Swim squad

To rise to the next level in triathlon you need to train by swimming with swimmers, bicycling with cyclists and running with runners. -- Stuart Macintosh


I hated swimming lessons when I was a child. All the spluttering and thrashing and swallowing water and shivering in the cold pool. No wonder I can barely manage to swim the crawl.

Nonetheless, this past Monday night I worked up the motivation to join four other guys for a coached swim workout at the Sendagaya public pool.

We started off with a 4x200 meter drill, and at the end of the first 200 meters I was already almost a lap behind. I looked up at the coach, a nice Canadian fellow named Greg, who said to me, "We have a lot of work to do".

My impression is that the other four guys, Keren, Fabien, Steve and Andrew, are pretty accomplished swimmers. It is difficult for me to distinguish how strong of swimmers they are from my vantage point, but somehow I have to think that if I was thrown in a pool with four people randomly picked off the street I would not be quite so far behind.

In any case, after months of swimming slow back and forth laps on my own, it was extremely helpful to have someone watching me, having someone providing feedback, be ing forced to do drills, and feeling pressure to at least sortof try to keep up with the others.

The key takeaways --
1. Kick - Imagine a loose rope around my ankles and keep the kick within that rope
2. Pivot shoulders - Drill by exaggerating swivel of body so that I am perpendicular to pool
3. Palm pressure - To increase speed don't stroke faster, instead concentrate on the force of water on one's hand.
4. Elbows up - Pull the medicine ball down. Not sure if I have this one down.