So in 2015, after a disc injury, I basically turned into a 100% swimmer with some lame, not so good attempts at getting back into riding and running. It took me a while to get over the lack of riding and running (especially riding as I still really miss it) but today, I am a swimmer first perhaps with a sliver of hope to get back into bike touring in the Alps. But I'm the guy at the dolphin tank every day all year. At my local pool, they may as well add me to the infrastructure.
In any case I started off 2016 working mainly on my freestyle using it is an opportunity for a swim focus with a hope of becoming some type of FOP swim dude when I got back into tris. Eventually I realized that I would just be frustrating myself, thinking about swimming for triathlon vs swimming for swimming.
It was at that point in April 2016, that I decided I needed to learn to swim like a swimmer. I wanted to improve EVERTHING...kick, all 4 strokes, learning how to kick dolphin and all the zillion variations and subtleties. This process is not new to me. I'd applied it learning how to play many sports from baseball, to tennis to XC skiing. Basically becoming a student of the sport.
OK, so I was watching replays of the London Olympics and the 400IM and 200IM. Those guys are beyond awesome. I NEEDED to learn how to do the fly. So here I was was unable to do barely 4 strokes due to neck and shoulder limitations from many crashes, but dammit I was going to learn.
Fortunately, I am blessed with a decent size engine, which helps (the high cost of good form as Slowman once wrote) and an insanely high tolerance for repetition (most of us have that). I think it was around end of May 2016, when I managed my first 25m fly. Bascially after that, I was so gassed that I thought that I would have to pack in the workout.
By June 2016, I managed a single 50m fly in a long course pool on a biz trip in Frankfurt. But it was all flailing and my timing was wrong. By the fall, even with bad timing, bad streamline, bad catch, terrible kick, poor core mobility, I got up to a set of 4x100m as 50m fly and 50m free. But I really sucked, but dammit, I was going to suck less. Mainly because my mobility on land was bad, doing this in the pool made me feel superman-ish in a middle aged age group ex triathlete way....and I was getting a six pack along the way.
On Dec 30th 2016, I did my first 1200 km year of swimming. The mileage had turned into my goal to basically average 100km per month. On Jan 1, I said, OK enough of that, this year, I need to stop worrying about a runner style mileage goal and really get better at all 4 strokes.
By early Feb of this year, I had gotten up to a set of 8x100m as 50/50 fly free. I started getting this crazy idea of "what if I could do a set 2x400m as fly-free". So I worked up to single 400m. By some time in mid Feb it turned to 2x400m. During that second one, I thought, "dammit" I think I could do an entire kilometer of this.
Big mistake....well kind of.
At the end of Feb, I attempted the 1000m as 50/50. I have done a ton of difficult endurance things in my life, but this was the single most difficult "race" I had ever done. Sometime between leg 7 and 9, it literally felt like I would pass out but I kept at it. At the end of the entire thing, I my time was 18:34.....based on my splits in the intervals, I THOUGHT I would have not problem going sub 18, but I totally fell apart.
At that point, I was excited about my "accomplishment" being the 50-54 world champion in an event with one athlete, but I was not happy with my pacing. I overcooked the first part, like any stupid 18 year old in a 5K road race.
So I said, that's it, I am not coming back to this till I can break 18 minutes.
But honestly I got scared to try it again. The pain was too much.
I gave myself the excuse to work on my technique for this....everything from getting my timing down, my streamline, my dive into the water, managing effort from my pull vs /core legs and lastly my underwater dolphin kick.....the latter was pathetic. I could barely make it past the flags. It's not that my core muscles were/are weak, my timing was way off.
In any case, I decided that every swim, regardless of stroke, I would start off each wall with 8-10 hard dolphin kicks. This made every workout harder than it should be,but thanks to the inputs of many on the fish threads like Jasoninhalifax and others, I was getting really strong. Not surprisingly my swim workouts were turning into more like core and leg workouts than upper body in many ways.
Also back at home to "train" for the event, I started doing set of 20 lat pull downs with 80-90% of body weight to mimic the 20-24 strokes of fly per 50M (scm). Also I started doing leg extensions, also 20-30 at 80-100% body weight again to mimic the number of second hard kicks while doing fly.
In November I started realizing that I was giving myself excuses for not trying the 1000m again, but I kept giving myself excuses. In November I decided to focus on my dolphin kick some more and try to get the 25m across the pool. I could do it with fins on, but was unsure without fins.
It literally took me less than week once I tried to make it the full 25m after a short rest from what I was doing. I felt this was my big sporting achievement for the year. Now I could hold my own with any "real fish" sprinting underwater for 25m...the same guy who could barely do 7m at the start of the year.
All the time, I was not timing anything just going by feel. I timed a few sets of 400m fly free and noticed I was consistently under 7 minutes often down closer to 6:40 on some days. I started feeling confidence that I would break 18 minutes now, if I just paced it out.
Anyway, yesterday I was going to hit 1200km of swimming for the year and it was 1000 km since my first crack at it. At this point many aspects of my swimming look like a 'real swimmer'. Even my breast stroke is getting decent.....my back stroke still sucks.
So I arrived at 1199 km for the year (not that my compulsive self is not counting LOL) and the time was "up". I had to do the 1000m whether I liked it or not.
So off I went. I came through 100m in 1:40 and thought the pace was too hot, so unlike my spring attempt, I started dogging it in some ways. For the fly I chose to breath every second stroke, as I get more power from my pull and save my legs. For the free, for one length I breathed every hand entry to "catch up" on oxygen. For the second 25, I breathed on right hand entry. I went through 400m at 6:58 comfortably, which put me on pace for 17:30.
All my work on the under water dolphin streamline was helping me above water for both strokes. I was able to keep my body tight and streamlines trying to emulate a torpedo. I was waiting for the hammer to fall between legs 7 and 9 and while it kind of did, it never buried me. I fell a few second off pace on each of the last few legs before the sprint home.
Final time was 17:36. I took 58 seconds off my time since the spring. 1000km of swimming to make a 5% difference, but I guess that is what it takes, and it was worth every meter in the pool. The dolphin tank has been my zen zone in an otherwise insanely miserable year.
I realize this "report" is long, but wanted to share the evolution of the pieces of the puzzle from triathlete guy to swimmer butterfly guy.
Finally I would like to add, that I had a really good starting point to get into fly....XC skiing double poling is actually the same core motion as the second kick part of fly, so I already had the timing for that down on land, I just needed to transfer it into water.
Also I have always had an aptitude to pick up new sports on land. Ever since I was a kid, I could pick up a new sport and get reasonably proficient really fast. But swimming, OH MAN, I could never get it, but I THINK after all these meters, I am getting there. Real swimmers ask me what my event is and what team I swim for. I THINK that qualifies me as a real fish now.
In any case I started off 2016 working mainly on my freestyle using it is an opportunity for a swim focus with a hope of becoming some type of FOP swim dude when I got back into tris. Eventually I realized that I would just be frustrating myself, thinking about swimming for triathlon vs swimming for swimming.
It was at that point in April 2016, that I decided I needed to learn to swim like a swimmer. I wanted to improve EVERTHING...kick, all 4 strokes, learning how to kick dolphin and all the zillion variations and subtleties. This process is not new to me. I'd applied it learning how to play many sports from baseball, to tennis to XC skiing. Basically becoming a student of the sport.
OK, so I was watching replays of the London Olympics and the 400IM and 200IM. Those guys are beyond awesome. I NEEDED to learn how to do the fly. So here I was was unable to do barely 4 strokes due to neck and shoulder limitations from many crashes, but dammit I was going to learn.
Fortunately, I am blessed with a decent size engine, which helps (the high cost of good form as Slowman once wrote) and an insanely high tolerance for repetition (most of us have that). I think it was around end of May 2016, when I managed my first 25m fly. Bascially after that, I was so gassed that I thought that I would have to pack in the workout.
By June 2016, I managed a single 50m fly in a long course pool on a biz trip in Frankfurt. But it was all flailing and my timing was wrong. By the fall, even with bad timing, bad streamline, bad catch, terrible kick, poor core mobility, I got up to a set of 4x100m as 50m fly and 50m free. But I really sucked, but dammit, I was going to suck less. Mainly because my mobility on land was bad, doing this in the pool made me feel superman-ish in a middle aged age group ex triathlete way....and I was getting a six pack along the way.
On Dec 30th 2016, I did my first 1200 km year of swimming. The mileage had turned into my goal to basically average 100km per month. On Jan 1, I said, OK enough of that, this year, I need to stop worrying about a runner style mileage goal and really get better at all 4 strokes.
By early Feb of this year, I had gotten up to a set of 8x100m as 50/50 fly free. I started getting this crazy idea of "what if I could do a set 2x400m as fly-free". So I worked up to single 400m. By some time in mid Feb it turned to 2x400m. During that second one, I thought, "dammit" I think I could do an entire kilometer of this.
Big mistake....well kind of.
At the end of Feb, I attempted the 1000m as 50/50. I have done a ton of difficult endurance things in my life, but this was the single most difficult "race" I had ever done. Sometime between leg 7 and 9, it literally felt like I would pass out but I kept at it. At the end of the entire thing, I my time was 18:34.....based on my splits in the intervals, I THOUGHT I would have not problem going sub 18, but I totally fell apart.
At that point, I was excited about my "accomplishment" being the 50-54 world champion in an event with one athlete, but I was not happy with my pacing. I overcooked the first part, like any stupid 18 year old in a 5K road race.
So I said, that's it, I am not coming back to this till I can break 18 minutes.
But honestly I got scared to try it again. The pain was too much.
I gave myself the excuse to work on my technique for this....everything from getting my timing down, my streamline, my dive into the water, managing effort from my pull vs /core legs and lastly my underwater dolphin kick.....the latter was pathetic. I could barely make it past the flags. It's not that my core muscles were/are weak, my timing was way off.
In any case, I decided that every swim, regardless of stroke, I would start off each wall with 8-10 hard dolphin kicks. This made every workout harder than it should be,but thanks to the inputs of many on the fish threads like Jasoninhalifax and others, I was getting really strong. Not surprisingly my swim workouts were turning into more like core and leg workouts than upper body in many ways.
Also back at home to "train" for the event, I started doing set of 20 lat pull downs with 80-90% of body weight to mimic the 20-24 strokes of fly per 50M (scm). Also I started doing leg extensions, also 20-30 at 80-100% body weight again to mimic the number of second hard kicks while doing fly.
In November I started realizing that I was giving myself excuses for not trying the 1000m again, but I kept giving myself excuses. In November I decided to focus on my dolphin kick some more and try to get the 25m across the pool. I could do it with fins on, but was unsure without fins.
It literally took me less than week once I tried to make it the full 25m after a short rest from what I was doing. I felt this was my big sporting achievement for the year. Now I could hold my own with any "real fish" sprinting underwater for 25m...the same guy who could barely do 7m at the start of the year.
All the time, I was not timing anything just going by feel. I timed a few sets of 400m fly free and noticed I was consistently under 7 minutes often down closer to 6:40 on some days. I started feeling confidence that I would break 18 minutes now, if I just paced it out.
Anyway, yesterday I was going to hit 1200km of swimming for the year and it was 1000 km since my first crack at it. At this point many aspects of my swimming look like a 'real swimmer'. Even my breast stroke is getting decent.....my back stroke still sucks.
So I arrived at 1199 km for the year (not that my compulsive self is not counting LOL) and the time was "up". I had to do the 1000m whether I liked it or not.
So off I went. I came through 100m in 1:40 and thought the pace was too hot, so unlike my spring attempt, I started dogging it in some ways. For the fly I chose to breath every second stroke, as I get more power from my pull and save my legs. For the free, for one length I breathed every hand entry to "catch up" on oxygen. For the second 25, I breathed on right hand entry. I went through 400m at 6:58 comfortably, which put me on pace for 17:30.
All my work on the under water dolphin streamline was helping me above water for both strokes. I was able to keep my body tight and streamlines trying to emulate a torpedo. I was waiting for the hammer to fall between legs 7 and 9 and while it kind of did, it never buried me. I fell a few second off pace on each of the last few legs before the sprint home.
Final time was 17:36. I took 58 seconds off my time since the spring. 1000km of swimming to make a 5% difference, but I guess that is what it takes, and it was worth every meter in the pool. The dolphin tank has been my zen zone in an otherwise insanely miserable year.
I realize this "report" is long, but wanted to share the evolution of the pieces of the puzzle from triathlete guy to swimmer butterfly guy.
Finally I would like to add, that I had a really good starting point to get into fly....XC skiing double poling is actually the same core motion as the second kick part of fly, so I already had the timing for that down on land, I just needed to transfer it into water.
Also I have always had an aptitude to pick up new sports on land. Ever since I was a kid, I could pick up a new sport and get reasonably proficient really fast. But swimming, OH MAN, I could never get it, but I THINK after all these meters, I am getting there. Real swimmers ask me what my event is and what team I swim for. I THINK that qualifies me as a real fish now.
Last edited by:
devashish_paul: Dec 16, 17 7:39