rotating the body. Second, it takes real work and a conscientious effort to swim with the body. Yet, to maximize your power for speed, shoulder rotation is essential.

Here is my favorite drill for freestyle or backstroke to learn how to properly rotate the shoulders. Have one arm outstretched over the head using a sculling motion with the hand. Kick flutter on your side with the other arm at your side but with the shoulder pointing straight up toward the sky or ceiling. Hold this position for at least 6 flutter kicks and with the head tucked down, but think mostly about having the shoulder of the trailing arm pointing straight up. Now take three consecutive freestyle (or backstroke) strokes with each stroke rotating the shoulder back to the vertical position. Now you end up with the opposite arm above your head and can think about getting the trailing shoulder vertical for another 6 kicks. This drill enables you to take the time to think about your shoulder position and to take 3 strokes trying to get the shoulder back into the same position. Once you feel you have this down, swim 2 lengths; the first drilling in this manner and the second swimming with the shoulder rotation, snapping from side to side. Obviously, the faster you swim the less time you have to get your shoulders turned, so the speed of the turn becomes more important. Also remember that the speed transfers more energy.

Another drill is to swim with one arm only, keeping one arm outstretched over the head sculling with the hand, while the other pulls with the shoulder rotating to the vertical on the recovery. One of the reasons I like the straight-arm recovery is that in order to recover with a straight arm, one has to rotate the shoulders to the vertical position. Biomechanically, the arm will not recover with the elbow locked unless the shoulder is rotated vertically. It just won’t work. Yet, once the shoulder is rotated vertically, it is actually easier to recover and creates less stress on the shoulder joint with a straight arm than with a bent elbow. Try it and you will see.

In the gym, put on a pair of boxing gloves and in front of the bag, hold your elbows at shoulder height and with the elbows bent about 45 degrees, hit the bag for one minute by rotating your shoulders from side to side, but not by bending the elbow. Hit it hard, like you are swimming the 50 meters, and rotate the shoulders as far as you can. This drill/exercise teaches speed and will also help strengthen the core muscles to achieve the shoulder rotation.

So now you have learned the 3 fundamentals of fast swimming.

1) Thick as a brick...which means use every trick in the book to help you streamline your not-so-streamlined body...especially keep your head down in freestyle. Way down!
2) Swim on the freeway...which means keep your hand out in front in the power position as long as you can and get them back there pronto! No stop-and-go swimming for you.
3) Swim with your body...which mostly means your shoulders and core, snapping from side to side to help drive you down the pool like Tiger drives his golf ball.

I have also suggested some drills that will help teach you these not-so-obvious fundamentals of fast swimming and will help remind you how to get them back if you should lose them. Do not underestimate the value of these drills to help you. Our World Team swimmers use them every day in practice. So should you.

Of course, the best advice I can give you is come down to Islamorada in the Florida Keys and spend some time with us. It will much easier for you to learn these fundamentals here than at home...and a whole lot more fun! See you soon.

Swimming On the Freeway

2008-04-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

By Gary Hall Sr.

In the first fundamental rule of fast swimming, we learned that though we are shaped more like bricks than fish, the little things we can do to make us behave more like fish (keep our heads down and body aligned, streamline off walls and starts, wearing new technology suits) make a big difference in our speed, even with the same or less amount of energy expended. Now let's focus on the second fundamental rule of fast swimming: swimming on the freeway.

Most people (even kids that don't yet drive) understand that cars get better gas mileage on the freeway than they do around town. We hear it a lot lately, particularly with skyrocketing gas prices. But it is surprising how few people understand why. Doesn't it seem a bit odd that we can get better gas mileage driving 65 miles per hour on the highway than we can, averaging 35 miles per hour in town? Well, any swimmer who has miscalculated the wall on a flip turn and who has extended their legs fully with a mighty force, only to discover nothing but water was there to await their feet, should know exactly why. There are few worse feelings than having to try to build up to race speed from a virtual dead stop. It is bad enough to watch all of your competitors zoom by you with their spring off the wall, but to top it off, now you have to spend soooo much energy getting going again that, well,... there is always another race.

Gas mileage around town is bad because from a dead stop, it takes a great deal of energy (fuel) to get that heavy car going to a decent speed; even more than it takes to keep it going at a higher speed (called inertia). The same is true in swimming.

Remember when I told you that when you dive into the water from a starting block for a split second you are going around 5 miles per hour. Yet, in just 5 seconds (without the help of a kick or pull out), you come to a virtual stop. That means every second in the water from the time you entered you slowed (decelerated) around 1 mile per hour each second. Or in a half a second you slowed 1/2 mile per hour and so on. The point is that we slow down very quickly, unless we do something to maintain our speed. Before we can talk about maintaining our speed in swimming, however, we must first understand where the speed comes from.

Although exactly where the most propulsive power (the power that moves us forward) is generated in swimming has never been proven, it is my belief that it comes from the arms at the beginning of the stroke; what Mike Bottom calls 'shoulder driven' freestyle. Less comes from the arm pull in the middle of the stroke and even less from the end of the stroke. The legs contribute to both lift and propulsion (as do the arms) but contribute less to propulsion than our arms at the beginning of the arm stroke. So if you believe what I have said about the propulsion, then the arm pull, shortly after the hand catch is made under water, shall be called the power position. Again, it is not that we don't generate power from the other hand positions or legs, it is just not as much.

So since we know that swimming on the freeway is much more efficient than swimming around town, how do we stay on the freeway? In other words, how do we maintain our speed and not slow down and speed up, then slow down and speed up again? The answer is to keep one hand in the power position all the time.

The problem with this solution is that we only have two hands. Since it takes some period of time to get the hand from the end of the stroke back to the beginning (the power position), there is always some lapse of time between the time one hand leaves the power position and the time the other one arrives. Ideally, if we had three hands and arms, we would always have one hand in the power position at all times. We'd be riding on the highway. Since we only have two, we must not waste any time getting our hand back into the power position.

For every second, or half second or tenth of a second it takes us to get at least one hand into the power position, we begin to slow down. Maybe not a lot, as we still have our kick and some propulsion from the end of our arm stroke going, but nonetheless, we begin to slow down and sink. The less we slow down (ie the less time lapsed in getting back into the power position) the less energy we need to expend to get the speed back. The more we slow down (ie the longer the time to get back into the power position) the more energy required. In the former, we are swimming on the freeway. In the latter, we are swimming in stop and go traffic. Where would you rather be?

Getting your hand back into the power position quickly requires effort. Remember, the fundamentals to swim fast don't make swimming easier. They just allow you to swim faster. The Race Club swimmers spend a great deal of time on boxing drills to practice getting their hands back into power position as fast as possible. Whether you use straight arm or bent arm recovery, the recovery should be fast and come over the top with the hand in position for an immediate catch or hold on the water. I also think it is important to release the hand sooner than most of us do. Too many swimmers focus on pushing their hand back at the end of the stroke, which just delays getting it back to the power position.
For freestyle, one of the best drills I know to get the arms recovering quickly is the freestyle pull with dolphin kick. One arm stroke for each dolphin kick will force your tempo and stroke rate up higher than you are used to. It forces you to swim on the freeway. Try it, but don't slow your kick down. Speed up your recovery to keep up with your legs, but use one stroke per one kick. Once you have the tempo right, switch back to flutter kick with the same tempo.

In backstroke, you can try the same drill, or if that feels too awkward, try what I call the "half-stroke backstroke". What I mean by this is just take the top half of the arm stroke, not the second half. In reality, you won't be able to do it. But psychologically, it will force you to release your hand early and get it back over your head into the power position (which by the way in backstroke is also at the beginning of the arm pull). So imagine you are only taking the top half of the stroke and you will get on the freeway.

So now you have learned the second fundamental rule of fast swimming. To keep on the freeway and not swim stop-and-go, you must keep the hand over your head in the power position as long as possible and get your other hand back there as quickly as possible.

Next, we will talk about the third fundamental of fast swimming: swimming with your body. Of the three, this is the most difficult to teach, requires the most concerted effort and yet, likely will contribute the most to your added speed. Stay tuned.

Thick as a Brick

2008-04-14T16:16:00.000-07:00

By Gary Hall Sr.

There are three fundamental principals I like to teach to all of The Race Club campers that pertain to both freestyle and backstroke. These principals seem so obvious to me now and yet, when I look back at old videos of me swimming in the 68 Olympics or even after, I cringe. How could I have done so many things wrong? Why didn't we get it back then?

I guess we were just dumb... but the truth is that these 3 fundamentals aren't so obvious. If they were, we wouldn't find that 99% of The Race Club campers haven't figured them out either. It really isn't their fault. Like with me, they have not been told what to do and, instead of doing what is most beneficial to swim fast, they have adapted in order to survive long, arduous workouts. The habits we develop by swimming 10 x 400 meters on 5 minute 30 second intervals allow us to (hopefully) walk away from the pool to live another day. They don't necessarily teach us the best way to get up and down the pool the fastest and most efficient way.

The first fundamental principal is that we are all built like bricks; well maybe not quite that bad. But the human body is definitely not streamlined. Let me give you an example. When we take a racing dive from the starting block, assuming we have any spring in our legs at all, and with the help of gravity, we all hit the water going about 5 miles per hour. That is nearly the same speed that Gary Jr swims the 50 meter sprint in the Olympic Games. And yet, even with the most streamlined body position we can manage and with no pull or kick to propel us forward, we come to a complete stop in around 5 seconds. In five seconds we go from 5 miles an hour to zero... that is called deceleration. That is a non-streamlined body. That is a brick..more or less.

The reason that this fundamental principal is so important is that with non-streamlined bodies moving through water, little changes in our body or head or arm or leg position and little changes in our surface texture (shaving or wearing new technology suits) can make significant differences in the drag and friction we encounter. One of my first revelations of the importance of this came when I was pulled through the water on a towrope for 50 meters in around 20 seconds. At this speed, by simply dropping my chin to adjust my head position and maintaining the same towing force, I dropped my time by nearly two seconds. The only change was body position, which created less drag. Improvement of our understanding of this principal certainly doesn't account for all of the vast improvements in swimmer's times, but it has clearly been a big contributor. Let's retrace some of the history.

1950's nylon suits replace cotton.
1956 Olympics Melbourne. The Australians shave their bodies and kick some butt. No one ever considers not shaving again for major competition (except for some crazy German guy with a big hairy chest who finaled in the 1500 meters in the Olympics in Atlanta)
1960 Speedo introduces striped colors (red/black, blue/black and gold/black) in nylon suits; a fashion revolution.
Late 1970's End of Superman. Swimmers begin streamlining underwater on starts and turns.
1988. David Berkoff proves one (with a ferocious kick) can swim as fast or faster underwater without any arm propulsion than one can swim on the surface using all forces possible.
1992 Full body (Farmer John) suits introduced for the first time.
2000 First Full body suit worn in the Olympics by Ian Thorpe
2008 Technology of full body suits keeps improving the dampening effect of the material to reduce drag. Will we someday actually figure out a material that makes us behave as if we are streamlined?

Here is a very simple drill you can all do to show how important something as simple as head position is. Kick on your stomach with your arms outstretched in front of you, sculling with your hands, but keep your head out of the water looking straight ahead. Now do the same thing with your head down, chin tucked almost to your chest. You will immediately feel your chest and back rise out of the water and your body aligns in a straight plane. You will feel less resistance and more speed as you scull through the water this way.

So why do we all want to swim with our head up? First, we like to know where we are going. Second, I believe we think that by lifting our head up that our body will do the same, not realizing that the opposite occurs. So if we are going to go to the expense and trouble of shaving our bodies and wearing the expensive new high-tech suits, we might as well learn how to hold our head in the right position to minimize resistance and swim faster. That means chin down in freestyle and head back in backstroke. And don't forget to streamline on every start and turn!

Some argue that the new high tech suits are unfair, like "steroids on a hanger". I say keep on improving that technology. Someday, I want to see a suit that will make me a perfect streamlined body, even though I look more like a brick. On that day, I will dive in off the starting block and glide effortlessly for 25 meters underwater without a stroke. That day, providing I am the only one who gets to use the suit, I will come out of retirement.

Next, I will discuss the second fundamental of fast swimming, called "Swimming on the Freeway". Stay tuned.

Joe B Miller

2008-02-06T14:37:00.000-08:00

It was my freshman year in college in a state that I continue to hate. I as usual had a slanted grin on my face, but it was a little bit off. My nose was curled up a bit.

"Joe, what the #@&% is that smell?"

I admit that my regenerated form of vocabulary was not fully developed at that particular time and place.

"Dude!" and a muffled laugh discharged from a similarly contorted nose was all that he replied.

Joe's the kind of guy that any father should be proud of. I have many recollections of Joe Miller, this one's in a two light bulb parking lot outside of Sulfur, Louisiana on the front side of dawn.

We were close to where Joe grew up. I looked around trying to imagine what it would be like living here.

"Is it like this all the time?" I asked.

"Yeah. It's the sulfur," he said. He was smiling too. I couldn't tell if that smile revealed a joy to be back in Sulfur or to be back in Sulfur and not be living in Sulfur any longer. I didn't ask.

"Let's get the #@&% out of here. It #@&%ing stinks!" I said laughing. We now had enough gas to make it to Florida.

I met Joe's family once and they seemed really nice. Joe was really nice and my parents hated him. My father is a terrible judge of character. But he wasn't alone in his assessment of Joe Miller.

At Texas it would seem that half the swim team's nose curled at Joe and it had nothing to do with smell. Frankly, a lot of people thought Joe was stupid.

Joe is the most dyslexic individual I have ever met.

I remember showing up to pick Joe up for summer school one day after a late night of heavy drinking. There was a note taped to the door. If you tried your hardest you couldn't capture dyslexia the way that two sentence note did. A schizophrenic ferret on crystal methamphetamine couldn't capture the chicken scratch that told me that Joe was dealing with something undiagnosed.

He had just completed his sophomore year in college and had not yet been diagnosed with dyslexia. I am tempted to write, "I have no idea how he did it" because he had trouble spelling his own name but Joe is a really smart guy. You have to be to make it as far as he did without being diagnosed with something as serious as what he was dealing with. Someone less intelligent would have ended up on the other bus to a different school.

I met Joe 15 years ago. Time goes by really fast. We remain good friends to this day and don?t stay in touch much as good friends often don't. We don't need to. We're both busy. We're both married with two kids. And we both know that if we ever needed help that we would be there for each other, no matter what.

Joe has a huge house in Hawaii, and owns several very successful businesses. He spends the kind of time with his kids a psychiatrist never spends with their kids. He has all the money he needs. He has a secretary that will read his mail to him. But he doesn't really need her to. He can read, though admittedly very slowly. He read 24 books last year.

I visited with him in Hawaii a couple years back. He seemed really happy. Like all of us he has bad days that he takes in stride, the same way that he has handled being dyslexic. Recently in an email he typed perfectly, "Spelling is not everything. As you well know, there are many avenues to success and one must search within to find their strengths and weaknesses and focus on the strengths."

I should stop right there. That one sentence is the message of this Aqua Notes. You should reread it.

A person shouldn't be judged for where they are from, or how they wear their hair, or what brand of clothes they wear, or how well they spell or swim. Of all those that judged Joe none are doing as well, or are as happy as he is. Life may throw some shit at us from time to time but in the end life is what you make it and you get what you deserve.

Joe deserves to be happy. He is a really smart guy and one of my heroes.

Here's to you, Joe. Congratulations on the birth of Sage. Continued success!

Your friend,
Gary Hall Jr.

The Straight-Arm Freestyle Recovery

2008-01-28T09:28:00.000-08:00

Recently, I was watching a video telecast on the Web of the World Cup meet in Berlin, hoping to catch a glimpse of some of the Race Club swimmers competing in the 100 m Freestyle. Mostly, I was captivated by the swim of Stefan Nystrand of Sweden, who dominated an impressive field of sprinters, and did so with a straight-arm recovery.

The straight-arm recovery in Freestyle is not new. I am not sure who was the first to use it, but in my memory bank, which has a rather small deposit, Janet Evans comes to mind. Others have succeeded using it as well... Kristen Otto (plus steroids), Inge de Bruijn, Michael Klim, just to name a few.

The straight-arm recovery is not pretty. In fact, it looks down right strange... but, then again, how much time gets deducted for a pretty stroke? Zippo. The question is... "will it make you swim faster?"

Science and logic would seem to support a "yes" response. Why? Well, the arm has weight to it, perhaps 5,6 or 7 pounds. I'm guessing, as I have never lopped one off to weigh it. Even though more of the arm's weight is at the proximal end (near the shoulder) than the distal end (near the hand), our recovery requires that we swing the arm back to the front to be in the position for another pull. This can be done with the arm swung either to the side or straight over the top and with the elbow either bent or locked (straight arm).

There are two primary objectives of the arm recovery. The first is to put the arm back in the position for the strongest underwater power or pull as fast as possible. The second is to transfer as much energy or inertia from the arm to the body as possible. By transferring this arm energy to the body, we help to continue to propel the body through the water.

Bending the elbow on the freestyle recovery might give us a slight advantage on the first objective. Since it shortens the distance that the hand needs to travel it likely allows one to get the hand back into the power position slightly faster than with a straight arm. I am speculating here because I have never actually timed it. However, with the second objective, a straight-arm recovery has a clear advantage over the bent elbow and allows more transfer of energy to the body.

The transfer of energy from the arm to the body depends on several factors. One is distance. The further the weight is away from the body, the better. A second is speed. The faster the weight is swung, the better.

Consider a discus thrower. Although he transfers his body's energy to the discus, he does so by extending the discus as far out as the arm will allow and by generating as much speed of the discuss as possible before it is released. The more body weight and the faster the speed, the further the discus will fly; more energy transferred.

Imagine if, instead of arms, you had ropes attached to your shoulders with a five-pound weight attached to each rope. If you wanted to transfer as much of the weight's energy to your body, you would swing the weight with the rope fully extended as fast as possible and would stop the swing with the arm in the horizontal position in front of you...just like casting a fishing pole with a lead weight on it. In that fashion, the maximum amount of energy will "pull" your body, since there is no more line to let out. Further, just like in casting, you would want to swing the arms directly over the top, not around the side, so the energy will propel your body forward instead of to the side. This is the effect of the straight-arm recovery.

Think about backstroke. You wouldn't dare consider a bent-arm recovery in backstroke (I think Adolph Kiefer may have been the last to do that in the 36 Olympics). Try it sometime and you will see what I mean. So if straight-arm works so much better for backstroke, why not in freestyle?

There are two reasons I can think of. The first is that it doesn't feel natural. Few have even tried it. It is not the way we were taught how to swim freestyle, so why change? I have not yet tried a straight-arm recovery in competition, but I can already tell it makes me faster in practice. It also makes me swim with what Mike Bottom calls the "shoulder driven" freestyle stroke. The second is that the shoulder joint does not extend (move rearward) as easily as it flexes (moves forward). So to recover with a straight arm directly over the top in freestyle means that the entire body needs to rotate from side to side. Yet this is a good thing. In other words, by using a high, straight-arm recovery, we are forced into more shoulder rotation and consequently, more hip rotation, which also helps propel us forward.

So if straight-arm recovery is that good, why doesn't everyone use it? First, it takes more work to do it properly. Rotating those shoulders and hips in practice is not easy. Some just don't have the flexibility they need to do it and trying repeatedly could impinge the shoulder and cause pain. And like anything else, it takes practice. For me, it felt very strange for over a week. Now, I really like the feeling of the straight-arm recovery and can sense the energy transferring with every stroke.

The straight-arm freestyle recovery is not for everyone, but it might work for you. Just remember not to turn your arms over like a slow, revolving windmill in Holland or a rotisserie chicken. You have to whip those babies over the top like you mean it. Extend the shoulder. And as far as that delicate hand entry into the water, forget it. Of course, when sprinting the hand needs to be in the position for an immediate catch, but great swimmers find a way to grab hold of the water.

If you're still not sure you get it, come down here to a Race Club camp and let me show you how. You see, I can teach young or old dogs how to do new tricks.

-Gary Hall, Sr.

Diabetes Cruise and a Lesson in Debate Class

2007-12-20T11:28:00.000-08:00

Diabetes Cruise

It's exciting to announce that on December 1, 2008 we will set sail from the port of Miami on the first Gary Hall Jr. Foundation Diabetes Cruise.

We are chartering the Carnival ship M/S Destiny and will provide an atmosphere where those with diabetes can come into contact with others living with this disease and a comprehensive team of specialists, doctors, presenters and educators that will provide the latest and greatest in diabetes management tools and techniques, nutrition, exercise, and medication information.

A cruise provides a relaxed atmosphere where patients can learn, interact and enjoy with their family an exciting adventure through the Caribbean. Prices are reasonable and rooms are going fast so sign up now if you or someone you know is interested.

You don't have to have diabetes to go. If you want to support the Gary Hall Jr. Foundation attending a cruise is a pretty stylish way to. Go Live It!

Click here to read the full press release.

Charles Jameson Hall

On the 10th of December my wife gave birth to our second child. Everyone is healthy and happy. The name was chosen to honor my grandfather, Charlie Keating. We had a middle name picked out, Busby, that we changed at the very last second.

I have to admit. I saw on a swim site a while back that Joe Hudepohl (Olympian 1992, 1996) had a son whose middle name was Jameson. My wife's brother is James. I drink more Jameson than the island of Ireland. For those that don't know Jameson is a traditional Irish Catholic libation. Joe, I hope you're not mad at me for stealing your son's middle name, but.

The Gary Hall Jr. Rant on Deck Pass

Check out the new Gary Hall Jr. rant on Deck Pass www.deckpass.com

Well, for those of you that subscribe to this newsletter it isn't exactly new. You read about the "Pep Talk" in my last Aqua Notes. Seeing as how I am kind of busy working on stuff like the Diabetes Cruise while training for the Olympic Games I plan to sample bits and pieces from The Race Club content so that I am able to contribute on a regular basis to the Deck Pass show.

New Fodder For My Rant Gun/ An Argument of Why I Should Get Some Crazy Money That Could Be Course Material In Any Debate Class

For five days in December Art Basel (pronounced Bashole) took over Miami Beach and brought with it many incredible pieces of art and a crowd any sensible human being would consider drowning. The "art" crowd is the most preposterous group that you could ever hope to NOT meet. Self important with the characteristics of a retarded chicken is how I have come to describe this group.

If I ever hear the word, "Eclectic" again I'm going to stick a toothbrush so far up my nose I'll be able to wear the bristles as a ridiculous false mustache, which should top off perfectly the ridiculous "arty" costume that I have put together to advertise to everyone else just how "eclectic" I really am.

The first thing you notice when you enter the convention is the amount of people. Then my eyes jump from a Richard Prince to a Botero. As I fall into the slow flow of people moving about I catch a dirty glance. Then another. Then another. Then I start checking everything. Is my fly down? Is my beret on crooked or something? Or did one of the lenses pop out of my sunglasses? Everyone has the same expression!

But then you realize that the looks aren't really dirty looks at all but rather a look of conceited constipation. This year there were 43,000 people that paid US $30 to curl their lips at each other. A new RECORD!

Walking through the great hall and seeing some incredible art I notice some of the idle chatter that surrounds. It's mostly namedropping. And then a flashback to that boring, familiar talk that we all were hearing about real estate prices a couple years back, except this time it's about art.

The talk is about how much this piece is worth, how much this artist is selling for. Who's hot right now and how much their pieces are going for and who's not hot right now and how much their pieces are going for. Appreciation is being discussed but it's not talk about brush strokes or color palates, it's monetary.

Last year a number of hedge fund managers came in and bought almost the whole show. And why not? The high end art market has appreciated more than my stock portfolio. Recently a Jeff Koons (a living artist) piece sold for close to US $24 million.

Review of the year: Art sales

Why am I going on about art for so long in a swim related newsletter? Art seemed to me to be removed from the grip of the mighty Canadian dollar, or what used to be the US dollar. Money is what I'm saying. Money makes the world go round.

Whether we like it or not we are judged by how much we make. Argue with me on this and you are disillusioned. I am not saying that there is nothing more important than money but it is true that society, that roaming mass of retarded chickens, judges us by our wealth.

Here is a perfect example. Matt Damon. He's a good looking guy. I'm so much better looking than him, and athletic. He makes a lot more money than me and gets the nod for sexiest man alive. Apparently having money has something to do with being sexy? Oh well on that!

If we as a sport are ever going to gain the interest of the common chicken we must figure out "a way to pay". Say it with me, "A way to pay."

Work has nothing to do with it. Of course we could argue all day long that even with the amount that our top earners make it works out to about US $2.60 an hour if you add up the number of hours spent to reach their level, justifying the salaries within the sport. But there is no logic here in the Art Bashole convention center and good riddance! Everybody here is getting RICH!

Jeff Koons came up with an idea to suspend a nine foot stainless heart from the ceiling with a bow. And then that was pretty much it. He didn't actually go out and sculpt the thing. He probably oversaw the handing of the piece of paper with his sketch on it from his assistant to the foundry, then viola, US $23 million and change. Oh, that "change" is US $600,000, a hefty sum for even the best in our sport.

Money fascinates people. Jeff's next piece will probably sell for significantly more, with twice as many lined up to pay it. The articles, talk and publicity aren't about how brilliant these pieces are but rather how brilliant the sums of crazy money are that exchange hands.

I have no intention of explaining this madness. As an observer I think that we need to try this approach in marketing our sport. Let's pay the top athletes in our sport, myself even more so, crazy money and see what happens.

Again, "a way to pay".

It's not just the artist and athlete that profit. Art dealers and coaches profit. Collectors and fans that invest profit too. All ships rise with the tide.

Ironically, I heard that the guy who bought the Jeff Koons piece was his art dealer. The value of his massive collection of Jeff Koons art just skyrocketed with the publicity and title "highest priced artist". He is sure to make more than US $24 million off of the increase in the rest of his collection even if he can't sell the heart thing for more than the price he bought it for.

Imagine. If you have US $25 million dollars to spend on your own client's piece of art which results in everything that he produces for the rest of his life selling for a mere US $1 million, instead of a scant US $50,000 per piece. You could stand to make hundreds of millions.

Which brings me to my point. United States Swimming has so much to gain by paying their athletes, especially me. The more USS pays the more they stand to make. All ships rise with the tide.

It's logic. Counterpoint is futile. Surrender. United States Swimming should make checks payable to Gary Hall Jr. Inc.

If you haven't already checked out our new clothing line and suits, visit our estore!

Swim Camps

There are a couple spots left for the holiday training camp season so sign up now before they are gone. We keep the number of campers to a minimum so that everyone gets the attention that they need. Once the spots are gone, they're gone. Please do not inquire about joining an already full camp. Thanks.

Have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Your friend in swimming,
And the greatest living artist,
And debate class hero,

AND THE MEEKEST MAN IN THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!

Gary Hall Jr.

Champions Until Judgment Day

2007-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

RACE CLUB MERCHANDISE IS HOT!

The Race Club SOLD OUT! ...of merchandise that is. We had to replenish the inventories, revisiting the well of creativity to drink from the good cup and come up with more cool designs. I think that you'll be dazzled by the new looks.

YOU should be the first on your team to sport the fashions of 2008, the year of the Olympics, with the hottest apparel in the galaxy. Let the world know that you are a RACER! Or surprise that special badass in your life with the perfect holiday gift! The Race Club, yea-yah!

We actually hired REAL models from Los Angeles, California and oh, selecting them was a treat. If ever you want entertainment read model/artist/actor/performer/lost soul bios. Click here to check out our new gear!

And if you're into swimming faster sign up for your camp NOW! We have very limited space left for the holidays and the pool is chock full of Olympians going all out for Beijing. Get in on the action and be part of history in the making!

Click here to read what others have to say about their camp experience.

THE PEP TALK:

The litmus test for a great coach in the movies is how well they give the pep talk. A good pep talk should have a "holding back the tears" moment followed with a fire in the belly crescendo of yelling in the manner of "I'm angry and I'm not going to take it anymore!" thing that is followed with loud roars from the team accompanied by grimacing faces, lots of huzzah and fist pumps and then a sudden stampede towards the opponent, or starting blocks.

Coaches, it's good to take off your hat during the "holding back the tears" part and even though you're talking to the team you should seem like you are talking to your hat. As the crescendo builds start slamming your hat into your other hand like you're trying to throttle the life out of a baby kitten. Spit when yelling. Turn red. And that's pretty much it. You got yourself a winning pep talk. It's important not to spend too much time thinking out what you are going to say because it's not the words so much that make a difference. These are matters of the heart, not the mind.

TRAINERS AND RACERS:

There are "trainers" and there are "racers".

You can't tell me that a swimmer can do these sets coaches give like 30 100's descending 1 to 3, 1 @ 90% effort, 1 @ 95% effort, 1 @ 100% effort (repeat 10 times).

If you swim a 100 free at 100% you should be reeling in pain, seeing stars or blue dots, not physically able to push off, let alone swim another 100.

That's the difference between training and racing. Though both are swimming they are not the same. It is perfectly acceptable to be a workout swimmer. If you are a competitive swimmer it's one thousand times better to be a racer. It takes hard work in practice to be good at any level, so don't get me wrong there.

That ability to train day in and day out with the consistency of the tides is a quality that can be admired but what these tough workouts demand on your body is not very similar to what a race demands, physically or mentally. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on what group you fall in with, we as swimmers are gauged by our race results.

Race results are what determine the difference between a rec swimmer and a great swimmer.

If I were a coach I would want one or two of those trainers on the team to be a rabbit for the racers. They'll always be out in front pushing the others to work a little harder, until race day where they will go the exact same time that they have been trained to go, the exact same time that they did repeats of all season long. Give me the racer every time. It's a lot harder to teach- arguably impossible. A good coach can motivate anyone to train a little harder.

Those trainers can get so damn snooty during the season. But when their career is over they usually carry a chip on their shoulder the size of a kickboard. They are champions until judgment day.

THIS IS IT. TODAY IS THE DAY!

The "Today is the day!" attitude should be practiced as often as you swim laps. If it's tried at a meet and it doesn't work it's because it hasn't been tried before.

A coach can push a kid through 10K practices for months, get to the meet and say's "Okay, today we do STARTS OFF THE BLOCKS!" The kid hasn't done a start all season long and the coach expects the kid to be equal or better than every one else off the blocks.

The only reason why this isn't a good example is because if you have a bad start in any event other than the sprints you can still win the race. If you don't practice that "Today is the day! It's time to throw one down! Step up or step off! I'm going to do this thing like it's never been done before!?" race mentality, you'll NEVER win.

So, how do you practice it? Get out swims. I'm not kidding. What do coaches say when kids do a get out swim? "Okay, this is it! A big chance to show us what you've got! Let's see it! Today is the day!" It's the same thing they tell the kid right before their race.

If you're the coach you can have them "get out" of a 400 that you were never going to give them in the first place and you're teaching them something more valuable than anything they could ever learn from that 400 at the end of practice anyway.

Or pair the kids up to swim their race. Winner gets out and loser swims the 400.

Signed with love and affection,
Racer Gary Hall Jr.

Sporting Stuff

2007-11-01T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hey there sport!

How about me introducing a new sport today? It starts in the countryside, early in the morning. Mist rises from the wooded area and spreads out into the open fields. The breath from the horses gathered around resembles the smoky exhale of Keith Richards. The horses are awake, more alert than their riders, more in tune with the anticipation that the hounds emit. The hounds are restless. The riders voices are rough, an octave lower than usual. They wear tweed.

The shrill sound of the horn pierces a few slight hangovers and they are off, foxhunting.Sort of.

Fox hunting is an old sport. But here the riders instead of carrying guns, carry cans of red paint. Instead of killing the fox, they throw a can of red paint on it. It's fun saving the animals. Nobody is going to kill the fox covered in red paint. We're saving the foxes. Going on the fox hunt with the horses and dogs and tweed. AND we get to do the most fun thing in the whole world, throw cans of red paint on fur. Why should those PETA activists have all the fun? This sport rocks!

Who's with me? I feel like going right now.

I dropped the puck at the Florida Panthers game last Friday. I am a hockey fan, kind of, as much as one can be having never lived in a state that gets colder than 34 degrees. Since I don't really have a thick jacket I wore all twelve of my windbreakers walking out on the ice to drop the puck.

Then the next few days I went surfing. A truant tropical storm, Noel, blew in some big waves. Rough conditions and a lot of paddling allowed me to call the session "aerobic".

So, if you remember the Aqua Note that started out with "I'm Gary, and I'm going to kick your ass?" You'll perhaps enjoy this email that I got shortly after:

Dear Gary,
Hi, I'm ------ ------- and I am going to offer you an opportunity to be a real man. I invite you to come to my farm, join me in some hog slaughtering, butchering and sausage grinding events. I can nail a 500 pounder in the head and be washing up 45 minutes later after getting it hauled out of the acre pen, hoisted, skinned, gutted, quartered, deboned, iced and in the cooler. This is both a cardiovascular as well as a muscular event. Think your up to the challenge? Do you have the nose and stomach for it? Are you strong enough, smart enough, and careful enough not to cut yourself while performing these backyard chores? Are you man enough to slaughter and grind up your own meat? Come, show me. This is just a warm up to swimming a 4000 SC yard workout. Show me what you're made of, come join me for a weekend of farming and swimming. I will make a man out of you, or not. ------

Wow. I'm curious. Now if you read beyond the first sentence of that Aqua Note I went on to say, "Not literally. Should you choose to step up on the starting block next to me you're going to lose. That's all I'm saying." So, I really didn't intend to call into question the manliness of a pig farmer.

When doing the public speaking tour I often talk about the opportunities that come my way because I was able to swim fast at the Olympic games. Meet royalty. Travel the world. And this.

I probably don't have the nose for it. Pigs stink, even when they aren't being quartered. I think I would probably throw up and I don't have a weak stomach. Am I smart enough? I don't know, but I probably would lob off about three fingers trying to slaughter, hoist, skin, gut, quarter, butcher, de-bone, sausage grind, and ice a 500 pounder if I didn't kill myself nailing it in the head. It's not a backyard chore for anyone that doesn't have a 500 pounder in the back yard. And I don't.

It's tempting. The Race Club is known for it's unconventional cross training. This could be the extra step that is needed to achieve optimum performance at the Olympic games. We don't know until we try. If it works you can expect an instructional DVD out soon in our merchandise link.

It's important for me to point out again that I never intended to insult the work ethic or manliness of anyone with the strongly worded introduction of my last Aqua Note. All I was saying is that I am a faster swimmer than you, or anyone else you know.

At the very least I am going to check into flights. I've never seen a 500 pounder let alone thought about doing those things to one. I think I might take up this invitation. It's every man's desire to be a "real man". I don't expect to be able to do what I've been invited to do, but I would like to see it done, and maybe learn something in the process. Then we can swim 4000 SCY. I'm up for that, and will probably need it to wash off the blood. At the very least I will be able to say that I've dabbled in hog slaughtering at my next cocktail reception with royalty.

Adventure, here I come.

Gary Hall Jr.
for the most part is an idiot. Nothing he says should be taken seriously. If you want to contact him directly about hog slaughtering, fox hunting, PETA, or swimming he can be reached at info@theraceclub.net

Oh. I contacted PETA about my idea to save the foxes and was told that the hounds kill the fox in a fox hunt. So I proposed that we have all of their jaws wired shut.

Peace!

Chinese Medal Podium Blitz (It's not a dance)

2007-10-11T07:23:00.000-07:00

Hi. I'm Gary Hall Jr. and I'm going to kick your ass. Not literally. Should you choose to step up on the starting block next to me you're going to lose. That's all I'm saying.

Training is going well. I'm just starting to get into it and things are looking good. I feel good. I wake up in the morning and say, "I feel like doing something today." Lately, it's changed a little bit to "I feel like doing something incredible today." It's awesome.

I know the introduction to this Aqua Note is worded strongly. I have a reputation as a loudmouth that I have fun living up to occasionally. You should try it sometime. You'll find that if you point to the left field bleachers before stepping up to bat you focus a little more, and swing a little harder. If you hit it out of the park, you look really cool. If you don't, so what! I've never met a champion that was afraid of failure. I am not driven by fear. It's no way to live.

The Race Club is growing. Coach Mike Bottom says that we are assembling a small Army. A while back I wrote that we would open our doors to athletes that want to come and train at the best swim program in the world. We haven't done any promoting beyond that old Aqua Note. Word has circulated some and we have people showing up every week to join us.

This week we have Thomas Kindler from Canada in. Tommy Boy is a hulk of a flyer. At 6'6 and 240 he's weighing in 4 pounds heavier than I am - this week. With this group everything is a competition! Also coming in we have Darren Mew, Olympian 2004 Great Britain, a breaststroker. Spaniard Sprint Sensation Javier Noriega (22.08) arrives this week as well.

These are good people that are willing to sacrifice everything to be part of a group that is not simply headed to the Olympics. We are going to the Olympics to win! We're not elitist. We're the best! There is energy in the air here that lets us know that we are all a part of something big. "It's pretty cool" is a modest way of describing the environment. "It's pretty fast" is more accurate.

Last week we were honored to have one of the best strength coaches in the world, Tim McClellen join our Race Club dojo from Phoenix, Arizona. We worked with Tim for the last two Olympics. Tim develops a program for us and will continue to check in from time to time leading up to our Chinese medal podium blitz.

The Race Club coaching staff: Mike, Matt Macedo, Mark Hill, and Coach Andy "Mack D" Diechert are doing a hell of a job. Every day they are getting the best out of our extremely talented group of badass swimmers. Every day we witness something incredible. You should join us!

Visit for a camp to get in on the action. This is history in the making! Or if you think you can kick some ass yourself, get on the train that's headed for the Chinese medal podium. Be a Race Clubber. info@theraceclub.net

This week's tip: After weights always declare in a loud but clear voice, "My body is a muscle factory and I just went through the industrial revolution!"

If it doesn't bring a smile to your face it will bring one to others. We're swimming fast and having fun!

Your friend in swimming,
Gary Hall Jr.

Long Live The Race Club!

THE 7-DEGREE TILT

2007-09-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Last week, I was whizzing across the Gulf Stream in the 38-foot Fountain Race Club sport fisherman, heading for my favorite diving spot. The three 275 HP Mercury Verado outboards were ripping this 7 ton vessel through the water with an apparent ease that any sprinter would envy. Yet when I glanced down at the speedometer on the console and saw that we were barely breaking 50 mph, I was disappointed. "This boat with these engines should go 60", I thought to myself.

I pushed hard against the three throttles again and sure enough, they were maxed out. Then I remembered the engines were down all the way. I hadn't tilted them up. I pushed the control that tilted the engines simultaneously up to about 7 degrees of tilt and all of a sudden, the boat spurted forward like it just took a second wind. Within seconds, we had topped the 60 mph mark. "Wow," I smiled, "now that is speed".

It seems odd that three little props, pushed by an enormous amount of horsepower could push that big beast over the water so fast. Yet, by making a very slight adjustment of the angle that those propellers create their propulsion, just 7 degrees, while adding no more horsepower, suddenly the speed of the boat increases by 20%! That, I realized later, is the essence of the Race Club camps.

Every single swimmer who has visited the Race Club camps in Islamorada has arrived with their engines tilted down. It's not really their fault. None of them ever had a gauge on the console showing them that they were doing something wrong. Most of them were swimming with what we now commonly refer to as the "survival stroke", a technique that enabled them to survive through those long, difficult sets at home. When the yardage gets piled on day after day, it often becomes a matter of finding a stroke that allows one to survive; to finish the workout. Survival strokes can reinforce bad habits that simply limit one’s ability to swim fast; like swimming with the engines tilted down.

The reasons that the engines are down vary. Some have their head position too high. Others aren't rotating their hips enough or hesitate a split second on their recovery, or a dozen other faults. The effect is the same. Bad habits reduce efficiency and/or create more drag to slow us in the water. The problem is we can't feel when are engines are down. We just know we are working our tails off and we aren't going as fast as we want.

The human body and the boat have a lot in common. Neither has a streamlined shape. Both try to gain speed by getting higher in the water. Both are very sensitive to minute changes to increase speed. Both need sustainable power to get them up and keep them going.

When you dive in the water, you are going about 5 mph, approximately the same speed as Gary Jr when he swims the 50 meter freestyle in the Olympics. Yet, if after the dive, you simply glide from the entry and take no strokes or kicks, within a few short seconds and about 15 yards, you will come to a dead stop. Case closed. You are not streamlined.

Every non-streamlined human body in the water can discover (without even knowing it) a multitude of ways of having its engines tilted down. The truth is, it is not easy to get the perfect stroke or keep it, once you have found it. That is why we all need coaches that are looking at us individually, all the time. Even Olympians need coaching.

So let us be your gauge on the console. Let us show you where in your stroke you are missing that 7-degree tilt. We will even show you how to increase your horsepower. You may not increase your speed by 20%, but if you can swim faster, with the same horses on your body, we know you will have more fun. Come find out for yourself. At the Race Club camp, we can tilt your engines.

-Gary W. Hall, M.D.

What is an allowable limit?

2007-08-23T07:40:00.000-07:00

What is an allowable limit? In Nathan Jendrick's book Dunks, Doubles and Doping: How Steroids Are Killing American Athletics, I remember a chapter where a former athlete and user of illegal performance enhancing drugs talks about how utterly ridiculous the allowable limit ratios are. For testosterone the allowable limit was 6:1 (testosterone to epitestosterone). The normal balance for a healthy young man is 1:1.

What if an athlete with the means to hire a private doctor with the resources to keep a testosterone level steady at, let's say, a ratio of 5:1. This ratio is still within the allowable limit set by FINA or the World Anti Doping Agency. The athlete is adhering to a VERY strict regime of testosterone injections and should their level ever go over the set target of 5:1 then the doctor simply ups the counterbalancing hormone epitestosterone with another injection.

Is this cheating? The athlete is taking more shots than a team of diabetics, of banned substances, but is within the "ridiculous" allowable limit.

Then let's say that athlete takes an extended break from the sport.

The attention of FINA and WADA, through publications and books perhaps, is brought to the absurd imbalance of what is "allowable". The ratio is reduced to 4:1 in 2005. However, there is no press release. There is no big news of the change.

The athlete makes a comeback. A comeback to old practices as well as training and competing. The injections resume and the target of 5:1 reached. He fails a drug test.

The situation is discussed in back rooms. All can agree that a scandal like this could set the entire sport back, and they are correct in assuming so. All can agree that this man is a really nice guy that has done much for the sport of swimming. Options are discussed. Leniency is considered because of the rule change.

A sudden retirement and an effort to sweep the scandal under the rug occur. Then information is leaked.

Now a strategy from his team of lawyers attempts to prove a long history of 5:1 ratio. This should be easy enough to do. But will his ratio be 5:1 in court the day a verdict is made, a naturally occurring imbalance? Or will they only prove that his ratio was 5:1 when he was swimming?

The story is speculation. It is what I believe might have happened with Ian Thorpe. Of course he is innocent until proven guilty, oh wait, he did fail a drug test. If he cheated or not will be discussed, heatedly I am sure. It brings up a very important question about what an allowable limit is.

Now that the ratio is 4:1, which is four times what a normal healthy man produces, is it okay for an athlete to take shots of testosterone and epitestosterone if they keep within the allowable limit? Is it cheating?

Yours truly,
Gary Hall Jr.

THE WORLD TEAM II

2007-08-20T07:32:00.000-07:00

The arrival of Matt Macedo at The Race Club is exciting news for a couple of reasons. First, the obvious, Matt is an excellent coach that has proven himself over the years and will contribute to our program tremendously. With Matt's arrival we open our doors to a number of athletes that are on their own way to becoming the next generation of great swimmers.

I have often described The Race Club as a swimming academy. It is an honor to welcome a World Team graduate to the ranks of Race Club Perfessor (coach).

There are simply too many people that want to train with Perfessor Mike Bottom. Many talented young swimmers that have yet to reach their full potential have been turned away in the past. We did not have the space or resources to accommodate everyone.

By creating a World Team II we are able to advance the swimming accomplishments of swimmers that aren't quite at the Olympic medal podium level, YET. We are able to place athletes in an environment that will catapult them into the next level.

Additionally, Matt will fill a role with our Masters program. Masters swimming has always been a focus for us here and we have had so many great Masters swimmers come visit over the years. Many of our swimmers show up to the Masters competitions and have a great time.

Matt Macedo was a member of the World Team from 1999 to 2002, which is very important to us. He has been there as a competitive athlete and knows the program. His joining us as a coach also demonstrates that we here at The Race Club have loyalty to our family and that we strive to provide opportunities for our swimmers, beyond their own competitive career and beyond the efforts of any other club, agency or federation.

That is something that I take very seriously. As we continue to grow so will the opportunities for our swimmers.

The Race Club is not a registered team. It's a family. Our coaches don't earn coaching points off of the success of our swimmers. There is some coaching point system out there for those that don't know. Our swimmers remain registered with their home club, or swim unattached. At The Race Club we don't care about politics. We don't care about high point trophies, or grants or titles. We only concern ourselves with results. We want the very best for our swimmers and will do anything in our power to facilitate their needs at every level. This approach has brought us a lot of success and will continue to do so.

Because swimming fast is what it's all about. If you would like to be part of our program contact us at info@theraceclub.net or 305-469-5500.

See you soon,
Gary Hall Jr

Detective Work

2007-08-12T08:44:00.001-07:00

I always try to put myself in the shoes of others. I imagine what it's like to drive a Bentley without a license and have more Chihuahuas than brain cells or what it must be like to be Carrot Top. By doing so I find myself sympathizing with those that initially I can?t understand.

Here is a post from a Timed Finals article http://www.timedfinals.com/10082007/in-my-mind-its-time-to-get-tough-on-doping/ on an issue that I have weighed in on from time to time over the years: CHEATERS IN SPORT.

Comment by Laughable: "Gary Hall is a disgrace. He speaks of money and the like, and yet his grandfather was a huge scam artist. Hey Gary, how much of that money got stuffed away to support your millionaire lifestyle in Miami??"

I have decided to play a detective in trying to out the secret identity of the mystery poster.

Judging from this Laughable's post I gather that he (and he is probably a he) is an intelligent man, probably educated in one of America's finer high schools or England, at least for some period of time. He must be referring to my maternal grandfather, Charles H. Keating. His familiarity with my family history demonstrated through the mention of my grandfather proves that he either has heard less educated people talk about my grandfather and has the ability to repeat what he has heard or he has a selective ability to read.

This second possibility seems likely because he has computer access and enough common sense to find and post on the Timed Finals website. We can assume that he has read the original article and has posted a response that utilizes a shifty technique used in advanced debate. This is where a person will throw in something that has absolutely nothing to do with the original topic, distracting the flow of logical discourse. I assume that he is capable of Googling a thing or two but not enough to research the fact that charges against my grandfather were dismissed, something a name search would have cleared up. Or is it possible that he knew the facts and wanted to plant a psychological land mine by insisting that my grandfather was a scam artist knowing that if he only insisted strong enough that it would make it so?

Judging by the brevity of his response I conclude that he is either a very busy man with limited time to surf the internet at his day job or has a limited vocabulary and came close to running out of words.

I don't know. It's a tough case really. Obviously, there is an interest in doping for him to open the article in the first place. Given my strong stance against cheaters, he opposes me and therefore is for doping.

He calls me out, "Gary". It's as if he knows me. If he did know me he would know that I live in Miami Beach though, not Miami. I wonder if his reference to my millionaire lifestyle is a reference to the millions of dollars that I have raised for charity? Or maybe it could be the millions of dollars that my grandfather, my father, and I have contributed to the sport of swimming over the years? Either way he must know that I have won ten Olympic medals and have earned some money by doing so. Medals can't be bought. They are earned. But he wants it to seem like I am one of those lucky sperm, inheritance kids.

A celebrity told me a long time ago that you can never truly be considered a celebrity until people that you have never met before hate you.

Laughable is someone that I have never met before. He hates me?

It's Barry Bonds. Barry Bonds is Laughable.

Barry has finished off what was left of baseball. "America's Pastime" is honor-less. He cheated and stole from innocent, clean athletes that don't take steroids robbing them of opportunities worth millions of dollars. His only punishment is an asterisk? He turns the justice system on it's ear. But, in addition to all of this bad stuff, Barry Bonds has confirmed me as a celebrity and for this I think that I can find it in my heart to forgive him.

I have tried to put myself in his shoes (which are two sizes bigger than five years ago) to understand but I can't. Perhaps that will remain the difference between a cheater and a clean athlete, something I can't understand.

Who cares? I'm a celebrity!

Laughable, I forgive you.

Gary Hall Jr.
can be reached at info@theraceclub.net

Swimming For A Few Dollars More

2007-08-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

When I was young, about 10 to 14, my aunt and I had a system of hustling swimmers out of their cash. I had a privileged upbringing. My grandfather would take us over to Europe in the summers. We would stay at these really nice resorts and at every pool at every resort there would be some swimmer putting in laps.

I was a kid and would act like a kid, splashing around in the shallow area. My aunt was my supervisor, assuming the duties of babysitter to her nephew at the pool. She would approach the swimmer and get to talking with them. Usually, or almost always it was a male.

"You are very good at swimming," she would start. "You must be on a team, or something. Do you compete?" Then she would talk some small talk about where we were from and how much we were enjoying the country. Then she would say that she had to watch her nephew and how he was pretty good at swimming and how she thought that he should join a swim team, so that he could swim as well as the swimmer, one day.

At the time I wasn't on a swim team but I could swim pretty fast.

One thing would lead to another and the race was set up. She negotiated the wager. When this was done she would call me over and tell me that I was about to learn how to race from a very experienced swimmer and if I could swim against him that I might learn something.

"Okay," I said with a shrug.

I never lost a race.

My aunt would pay me but without knowing how much the wager was for I never knew if I was getting a fair share. At home I had a large glass fish that I filled with every currency from every country we visited.

For every age group coach out there I recommend trying this: the twenty dollar bribe.

About one week before the next big swim meet announce to your team that you are going to give the swimmer that drops the most time (it can be cumulative if you want them swimming more events) a crisp Andrew Jackson. There is advantage to swimming the longer events too because it's easier to drop a few seconds there.

I think you'll be surprised who the winner turns our to be. It probably won't be the swimmer you expect.

Gary Hall Jr.

Pan Ams: Soldier Through

2007-07-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

My bags are packed and the majority of the team is headed out to enjoy their last night in Rio de Janeiro. Most were able to see Christ the Redeemer today while the few of us that still have to swim sat behind hoping to close this meet on a good note.

About 64% of the men's team swam a lifetime best at these Pan Am Games. About 86% of the women's team swam lifetime bests. That's impressive.

Count me among those that came up a little short. It stings. The realization that I wasn't going to be swimming at the level I wanted was there before the first gun went off but the hope that things might go better than I expected lingered.

What do you say to a swimmer that just encountered some pretty serious disappointment?

Coaches and teammates have this to deal with often.

I remember (Here I go reminiscing again. I'm starting to sound like my grandfather.) sitting in the hot tub off of the warm down pool in Sydney in 2000. Jenny Thompson was devastated. She hadn't won the individual gold medal that the media had made such a big deal about. She felt like a failure. I put my arm around her.

Jenny has 12 Olympic medals. Her performance on the relays over the years earned many other swimmers gold medals. There are quite a few Olympic gold medalists out there because of Jenny. Her best efforts were for the relays.

Some media angle about how her relay medals didn't stack up to an individual gold medal had taken this negative spin instead of the really amazing thing it was. Anyone that knows Jenny knows how selfless she is. As far back as I can remember she was always a team captain for this same reason.

Her medal count is impressive. What is more impressive though is that it demonstrates that Jenny was the greatest teammate you could have.

Anyway, she was sitting there feeling like a failure. I made a feeble attempt to articulate how much respect she had from the team and from myself, that the media had missed something incredible by micro-focusing on something stupid.

It's important to realize that there are going to be setbacks. If we all went personal best times every time, there would be no joy in it, no challenge.

There is a bright side to every situation. Things can ALWAYS be worse. The bright side to not swimming well at the Pan American games is that it isn't Olympic Trials.

There is winning and there is losing but the only real failure is to fail to learn from our losses. You learn more from the races you don't win than the ones you do.

I have to go to sleep pretty soon because I do have to swim one last 50 free tomorrow before leaving straight for the airport so I'll end with another "I remember" story. In 1995 the Pan Am's were in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

After having completed my warm up I put on my sweats and was talking with teammates and a cute girl from Argentina. I lost track of time and before I knew it I was being called to the ready room. I collected my cap and goggles and went in. I put on my cap and goggles and they walked us out to the starting blocks for the 100 meter freestyle.

They announced the finalists behind their blocks and after they announced my name I did a little wave to the crowd and then turned. I took off my jacket and then my pants. I wasn't wearing a suit.

How could I have forgotten my bathing suit? I turned white. "I don't have my suit!" I was totally panicked. Fortunately, the US team was sitting near and out of the crowd this tiny Speedo comes floating down to me. Mark Henderson had shot it like a rubber band.

By this time all the other swimmers were on the blocks and looking at me as I am hopping around doing the world's fastest deck change on international television.

How could I have forgotten my suit!

My heart rate was close to 200 beats per minute as I jumped up on the blocks. I led at the 50 by about three body lengths and finished, barely, in sixth place.

What I learned from the 1995 Pan American games was not to forget your bathing suit.

What I take away from these Pan American games is not as clear to me yet. But I'll have plenty of time to figure it out.

At the tender age of 32, I am still learning and learning is what makes us better.

Off to soldier through tomorrow's 50 free,

Gary Hall Jr.

Pan Ams: An exercise in tough

2007-07-20T08:46:00.000-07:00

Beating Brazil in Brazil is like, hard. We knew it was going to be tough but now that we are in the competition and actually having to do it, well, it's tougher to do tough than it is to talk about tough. I am reminded that this is and was always the case.

This young US team is doing a bang up job. There is no doubt about it. Every swimmer here has made the US proud, swimming their guts out in these Pan Am Games. They have been gracious in victory and defeat. I am sure that you will see some of these swimmers on the Beijing trip.

With that said I now talk (write?) about the Brazilian team. I have spent many years on the pool deck and have been around long enough to remember when Brazil was a strong team. Way back in 1996 I narrowly beat a couple different Brazilians and their relay team was a contender for the gold medal.

Brazil is in the process of demonstrating that they are back with a young and talented team that is stronger than they have ever had before. This next generation of Brazilian swimmers is impressive and we can be sure to see them fighting for medals next year.

Tonight I swim the 4x100 free relay, prelims.

The morning finals schedule has me all spun around. When someone is talking about the evening session I assume they are talking about finals. When they talk about the morning I assume they are talking about prelims. It's always been that way and I am conditioned.

Since there is nothing short of selling my soul that will change things back to the way that they always were at the Olympic games I just keep trying to make the change. So instead of talking about morning and evening swims I talk about prelims and finals. It doesn't help because whomever I am talking to has had the same problems adjusting. It's total communication breakdown.

Early on I decided that I would hold judgment until I tried the morning final schedule. Now I have. Whether we are talking about prelim/final or morning/evening, it stinks. Morning finals suck. Everyone is doing the best to stay positive about it, but it sucks. Everything about it sucks. It is going to be really difficult on the swimmers in Beijing, more than I had anticipated. Yeah, everyone is on the same playing field, that's true. It sucks for everyone.

The schedule here allows only a few short hours between morning and evening (final and prelim) sessions. There is enough time to eat and get a massage. Or get a massage and take an hour nap. Or eat and nap, but not all three. Here we are getting back at eight or nine at night and there are only fifteen swimmers entered in some of the events. Imagine what time we will get back to the Olympic village, after a long bus ride, after each event offers fifteen heats.

As if swimming in the Olympic games wasn't difficult enough, some NBC exec, that probably sold their soul, just made it a little more challenging. Thanks a lot. Maybe we should tie the competitor's hands together! It will be great for ratings! Who here still has a soul?... And wants a promotion?

Bother. I'm leading off the relay tonight in the prelims. I haven't been training for the 100 but I'm going to try to pop a good one. Just gotta be tough.

Gary Hall Jr.