What We Think About When We Swim

On Tuesday of this week I returned home from a trip to Italy and England. On the first leg of that trip, (Oct 19) I swam Corsica to Sardinia. I’ll recount that in next week’s blog.

Tuesday evening,  I read the New Yorker magazine article, WHAT WE THINK ABOUT WHEN WE RUN. It was mainly a review of “Poverty Creek Journal” a collection of essays on a year’s worth of runs. It also summarized a study published  in the International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology. Sports psychologists gave clip-on microphones to 10 distance runners and asked them to narrate their thought process during a run.

What did these runners think about?

How hard it was to move at their desired speed: “Come on, keep the stride going, bro.”
How soon they could stop: “Come on, you have enough energy for a mile and a half.”
And quite often about how miserable they felt while running. The researchers summarized: “Pain and discomfort were never far from their thoughts.”

I couldn’t help but wonder why people carry on with such a masochistic exercise. And then I thought: If they knew how it feels to practice Kaizen Swimming, would they give up running? Or would they run differently–the way ChiRunning teaches?

In any case the contrast between the runners in this study and the practice I’d done just a day earlier could not be more stark.

Before I describe my practice, I’ll review several principles of TI Fast Forward training methodology:

1. Always focus on improving your swimming.

2. Create a feedback loop-either subjective (Focal Points) or objective (SPL, Tempo, Time). If the latter, use two metrics. Tempo+SPL or Tempo+Time or SPL+Time.

3. To swim faster, design problem-solving exercises that strengthen your ability to hold Stroke Length, while increasing Stroke Length. We call this the [I]’Algorithm of Swimming Success.'[/I]

On Monday morning, six hours before flying back to NY, I joined Sean Haywood (he swims for TI UK Coach Tracey Baumann and was among 27 members of her training group who went with Tracey to Ironman Mallorca the previous month) for a swim at the Hampton Lido, an outdoor 36-meter pool. Having never swum in a 36m pool, I went in with no idea what stroke count or pace I should aim for.

But that’s never a problem. I can ‘create meaning’ in any pool, just by counting strokes during my tuneup, which I swam in the ‘medium speed’ lane.

Swimming with a feather-light catch and barely-there kick, I took 24 strokes the first length, then added one stroke on each of the next three laps–reaching 27 SPL on the 4th. (I later did a calculation and found that the Green Zone for my 6-foot height in a 36-meter pool should be between 24 and about 28 strokes.) When the ‘tuneup effect’ began to take hold, I shaved a stroke bringing me to 26SPL. I swam continuously for another 10 to 12 minutes, holding quite steady at 26SPL (except when I overtook another swimmer and sped up to pass).

Feeling ready for a challenge, I moved into the ‘fast’ lane and turned on my Tempo Trainer. It was set to 1.17 sec/stroke. I figured that was as good a place as any to start. I swam 4 lengths (144m) continuously, and averaged 27 SPL. Armed with that information, I decided to swim a Tempo Pyramid, slowing tempo by .02 each  repeat until my SPL returned to 26–or 104 strokes for a 4-lap, 144m swim. I reached that at 1.23 tempo–25 strokes on the 1st length, 26 strokes on the 2nd and 3rd and 27 strokes on the 4th.

Next I would test how long I could hold this stroke count, while increasing tempo by .01 sec after each  rep. I held this count for 11 reps–to a tempo of 1.13 sec/stroke. Doing the math, my pace at 1.13 tempo–and the same number of strokes–was 14.4 seconds faster than at 1.23 tempo. Yet I’d never tried to swim faster. I simply executed strokes of consistent quality while making minute increases in tempo.

At 1.12 I exceeded my target count so on the next rep, I dropped down to 3-length (98m) reps and held my 26SPL average (25-26-27 strokes) until I reached 1.09.

At 1.08 my SPL rose again, so I cut another length from my repeats, carrying on with 2-length (72m) repeats, holding 26 SPL to 1.06. When my stroke count rose above 26 again, I cut another length and finished my practice by holding 26 strokes for 36 meters from 1.05 to 1.02 sec/stroke. My final length was 27 strokes at 1.01.

If a researcher had given me a waterproof mic and asked me to record my thoughts between repeats, I’d have said I was in a nearly-blissful Flow State the entire time, from focusing on every single stroke . . . Totally Immersed in what I was doing.

And how did I feel physically? Fabulous!  As I swim steadily faster, my movement through the water felt better and better–more integrated, more fluent. And the overall effect produced a highly satisfying Flow State.

Can it get any better than that?

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