Secret to Better Flip Turns

I've always thought I had a pretty good flip turn and yesterday I got confirmation, almost. A former NCAA swim team coach was doing a favor for the guy in the lane next to me, evaluating the guy's stroke, when I stopped at the wall. Standing high above me on the pool deck, the coach said, "You've got a good flip turn there". I thanked him. Then he said, "You could do better with it if you just tightened up more on your kick-off". Not knowing exactly what he meant, I asked, "Tighten what up?" And he put his arms out front of him, grabbed his two hands together in a fist and forced his arms out dead straight. Relaxing, he said, "Your elbows are relaxed. You have a kink in your elbows". I tried what he suggested and instantly added almost two meters to my push off distance. I guess my elbows were impeding the slipstream.

Keep Your Head Down - What that Really Means

"Keep your head down!" I've heard that mantra for years. Foolish me, I never really understood the premise until earlier this week when I spoke with a swim coach with a remarkable personal best time in 100 meter freestyle. Needless to say, I listened. I had asked him what his secret was. He didn't really think he had one but was more than happy to demonstrate his stroke technique (on dry land). He talked about keeping one's head down. Great, I thought. How many times have I heard that before? What was different was that he went on further to explain - a good thing since I always thought that the expression meant to just put your face in the water and not be looking up (with a dry face). NO! I was wrong. He showed me (another guy had come up and was listening too) that simply putting one's face in the water is not enough, even if the water (like me) comes nearly up to your earlobe. If you are looking forward, unless your face is streamlined, you have in essence put up a flat block in front of you and are blocking the slipstream of water past you. You must defeat that effect by dropping your head further and point your nose at the bottom of the pool to get the streamline effect. I've been working on this since. It will take some effort to get comfortable but I look forward to improved results. In the mean time, I could use someone to ride in a boat beside me to slap me on the back of the head when I don't "keep my head down."

The Minutia of Slipstreaming Technique

If you know this blog, you know I examine some odd things about swimming from time to time. Today is no different. In fact, today I'm going to highlight a lot of swimming's oddity. If you don't know much about speed swimming, this post will enlighten you. Swimmers are known to do some very odd things. The guys wear those skimpy suits few of us wouldn't be caught dead in. Back in the sixties when long hair was the thing, they shaved their heads. If you see any telecast where they interview a group of swimmers, I challenge you to find one with a hair on his chest, much less his arms or legs. Why, you ask? Swimming is a sport of micro-seconds. Championships and records are set in fractions of seconds. The time between two contenders hitting the wall (that means finishing, in swim-speak)can be infinitesimal. All these odd things I cite above are for speed. It's hard for me to imagine shaving my arms would make me any faster, but honestly I don't think I could ever tell if I were 0.01 seconds faster. Maybe some of it is psychological. On Saturday, one of the major TV stations carried the Dual-in-the-Pool, a competition between the USA men and womens teams and Australia's. Together, they hold most of the world records so it was fun to watch. When Cullen Jones, an American was interviewed following his 50 meter freestyle victory, he mentioned having a bubble in his suit earlier and electing to go with another design. When you're competing against the best, I guess you'd rather your competition eat your bubbles than carry the things with you!