Wow. Thanks, Gary.

welcome and interesting idea. I am always looking for a bit more oxygen in the water.

I am intrigued by this breathing advice. That is a lot of breathing!

But I like breathing

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Kat Hunter reports on the San Dimas Stage Race from inside the GC winning team
Aeroweenie.com -Compendium of Aero Data and Knowledge
Freelance sports & outdoors writer Kathryn Hunter

I have a friend on my swim team that does that. It's really weird to watch but it works for him.

jaretj

Like with anything new, it will feel strange when you first try it, but very natural when you get used to it. Believe me, you will not only welcome the 02 but will feel more ability to sustain your speed.
Bonking in a race means running out of glucose or water or both. But our bodies automatically slow down when we run out of ATP or overheat. If the conditions are poor, we may not be able to avoid overheating, but we can surely keep the pipeline of 02 and ATP going by simply breathing more. Try it and you will see.

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

Isn't the liquid oxygen a little chilly on the tongue?

Something different to try but for someone who has the most difficulty with the swim I need any and every trick because I still haven't found one that works for me yet. Thanks!

I've definitely heard about the benefits of bilateral breathing, but never in this concept of 2:3 breath:pull ratio. I think I'll stop amusing my coworkers by practicing it in the air and give it a try during this evenings workout...

great advice about the breathing. because there are still some misguided folks (some even on this forum) who suggest "bilateral breathing" (just 1 breath for each 3 arm strokes) for distance swimming. and yet nearly no elite swimmers or triathletes do this at race pace. finally, some advice from someone who knows fast swimming. thanks!

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Where would you want to swim ?

Dear tim_sleepless,

Liquid oxygen isn't like liquid nitrogen, which would definitely freeze your tongue. Liquid 02 was developed by NASA for toxic clean up (oxygen is very germicidal) but never was developed there. Instead, it found a home in the supplement industry.
It is comprised of one Hydrogen atom with 4 Oxygen molecules (very unstable). Once it touches anything from the plastic container, the 02 will immediately jump off. That is why it needs to go from the bottle to under your tongue and hold for 30 seconds or so. Never put on a spoon or glass or mix with other liquid. The 02 goes right into the blood and saturates (97%). It has a tiny bit of chlorine also (not enough to harm) and tastes just like pool water.
I use it (along with Thunderbolt) before each practice and each race. It works.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Unfortunately, I would bet that the vast majority of folks on this forum that are weak in the swim are those with the poorest form ... myself included. The culprit to my poor form is my inability to smoothly breath without lifting my head. The lifted head, of course, results in dropped legs ... the drag-suit you mention. Along with the lifted head is a stroke on the breath that tends to push down to compensate for the head lift - resulting in less forward propulsion. These are flaws in my swimming technique, I understand, and I am endeavoring to eliminate them. Until I do, I will likely not be incorporating more of what I do worst.

Now, if you have any tips that'll make my head-lifting issues evaporate i would looovvvve to read that.

I was of the understanding that venous blood is never completely desaturated under "normal" breathing: there is always oxygen in the blood. It is not lack of oxygen in the blood, but rather the ability to deliver it to the muscles (capillarization) and to use it within the muscles (mitochondria) that is the limiter. Do you have pointers to studies that will disabuse me of this idea?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Ken, you may be right, but you must also be missing something. Go run a 5:30 minute mile forcing yourself to breath in with one quick gulp then slowly exhale over 4 strides...keep that breathing rythm all the way through that mile and then tell yourself that there is always oxygen in the blood.

Hence my qualification of "normal breathing." Also, comparing swimming to running is a bit off, as swimming uses much less oxygen due to less musculature coming into play.

When I swim, I'm never gasping for air (except in turns in the 200 breaststroke, and even then I suspect it's too much CO2 and not insufficient O2); that's never been a limiter.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Dear Ken,

The process of getting oxygen converted to ATP at maximal exercise (so called VO2 max) is complex. it depends on the %02 in the air (altitude), the number of breaths, the number and size of alveoli in the lungs and associated capillaries reaching them, the number of RBCs in the blood, the stroke volume (blood expelled with each heart beat), heart rate, peripheral resistance to blood flow, capillary perfusion at the muscle, transport rate of O2 across the cell membranes and the number of mitochondria and other organelles required to manufacture ATP.
With minimal exercise, the % of arterial O2 saturation begins to diminish immediately. I am a physician and tested this on myself with a pulse oximeter in my own operating room once. It dropped down into the low 80's but jumped right back up to 97% with the liquid oxygen. Cardiopulmonary (aerobic) training will improve most of the above functions, but with maximal exercise, one cannot maintain a high saturation of arterial O2. Therefore, the number of breaths we take is important, just as we notice the %02 in the air with altitude also makes a huge difference.
So at race time, your physiology is pretty much stable (although ATP has been shown to increase peripheral blood flow and may improve your VO2 max), but you CAN control the number of breaths coming into the system. If it doesn't cause serious technique flaws, which if done properly, it shouldn't, then it is worth every precious breath.

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

I feel like I'm the only one that doesn't get it. Are you all talking about breathing on 2 consecutive strokes, then getting another stroke in before breathing again?

Dear Robroo,

Sorry. It is a bit confusing. Let me explain. Right arm recovery, breath to the left. Left arm recovery, immediately breath to the right. Then hold one right arm stroke and begin the same cycle. This time the cycle starts to the left. This is NOT breathing every third stroke to opposite sides which is getting LESS oxygen, not more.
Practice it a few laps. Once you get it, its like riding a bike. You will get into a definite rhythm.

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

So don't tell me world class swimmers never do this.

Can you give us a link to video of this being used?

Dear TomAnnapolis,

You make a very good point. Lifting the head too high is one of the most common mistakes swimmers make in the freestyle. The best reasons I can come for this fault are two: 1) we like to know where we are going and 2) we swim defensively....that is if we are in a lane with 5,6 or 7 other swimmers circling or in a tri swim with kicks and feet and blood in the water, we watch out for the drunk swimmer going down the wrong side of the lane or the vicious triathlete who refuses to cut his or her toenails.
LIfting the head creates two big problems. First, it causes the hips and legs to sink significantly increasing pressure drag as we move through the water. Second, with the head above the surface we also increase surface (wave) drag, further slowing us down.
In our camps, i can easily teach swimmers with some selected drills to get their heads down (though most can't believe how far down they should be) but keeping them down is another matter. It is as if the head is made of cork. As soon as they take the first breath, the head goes right back to the high position. Here are some tips to help you.
Your line of sight should be either straight down at the bottom of the pool or even back 10 degrees or so. If you are looking forward in the pool at all, your head is too high. Second, buy a monosnorkel by Finis (you can also find on our website http://www.theraceclub.com). Don't just use the snorkel (which eliminates the need to side breath), but place a tennis ball between your chin and your chest and hold it there while you swim with the snorkel. That is the head position you want to maintain (even while side breathing). Do this enough and you will get it....but take out insurance for swimming related injuries because you should never be able to see that swimmer coming down the wrong side of the lane!

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

It is a bit confusing. Let me explain. Right arm recovery, breath to the left. Left arm recovery, immediately breath to the right. Then hold one right arm stroke and begin the same cycle. This time the cycle starts to the left. This is NOT breathing every third stroke to opposite sides which is getting LESS oxygen, not more.
Practice it a few laps. Once you get it, its like riding a bike. You will get into a definite rhythm.

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.
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Thanks, I was also a little confused on this.

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Train safe & smart
Bob

Well, here's Kieran Perkins at the worlds in 1994.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIOQvfFYCdI

Dear Schroeder,

Sorry. I can't and rarely does one see world class swimmers use it. I have seen a few. But their VO2 maxs are also off the charts. For the rest of us mortals who don't train 8 hrs a day, it is a nice way to sustain our speed better.
Some of the things I have learned about efficiency have been on my 57 year old body that doesn't have the cardiopulmonary system it once had. This is one of them and I can assure you it helps me.

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

Thanks,

you could see him taking the extra breath right before the turn but I couldn't catch any other. But picture clarity and the camera work made it difficult. When I'm tired, I breathe like that right before the turn also but always thought of it as a negative.

Thank you for killing off one of the holy cows.

When I first started swimming 4 years ago, common sense told me that more oxygen good, less oxygen bad, and I could never understand the obsession expressed by quite a few with holding ones breath for as long as possible.

I would like to hear your opinion on another subject, exhaling.

I was lucky when I started to have as a coach a former Olympian (1988) and US record holder (I dont want to use her name, havent cleared it with her but I am pretty sure she was of the same generation as your son and that you would know her)

She changed my exhale from slow throughout the underwater phase to explosive as I rotate out.

This makes intuitive sense to me as it retains maximum oxygen for absorption and it greatly aids in fully emptying the lungs before each breath, avoiding shallow breathing. It also makes the upper body more buoyant for longer though that may be a debatable benefit.

On further thought, if starting to breathe on both sides, it seems the only way to empty the lungs in the short period of time between breaths.

Again, thanks for your advice.

Me neither!

yet nearly no elite swimmers or triathletes do this at race pace

I think you mean nearly no MALE elite swimmers. There are plenty of elite women who bilateral breathe.

for example, check out Manaudou

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6GmflekO_g

Dear Schroeder,

You are right. He did not do it regularly or with any pattern i could detect. But he did it a couple of times in the middle of the pool. I had never seen it done before that. The point is that if you can do it sometimes, why not do it regularly. Breathing every stroke is too much, but this is the next best thing....though maybe you need to be old like me to appreciate its benefit.

Yours,

Gary Sr.

Dear Gary,

You have excellent advice, but I have a small question about your view regarding head placement. Of course you don't want to lift your head high in the water, but I have noticed in my swimming and coaching that a slight head tilt allows for a lot easier breathing if you are able to swim at a good clip. But the real clincher is watching the technique of elite male and female swimmers competing in 800m and 1500m events (there are tons of these videos online): nearly 100% of them have their heads slightly tilted back (i.e., their faces are not facing straight down to the bottom of the pool). Your thoughts?

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Where would you want to swim ?

Yay! Magic!

Now, I'll be the first to admit that I'm not an Olympic medal winner, but just a middle-of-the-pack, know-nothing drowner. However, the logic and the anecdotes in your post, don't prove or even offer evidence to support a hypothesis that might be tested.

Just as distance runners and distance cyclists have differing techniques than sprinting runners and sprinting cyclists, for longer swimming applications, say 2.4 mile iron distance, giving examples from 400 meter techniques might not be pointing the right direction.

If you gave me the option of getting through the swim leg with 27% more oxygen, my taking it or not would depend on the cost of the oxygen. Why not breathe every stroke and get even more oxygen? If I gave you the option of getting through the swim leg with even more oxygen, would you take it? Would you take two breaths per stroke for even more oxygen? Ten breaths and a margarita per stroke?

Liquid oxygen has a freezing point of -222.65 °C and a boiling point of -182.96 °C. I don't think you're putting that under anyone's tongue. Though you call it liquid oxygen, that's not what you're writing about. Oxygen can in fact be toxic in many liquid forms, and under pressure. We know what Hydrogen Peroxide does, and it's only H2O2. HO4 would have the same toxic effect. We need not worry though, because this HO4 would quickly dilute in saliva. You're shilling an expensive bottle of water. Even that doesn't matter though. Our lungs are good at absorbing oxygen, but there's no evidence that our mouths or stomachs are oxygen uptake organs. Why don't you take this quackery even further? Instead of just drinking 30 drops of water before the race, we're swimming in water. It's 1/3 oxygen. Drink it all, or if drinking doesn't work, why not breathe water? It's got more oxygen than air.

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C
Purveyor of Crank!

Dear Jacknine,

You bring up a really good point and one i often forget to mention. Some of the best underwater slow motion video ever taken was in a DVD we produced last summer entitled The Three Styles of Freestyle (http://www.theraceclub.com), in which Mike Bottom describes why you need different techniques for different distances (I fully agree). Anyway, you see only a trickle of bubbles coming from the mouth or nose until the expulsion of air at the last second. Keeping the air in the lungs as long as possible is the idea. I would also think that the added pressure in the lungs of a full breath would help with the transport of 02 across the alveoli, but not sure on that.
Best thing about the video is to watch the head positions (low) and elbow positions (high) of these world class swimmers.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Now we're talking.

As you said, not the best quality, but I didn't see a single instance of him breathing to his left with the possible exception of into one turn. He did switch to breathing every four on the last 100 for a bit.

One would think that if this were truly beneficial, you'd see it more. Especially if someone like Perkins did it fifteen years ago.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Dr. Hall, thanks so much for the tips. Its great having you participate on our forum. I've done 3 IM races, and the swim is where I really need some work. I'll make sure to incorporate your tips in my workouts.

Also I wanted to tell you my wife speaks fondly of you. When she was younger, she has some eye problems and you treated her and even to this day she still mentions how appreciative she was for the treatment. I hope all is well with you and your family.

Peace,
Rob

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"Your Attitude Determines Your Altitude."

Thanks again.

I am convinced that anyone can be become a MOP swimmer by primarily focusing on technique, rather than lots of distance.

Getting beyond that is another issue however.

Dear By Crank!

I too was a skeptic, as were our World Team swimmers in 2000, until they went to Flagstaff for an altitude training session. By the middle of the first workout, they were putting the liquid O2 under their tongues after every set. It works. This product does not use or contain hydrogen peroxide in any form, as some products do. It contains 1.2% chloride, .8% sodium and some trace elements. The rest is concentrated activated stabilized oxygen.
The reason I don't recommend breathing on every stroke is that it is too much. One needs some pause to keep from getting totally dizzy. Keep your semicircular canals moving all of the time and you will see what i mean. Getting two breaths in one stroke...unless you swim like Esther Williams, forget about that.
Here's to the doubting Thomas!

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Dear Schroeder,

You are right. One sees this done by more female distance swimmers than male...yet few of the American swimmers. Not sure why. We are all creatures of habit to some degree.

Gary Sr.

Dear GregX,

I have noticed that most of the distance swimmers do have their heads lifted slightly, but never a lot. Remember that you are really trying to achieve alignment of the head and body in the water. Swimming a slower speeds we are lower in the water and therefore, the head has to drop lower. At race speeds we elevate our bodies in the water and the head doesn't need to drop as far.
Popov was one of the first swimmers i noticed who really maintained a low head position. Look at the underwater shots of our DVD, The Three Styles of Freestyle...Gary Jr, George Bovell, Salim Iles, Nathan Adrian, Mike Cavic etc....they all have their heads down. I always thought one can learn the most about efficiency from the sprinters as there is no room for inefficiency. However, depending on the distance and the strengths of the swimmer, the techniques must change.
I have not noticed that the lower head position hampers breathing (only the view to the front). I teach breathing to the side and back slightly, so when the head goes back down t stays low. Breathing to the side and front tends to cause us to keep our heads too high when we rotate back.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Okay, this isn't exactly what he's talking about (and it's not an olympian either), but it looks like this female NCAA swimmer (the girl who wins, Menezez) takes two or three breaths on the right, then two or three breaths on the left and then grabs an extra breath on the opposite side before she hits the wall. I guess that's what you have to do to swim 1,000m in 10:26.

http://www.floswimming.org/...scy-free-final-ha-d1

(There's a close-up at 5:30)

Imagine that: you'd finish your 4,000m workout in 42 minutes.

Finally, try starting your tri (30 minutes before race time) with Liquid oxygen and Thunderbolt (ATP), which you can find on our website. Should help your VO2 Max and reduce lactic acid production. Our swimmers (50 in the past 3 Olympics) have used it successfully and swear by it. The combination of both products is key. Take two capsules of Thunderbolt and then 20 drops of liquid oxygen under the tongue, hold for 30 seconds, then swallow. Then, off you go.
______

Dr Hall
I'm a little challenged in understanding how these supplements would work exactly and if you could direct us to some studies that would enlighten us as to how your oxygen "drops" and ATP pills taken orally would give us this proposed boost. Since you're a physician, I would expect you could easily explain that and not use anecdotes. They do seem pretty spendy on your website. ;-)
Dave

Understood...I am just speculating here, but I think that it may come down to cadence. There is only an advantage to breathing faster up to a certain rate and then there's just not more air to be absorbed (perhaps because it takes X amount of time for diffusion across the alveoli?).
Elite 1500 swimmers have a stroke turnover that I could only mimic for a 50 or a 100. With the slower turnover that I can sustain through say 1500 meters, I might benefit from this breathing technique.
I sometimes find myself in the middle of a middle distance swim race cutting my strokes short because I just HAVE to increase my respiration rate (single-sided breathing every 2nd pull).

Dear Jacknine,

Please don't mistake my recommendation for breathing in the race with aerobic training. Practice the breathing pattern i recommend before you ever try it in a race. But in practice, we still do a lot of breath holding sets....the purpose to improve the cardiopulmonary system. Racing...you will need all the O2 you can get.

Regards,

Gary Sr

Hi,

Just a point of fact. The % of O2 in the air at altitude (even Mt. Everest) is exactly the same as the % of O2 in the air at sea level -- about 21%. However, since the pressure at altitude is so much less, there are fewer oxygen molecules per volume of air, hence the "lack of oxygen".

Thanks for the helpful tips, and welcome to ST.

Ciao,
Sharon

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Festina Lente

Dear Docpeachey,

Thanks for the clarification. It sure hurts a lot more at altitude without the O2!

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Hrm.

Not to be a nudge, but...

You joined today. 14 posts. In those 14 posts you've mentioned your oral ATP and liquid O2 5 times, your swim DVD three times, your camp twice. You've pointed to some videos that don't show the breathing technique, and when pressed, you say "Oh, I saw it once or twice in a race, they don't do it regularly."

Masterful advertising, sir. Well done. Welcome to ST.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I guess that's what you have to do to swim 1,000m in 10:26.

It is 1000 yards, not meters. You're right, she does it much more often than Perkins appeared to. It looked like she wanted to see both sides of the pool and instead of throwing in a 3, she threw in a 1. Then she takes the extra breath at the wall. She did it very smoothly but for your typical ST swimmer, it might add one more hitch in their get along.

Whoops. Does this mean I have to renounce my Canadian citizenship?

Yeah, the guys don't seem to do it as much. I just saw a few seconds of the guys race, and the leader there was doing one-sided breathing the whole time (and I believe he finished sub-10:00).

http://www.floswimming.org/...scy-free-final-ha-d1

Your swimming advice is great.

Your chemistry knowledge is, ummmm, dubious at best. Maybe even comical.

Take the knowledge, not the "supplements".

Dear Devlin,

Point well taken. Selfishly, we have held some of our products close to the chest because we know they work and they are legal. There are too many athletes taking substances that are not.
Gary Jr officially retired from swimming in November. We decided to let the world know about the products our swimmers take and market them. But it is our business to help others swim faster legally. There are many other products we recommend...just that these two are a bit harder to find.
Expensive? perhaps....but they work, particularly when used together. Only you can be the judge of their value for you. But you should try them first. Then critique.
If you are looking to maximize your ability in Triathlons, you need to work on all five disciplines, not just swimming, biking and running.
Those are swimming, biking, running (1), strength (2), mental training (3), recovery (4) and nutrition (5). Neglect any one or more of them, and you will not be as good.
We are learning a lot more about nutrition in athletic performance. We have yet a lot to learn. I am just offering something we believe in and in our repeated (though anecdotal evidence) performances, have proven to work.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Dear dcsxtri10,

Let me work on finding some studies on the liquid Oxygen. It has been awhile since i last checked, but i am sure there are some. ATP which is readily absorbed orally has the obvious advantage of maximizing available ATP (without using Creatine...CreatinePhosphate is also like available ATP). However, best case that will last about 30 seconds before you move on to anaerobic respiration. So what is the value in an endurance event?
ATP was shown in one animal study (i will have to find it) to increase peripheral blood flow. I suspect that ATP is also allowing Oxygen to reach the muscle more easily, though this is not proven. If you take too much ATP it will cause tingling in the hands and feet from vasodilation (like Niacin). That may be the benefit to endurance sports.
I will report back with the studies I find. Thanks for asking.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

If you've got any science to back you up, share it.

"Concentrated activated stabilized oxygen" is gibberish.

There is no reason to believe that the products actually deliver oxygen to the body. It is possible to use an electric current to add a tiny amount of oxygen to water, but to access it, a human would need gills.

Even if it were possible, taking oxygen through a liquid, pill, or food would not significantly raise the body's blood level of oxygen.

Oxygen enters the bloodstream through the lungs. The body adapts to what it needs by changing its breathing rate.

Partial pressure of CO2 primarily determines when we take another breath, not lack of oxygen. The body will extract what oxygen it needs from the air and deliver what is needed to the cells. Blood returning to the lungs contains surplus oxygen. Swimmers, can learn bilateral breathing, and breathe whenever their partial pressure of carbon dioxide indicates.

One hypothesis is that the World Team swimmers in 2000 would have done much better had they not been poisoned after every set. Without science, you're merely selling "gibberish water" and implying the equivalent of "because Phelps once bonged out, we should too".

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C
Purveyor of Crank!

Note to self:

When making outlandish claims about supplements, liquid oxygen and science in general... bring the "science" info (ie; studies) to the table early if you plan on posting on ST.

I just hate it when facts get in the way of an otherwise good discussion ;-)

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Founder of THE TRIATHLON COLLECTIVE (Closed Facebook Group). A SBR discussion group without the white noise/trolling!

Thunderbolt and Liquid oxygen... The best thing since Power Cranks!

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Founder of THE TRIATHLON COLLECTIVE (Closed Facebook Group). A SBR discussion group without the white noise/trolling!

I suspect it will be a long time before we hear back on studies that would reflect a physicians level of knowledge to support your claims.....
Dave

Dear Crank,

I will work on finding some studies for you. Have you ever heard the term Oxygen debt? Why do you think you hang on the wall after a hard set with no exertion going on, breathing as if it is the last available oxygen on earth and you had better get it before your training partner does? If the body could extract all of the oxygen it needed all the time, your labored breathing would cease when your exercise does.
Your theory may be right for sitting at your computer, but not while swimming. Getting enough oxygen to the cells, involving the myriad of systems and steps along the way, is perhaps the most significant rate-limiting component of endurance sports. Perhaps that is why people with low VO2 maxs don't fare too well in endurance sports.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Dear PennState,

Good point. I did not come prepared. Had no idea I was opening Pandora's box. I will get back.

Gary Sr.

This is some of the best "crap" I have ever read on ST. Keep it coming. I have to watch the kids tonight. So, the TV will be occupied by Elmo. If this keeps going ST will entertain long into the night.

Liquid Oxygen. That's a good one.

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Twitter @achtervolger

Dear snake oil pusher,

I've always found ATP applied topically to be far superior.

It might be even better if you could swim in Phelps' bong water.

Hi
(humble, gulp)
I have to point out the obvious to a group that may not have a grasp on just who is in our midst......................
Gary Hall Senior was the Michael Phelps (only smarter........he is a VERY noted eye surgeon) of the late 60's and early 70's

This gentleman is THE MAN........please conduct with respect, and his son is a very notable man on many levels (hi Gary JR!)

Thomas Price
Humble in the presence of the MAN

So, can I swallow sunshine and get a tan?

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Oh, how does the liquid Oxygen work on stains?

Couldn't resist that one either. (bad Jose Wales reference)

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Twitter @achtervolger

Dear Donut Gestapo,

Just try it....even without the studies, then get back to me.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

I think many of us are quite aware ;-)
Dave

I think he's getting all the respect due to someone pushing supplements with no proof of their effectiveness

And Frank day is an original Ironman and physician (not a scientist) as well. That still doesn't stop the "burn the witch" mentallity on ST.

I'm not judging Dr. Day's or Dr. Hall's promotional practices. I'm just saying...

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"Go that way, really fast. If something gets in your way, turn." - Charles De Mar

Placebo effect?

Back in the day, all the members of my team used to eat Jell-O powder to improve our swimming performance. I swam some of my best times on that stuff. So, n=1 that Jell-O really works. Does anyone want to by some special Jell-O?

Note that it is not tainted with ST Cool-aid.

Athletes will try anything. Especially if their coach tells them to.

I'm just not buying liquid oxygen. My chemistry is a little rusty. And, my A&P is even rustier. But, come on. Write a book to make money. Liquid oxygen is taken orally and that gets oxygen into your blood stream. That is a heck of a statement.

No disrespect to you or your swimming accomplishments. They are what they are. Your product seems impossible.

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Twitter @achtervolger

Wait this makes basically zero sense.

A few basic facts about the chemistry of breathing etc:
-your urge to breath is generally limited by your need to blow of CO2, not your need for 02- unless you are in some very weird situations, your CO2 sensors cause you to breath long before you start to get lower O2 sat
-your muscles dont really go into oxygen debt- they switch from aerobic to anaerobic metabolism. The switch to anaerobic metabolism is because you cant deliver enough oxygen via your bloodstream to the muslces, not because you cant breath fast enough. The issue is oxygen delivery not oxygen absorption. IE this is why you see cyclists blood doping NOT getting 2nd sets of lungs implanted.
-key point here is that the limiting factor isnt 02 absorption, its 02 delivery. Delivering more 02 wouldnt get you anywhere if you deliver it at the lungs- its delivering it to the muslces thats the hard part. key test- what color is somone with low oxygen saturation? Blue. What color are people when htey are racing? Red or pink- they clearly are NOT having issues with 02 saturation

other stuff that tmakes no sense:
-liquid oxygen is insanely cold. Regardless of how much salt you put in it, it is still gong to be a variant on insanely cold. It also evaporates in seconds, regardless of what else you put in it. The equivalent would be someone saying "yes, on mars, the temperature is 300 degrees C, but because it has salt in it, this "liquid water" wont boil off. This is patently absurd- anyone with a thermometer and a stove can demonstrate that the boiling point of gatorade and water are within a few degrees of eachother.
-EVEN if you could drink liquid oxygen, AND not freeze your mouth off, it wouldnt do anything. Lets say it then evaporated in your stomach- all that would happen is you would burp it out again. Or explode. Your lungs are built for gas exchange. Your stomach and gut are built for liquid exchange nad acid management. You can breath via your stomach about as effectively as you can drink through your lungs- ie you cant.
-And again, even if you could, it wouldnt help- see above

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

Im actually going to differ from others on slowtwitch and say this kind of hooey ISNT welcome here
-you have no posts that arent selling your products
-your supplements are genuinely laughable to anyone with a high school knowledge of chemistry

Also:
-you quote your own medical background to give yourself credibility, but you fail to mention the following 2 things:

a) you are an opthamalogist, which is hardly an area related to exercise physiology
b) you have been permanently banned from performing surgery for misconduct "Arizona ophthalmologist Dr. Gary Hall has been permanently banned from performing or assisting in any surgery, and has been placed on a five-year probation covering the remainder of his medical practice."
[/u]

for those interested, here is the link:
http://www.bizjournals.com/...5/04/11/daily60.html

keep this in mind before getting eye surgery from him or buying his medicines...

Im not the kind in general to do this- but if you are going to bring your medical credentials INTo the discussion, then its fair to point out the issues with said credentials.

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

Yes, he is. And his son is no slouch either. I don't think anyone is disputing their swimming accomplishments

But, he is using the forum to push a very questionable product backed up with no evidence, and a lot of impressive sounding polysyllabic words and pseudoscience.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

That doesn't reflect my points, nor address them. It doesn't even show an understanding of oxygen debt.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.

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C
Purveyor of Crank!

ouch

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Forget speedwork. Speedwork is the icing on the cake and you don't have a cake yet. - MattinSF

Basically they have 9 tenants, live life to the fullest, do not turn the cheak, and embrace the 7 deadly since. - TheForge (on satanists)

Here's your rat study

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10871303

and a rabbit one

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10871303


Here's a study showing no impact of oral ATP supplementation at much higher doses (10-15x) than in Thunderbolt on 30sec performance, although some subjects got better at weights. Which is nice

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...=f1000,f1000m,isrctn



Glad to be of help.

I really am enjoying this. Even if people type such big words.

Seriously. This guy picked the wrong forum for this. We should be suggesting Beginner Triathlete or somewhere where his stuff might go over better. We should be helping rather than arguing.

Wait. This is ST. Forget helping.

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Twitter @achtervolger

They're pretty much laughing over on BT as well, except for the swimming newbies who are just confused.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

My understanding it that Perkins used to take two breaths of his right, swim threee strokes and then then take two breaths to his let and repeat.

Thorpe would breath every 2 nd stroke. To his left heading up one direction of the pool, and to his right on the way back.

I'd love to see all supplement pushers to post here on ST, so we can really dissect their product and force them to back up their claims with facts... although it may not bode so well for Dan and ST advertising.
What an entertaining thread!

Try surfing the forums at bodybuilding.com if you like this vein... its wading through BS so thick that makes swimming in lake louise in clermont seem crystal clear

First the bike $'s, then the running shoes that bounce you to the finish chute...At my next swim practice I'm going to pedal up to the pool in my full kit, dive into the pool with my Profile Design aerobars (aerodynamic/hydrodynamic, what's the difference?) and recruit the cutest girl there to put some drop$ of liquid oxygen on my wagging tongue after every 100. I'll rise up out of the water like like a modern day Triton!

I had time to kill and experimented with the 2:3 breathing this evening in the pool. I usually breathe on my right, but do alternate during a long set just to alleviate the neck aches. That being said, I didn't have too much trouble getting the technique down. It definitely required more thought, as I had to remember to breathe on certain sides, and breathing twice in a row is just...weird.
So based off the sets I did, I found 2:3 breathing to be ~5 sec slower per 100yds, with no discernible difference in how I felt afterwards. Granted, I'm sure I didn't master this breathing technique, but I found it strange. Maybe it's just because I've adapted to breathing every other stroke, but I feel I just don't need to breathe 2 stokes in a row. It felt clumsy because I had a natural tendency to keep my head under during the 2nd stroke, because I wasn't "hungry" for oxygen (can we tell I'm not a doctor?). That, and the entire time I was forcing myself to do it, I thought, "is this post really going to make thousands of long course swimmers suddenly smack their foreheads and realize 'man, I was doing it wrong all this time!'"? Either way, I am not going to continue trying to breathe 2:3 breaths:pulls. I think if there's any performance gains to be had, they're in my stroke technique anyway.
Oh, wait, I didn't read the rest of the tread...did ST spend all day debunking this breathing thing and I missed the boat? Liquid oxygen what now?

Well, there was your mistake. Obviously you missed the benefit from the O2 and the ATP. You'll have to repeat the experiment, not all the variables were present.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

i hear that liquid O2 combined with ATP totally cleanses the lymphatic system of toxins.

Even if the "science" the Thunderbolt/Liquid O2 claims were true, wouldn't there be a huge ethical problem:
It would be like most banned substances: A chemical that has an effect or side-effect designed gives whoever takes it an unfair advantage over the competition. Are we OK with a culture of whatever is not currently on the list over forbidden practices or on a doping list is not cheating. There is no other reason to "keep it close to the chest", other than not getting caught using it. Keeping it secret ensures the unfair advantage too.
It is not like not you are talking about keeping an innocent training secret from the other teams or countries. This is about by altering your natural body with chemicals with "very powerful effects".

In my opinion, trying to sell such items and argue for them should be embarrassing for anyone with their name related to the Olympics...

so protein powder, or endurox, or anything of the like should be banned because it assists in muscle recovery?

What about compression socks? Hell just ban clothes, food, and equipment. That'll show who the TRUE champion is...

Dear ST forum,

OK. You've beaten me up on the studies. I will get them soon enough. Some of you likely won't believe them even when i do. The rest of you will try the products and figure it out for yourself. But let's move on.
There are 3 fundamentals of fast swimming that apply equally to the 2 1/2 mile swim in the Ironman and the 50 m freestyle. The techniques change but the fundamentals do not. One needs to understand and learn about all three. The first I call Thick as a Brick. Here is the short version.
The human body is shaped more like a brick than a streamlined object (fish, airplane etc) and bricks don't do well in the water. It takes a lot of energy to power them up and little time for them to slow (decelerate).
If you take a racing dive, you hit the water at about 5 mph, which is about as fast as Gary Jr swims the 50 m freestyle. However, even if you get in a tight streamline, with no kick or pull, you come to nearly a complete stop in 5 seconds. That is a brick (almost).
Most of us try to do the obvious things while swimming that will make us behave less like bricks and more like fish. We wear a cap, a wetsuit when appropriate and allowed or a Lazer suit in a pool, even shave our arms and legs to reduce drag. All good things. Soon we discover in this challenging sport called swimming that the little things we can do to ourselves to make us less like bricks, the faster we go and with less effort.
But there are two things we must do that are not obvious and nearly all of the hundreds of swimmers who have come to The Race Club do wrong....very wrong. The first is head position (we have already discussed that) and the second is the high elbow underwater.
All of my coaches always told me to swim with a high elbow underwater, but never explained why. Because they would tell my my elbows would drop when i tired, i assumed it had to do with power. It has nothing to do with power. It has everything to do with drag. Here is a little experiment you can do that proves I am right.
Put your fins on. Push off the wall on your stomach and put one arm straight over your head while the other arm is pointing straight down at the bottom of the pool. Now kick as hard and as fast (with your head down) to the other side of the pool. You will have to work at keeping your straight arm down as the water will want to push it back. Once you have done that and realize how much drag your straight arm creates, do the same exercise at the same speed, but instead of putting your arm straight down, hold it directly to your side and bend the elbow 90 degrees. Make sure it remains at right angles and you do not bring the elbow out of the water.
What you will experience is drag both ways, but a lot more drag with the arm straight than with it bent. Same surface area yet a lot more drag is created when the arm is straight down as opposed to bent with a high elbow. Not obvious but true hydrodynamics.
In swimming, your arms are your best friend and your worst enemy. They are your best friend because they create most of the propulsion. They are your worst enemy because they cause significant drag.
The forward velocity of the hand throughout the underwater pull is near zero. Yet the body (of a fast swimmer) moves at about 2 meters per second. A slower swimmer moves at about 1 meter per second (50 meters in 50 seconds). The arm, as you move down from the shoulder to the hand, moves forward at 2 m per second down to zero at the hand. The faster an object moves, the more drag it creates. Also, the arm is bigger at the top than at the bottom. Therefore the upper part of the arm from the shoulder to elbow will create a lot of drag if the arm is straight down or less drag if the elbow is high and to the side.
Other than reducing drag, there is nothing comfortable or natural about pulling with a high elbow....yet every great swimmer does it. In fact, it is less powerful than pulling deep, but the increase in drag that creates more than offsets the added power.
So swim with your head down (nearly submerged) to elevate your body in the water (reduces pressure drag) and to reduce surface drag by not allowing your head to become the bow of a boat. Then pull with your elbows up....way up, uncomfortably up....and you will begin to see what i mean. The pull will also be wider than you are used to
Now, I am too tired to discuss fundamental #2 (Swim with your Body) or fundamental #3 (Swim on the Freeway), so I will take these up tomorrow. I am brain dead from arguing with the naysayers.
Have a nice evening!

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

I've use the "breath on every arm stroke" technique in the past in open water but have not done it in years....maybe I should cause from 94-96 I was consistently in the 54-56 range and I am no consistently in the 60-62 range....oh, maybe it has more to do with swimming 15-20K per week in that time frame and only doing ~0-8K per week of late.

Seriously though in open water swimming it does work OK. Not sure why I stopped doing it. I'll actually go to the pool for the first time in Feb tomorrow so perhaps time to try it again. I don't think you will notice a diff in a 100 or 200, but towards the tail end of a hard 400 and beyond, more oxygen is good.

I typically breath either 45, 60 or 90 times per minute when running depending on intensity (every second right foot, every third stride, every right foot). In the pool when swimming a 100m in 90 seconds, with 22 strokes per length (total 44) and breathing every third hand entry I am only breathing ~15 times....so I ask you guys....what is wrong with this picture? Running in 90 seconds, I breath between 60 and 120 times per 90 seconds depending on intensity....in swimming, only 15 times? Next time you go running, try breathing only 15 times in 90 seconds.

.....and all those 1:10 plus IM swimmers with pretty strokes with incredibly low stroke rate are hardly getting any oxygen....by and large the reason why these guys with pretty strokes are so slow is cause not only is their stroke rate low (as all coaches say...slow it down so you glide more)....they are getting less oxygen because of stupidly low stroke rates....certainly a death spiral for the slow swimmer!!!

Dear nfreeman,

You misspelled ophthalmologist. I was the subject of a witch hunt in Arizona because of my family connection to my father-in-law, Charles Keating. I stand on my record of caring (well) for over 100,000 patients and left Arizona gladly because I was clearly not wanted there. Life isn't fair. What does this have to do with swimming or physiology again?

Gary Sr.

PS I am still happily married. Are you?

Regardless of the supplement conversation, I did find these swim tips interesting.

I have to point out the obvious to a group that may not have a grasp on just who is in our midst......................
Gary Hall Senior was the Michael Phelps (only smarter........he is a VERY noted eye surgeon) of the late 60's and early 70's ]]

Been busy here and just ran into this thread, and yes, this is the real deal when it comes to swimming. I swam around the time of this guy, and recently I watched him swim around 56 I think for a 100fly at masters nationals in the 55+ AG..He has the creds for swimming, and has been doing it at the top level for a lot of years, about 40+...

Ok, first thing. How long have I been telling all of ya that you need to breath, and a lot. I hope this helps settle the alternating breathing(every 3 strokes) vs breathing every stroke theories. I have done what he talks about, but just into the turns like Perkins did. I will have to develope the technique to do the 2 breath every 3 stroke method, because he is right, the more air you can get in swimming, the better off you will be, especially in a triathlon. Does'nt matter if you are out of breath or not, your body will benifit from the extra oxygen, even if it is'nt in speed in the swim..Remember, that you have a long day after the swim, may as well get on with it, in as small as hole as possible.

As to the nutrition aspect of liquid oxygen, I have no expirence with it, and since I do not have a science degree, I can't begin to even formulate an opinion on it. Perhaps I will give it a try, stranger things have been shown to work over the years.

To Gary Hall SR., welcome to the forum, and just know that this kind of trial is normal here. In fact, it is usually worse, but apparently most people here believe you are who you say you are. We often get pretenders here, and they get flushed out quickly. I hope that you do not get offended at the challenges here, and continue to post your thoughts on swimming..First posts that have a sales pitch in them here, are often taken as spam, I hope that was not your intention, and you stay around long enough to get to know our community. Besides the 20k+ that actually post here, there are another 100K plus that just like to read and lurk..And I can tell you, that most of them are lacking in the swimming dept, and can use all the help they can get..

There you go.

Gary Sr.

Thanks Monty! I needed that. I was starting to feel like this was the Board of Medical Examiners in Arizona. Regardless of what people may believe about the liquid oxygen and ATP (they work), trust me when i tell you that I was in a kangaroo court in Arizona. Kind of how i feel here today.
So I am sharing with all of you some of my best knowledge in swimming. You can take or leave it. All I can tell you is that after 50 years in the sport, i think i have learned something. And there is a lot of either non-advice or bad advice being given to swimmers.
Anyway, glad to be here, appreciated or not.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

I love the race club videos on floswimming. My teammate swims the 1500 meter freestyle with the style of breathing you described...and he goes 15 45 so something is working.

welcome gary. many of us remember. honor to have you here. reader forums are this generation's frontier, as in the wild west, guns blazing. forewarned is forearmed. that established, our readers here are typically good natured.

i hope you stick around. we did have a real swimming father figure, doug stern. as you may know, doug passed away. we've got very good swimmers here, but we're still waiting for our next swim guru -- somebody really, really old, like you ;-)

i think you'll enjoy slowtwitch, i hope you're a regular.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

You should be ashamed of yourself for promoting that liquid O2/ATP crap. Talk to us about your 50 years of swimming knowledge, about form, about technique, but don't try to push that garbage on here. You also sell Noni Juice, will that increase my run split? Sad.

(from a MD/Phd in biochemistry who knows a little about anerobic/aerobic metabolism)

Dr Hall,

I'm pleased that you are back and talking about swim mechanics and would also be interested in your swim facilities/clinics. Your expertise here is appreciated and if you can add some swim concept improvements for us slower swimmers, for that I would be grateful.
I have no issue with your medical board problems and by my understanding you are still a licensed to practice physician in Arizona. That all is probably irrelevant to much of our discussion until you started hawking your supplements .... I do still believe you owe us a higher standard of truth as a physician than the usual corner supplement pusher. I think you know you can't provide proof consistent with your education and the anecdotes don't cut much.
If I might suggest some help ... keep up your swim stuff as it is much appreciated ... let the supplement stuff go. If people want it, they know your website address and can purchase it anyway. Your focus on it really got things sideways for you .... welcome to ST ... it can be a tough place.
Good luck
Dave

Gary,

Thanks for the swim explanations, but I am still confused but what you write. You say to swim with your head down, yet if one even makes even a cursory study of videos of many, many elite 800m and 1500m swimmers racing in competition, nearly all of them have a very visible slightly tilted head up position, i.e., their faces do not point to the bottom of the pool, but point at an angle slightly forward of this. How best can one explain this? Thanks.

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Where would you want to swim ?

Dear Dave,

Thanks for the advice. I will take it. The supplements did get us sidetracked. Our 17 swimmers who went to Beijing from TRC who used our supplements did very well.....but i understand the controversy. Just trying to help. So I will stick to the swimming techniques. I am giving you a brief summary of the three fundamentals of fast swimming. Hope they help some of you.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Mike,

I'm there too, and I'm a born cynic. Listening ...

Dan

Dear Slowman,

I am proud to say I knew Doug Stern. He came down here to The Race Club in our first year to visit us. He was a great man and one of the first, if not the first, swim coach to focus on triathletes.
I am sure I cannot replace Doug as a swimming guru for the forum but i am happy to contribute what I've learned. Competing in tris for 10 years and several open water swims has also helped me understand the significant differences between pool swims and the challenges of open water.
I am definitely old.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Glad to see I wasn't the only one trying "bilateral breathing" at my desk... defiantly going to give it a try, thanks Gary!

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Swim to Eat, Bike to Eat, Run to Eat.

I'm not an ophthamologist, but I can do 'rithmetic. 100,000 patients over, to be generous, 40 years is 2,500 new patients per year. That's about 7 new patients per day, 365 days per year, for 40 years, not to mention some 50 linear feet of folders added every year. You really want to stand by that claim?

I'm also not a hydrodynamic specialist, but I think you are confusing torque with drag, when you speak of the difference between a straight arm and a bent arm. If the surface area is the same (and they are in both instances), then the drag will be pretty much the same (unless one position is much closer to the body and changes the hydrodynamics). The torque will, of course, be more on the extended arm as measured at the shoulder, with force x distance and all that. In any case, when during the pull and after the catch does the arm present a forward velocity relative to the water? I'm thinking never, because that would indicate no drag thrust backwards, and no forward propulsion at that time.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Dear GregX,

The key word is slightly. The head needs to be in alignment with the body. When we swim slow, the head needs to be lower. As we speed up and the body rises in the water, the head position goes higher, but the chin is still down. If you watched Cielo in the 50 meter freestyle (no breath I beiieve) the chin was tucked down, even though he was almost hydroplaning. Same with Cavic in the 100 fly (except for the finish). Check out our DVD. You will see.

Gary Sr.

What is wrong with this picture? Next time you go running on your arms, see how much breathing you need. You are only using a fraction of the muscle while swimming that you use while running. Swimming just doesn't require nearly the amount of oxygen that is needed while running or biking.

Oh, I breathe about 50 times every 90 seconds of swimming (10 breaths per 25yds for 125 yards) at race pace. I suggest you check your math, as I don't think you take 22 spl for a long course pool; perhaps you meant 22spl for 25m, for a total of 88 strokes, which comes out more like 30 breaths per 90 seconds. So, you breathe twice as much running, which is reasonable considering you are using far more muscle.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Dear Ken,

There are three types of drag, pressure drag, surface drag and friction. They all play a role in slowing us down in the pool. The faster we go, the more important a role the pressure drag plays. This is the drag, by the way that makes us want to tuck in behind our biggest biker, runner or swimmer and get a ride.
The big appendage we call our arm creates very significant pressure drag, especially when we are moving forward quickly. The top half of the arm is moving forward nearly as fast as the body, but not the forearm and hand, so the position of the upper arm is most important. How we position our arm makes a big difference in the drag coefficient. Try my suggested test and you will see.

Regards,

Gary Sr. And yes, I did have over 100,000 patients in 22 years of practice in Arizona. I must have been doing something right.

Your math is correct....22 strokes short course, 44 long course....DOH...still way down in the pool compared to running (half the amount of breathing). Your point on the weight bearing nature makes sense when going at a moderate intensity, but when you are going all out in any sport, the oxygen needs should be identical whether there is weight bearing or not.

I'll call BS on this too. Maybe 100,000 patient encounters, not 100,000 unique patients.

If in fact you did see 100,000 unique patients, then I don't doubt you had problems with the AZ board, you weren't caring for your patients, rather moving them in and out the door.

I find it hard to believe that this poster is actually Dr. Hall. Anyone with his credentials wouldn't come on this board and spout such nonsense. Maybe I should create a username "Michael Phelps" and try to explain why I had that pipe in my hands.

I call BS on this whole thread.

Well, that's not quite accurate. Oxygen is needed by muscles. The more muscles, the more oxygen is needed. The less muscle, the less oxygen. It's not about weight bearing: when you run, you are using the biggest muscles in the body. The glutes, quads and hamstrings consume vastly more oxygen than do the lats, pecs, deltoids, etc. Even my lats.

As for going all out, now you are talking anaerobic exercise. Breathing doesn't exactly figure into that, does it?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

What? You don't believe he saw 12 new patients, 365 days per year, for 22 years?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

OK, perhaps not all out, but say 1500m Olympic tri. You're still using core muscles and legs, and drawing oxygen with them (especially in a non wetsuit swim). So while O2 needs may not be as high as running a 5K (picked that for equivalent time range), I would think they would be close...at least to the point where "half the amount of oxygen is not enough"

Mr (dr) Hall

X2 what slowman said.

two things:

1) pace yourself on replies.....this place will wear you out

2) there are 1000's of us hungry for swim advice even if some of us stay in the background; some of us are smart enough to listen instead of talk!!

Dr. Hall:
Welcome to ST. I do appreciate you sharing your insight. I learned a lot about swimming from this thread alone.

Btmoney:
I think you may have missed my point in my post. Supplements are legal and available to everyone. Mr. Hall claims to just now release this stuff that his Olympians secretly used to win gold. He tries a little too hard to promote this stuff, (which I think he invented, by the way).
I am all for having great equipment and supplements, as long at it is commercially available to everyone.

I can't believe Gary Hall Sr. is on ST giving tips! Awsome.

carry on....

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

gary,

age-group triathletes swim slower, even as a percentage of their bike and run, than do pro triathletes; that is to say, they bike and run X percent slower than pros, but they swim Y percent slower, and Y is considerably bigger than X. so, they need help in the water. most know they need help.

most slowtwitchers know your son as one of the bright stars of swimming today. a few know that you were, perhaps, an even brighter star in your day. we have 25,000 registered users here, and more "lurkers" than registered users. so, here's a big audience of folks who ought to listen to those with last names like hall, and spitz, and babashoff, and furniss.

you're going to take a lot of guff from folks about products you may promote, and i'm not going to limit or censor that because this forum is like the aboriginal gauntlet through which you run, while we all pound you with sticks; we'll see if you make it through alive.

but swimming: since you broke those world records and made those olympic teams, most of us figure you've already run that gauntlet; we'd like to know how you got yourself through it, and any help you can give, we're eager to listen.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

x2 on that. I watched you in 72 and 76 (I was 6 and had just started swimming competitions in 72), and I watched your son as well. I welcome the swimming tips, just not sure at all on the supplement stuff. :)

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I'm pretty sure we are actually all now dumber for having read any of this. This just doesn't pass my smell test. I'm waiting to next be asked for my bank account number so that the President of Zimbabwe can transfer his fortune to my account.

If GH Sr. wants to give us swim tips while throwing in a few words to hawk some of his products, I have no real problem with that. Just read what you want to read and dont what you don't.

THanks for all the tips and please tell your son that he is an inspiration to me. I'm also a type 1 diabetic and have circumvented many of the complications of diabetes with regular exercise. I'm training for my first IM, so wish me luck on the swim. I'll definitely try the breathing technique. Anyway, thanks to you and to him.

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Remember, one man's ceiling is another man's floor.

X2. A legend offers swim tips and people bicker over how many patients he's seen. Mr. Hall, you are truly getting a "taste" of how ST can be

Welcome, and keep posting the tips. I tried the breathing tonight and I have to admit I felt like it was the first time I've ever swam, but maybe it just takes a lot more practice. But more than willing to listen. Even the decent tri swimmers have stuff to learn :)

Yes I noted the technique you describe while watchin Andrea Hewitt swim training in Chch/N.Z in 2004. Watched her in one ITU race and she was first out of the water and first overalll that day, and she is not big. Am pretty sure it is a common technique in swim squads, but a good reminder to the many on here who don't swim in a squad often.
In triathlon there is often times when there is a ripple on the water such that unilateral breathing is also useful(to prevent swallowing water).
Also if you watch the best 1500m swimmers they breath unilaterally everystroke at times also.

My understanding is breathing will vary a bit in triathletes. If you want to get off the fron then some train to swim without breathing the first 20meters plus. Then it would make sense to unilateral breath a while.
The technique you describe is great for training and racing in open water sometimes. I also sometimes swim 25ms unilateral to oneside and then 25ms unilateral to other side to keep the muscle balance.

Thanks for the useful advice and rejogging the memory.

G.



www.triathlonshots.com

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http://www.TriathlonShots.com
Full event coverage of triathlon/ironman in photos.

And if you're going hard enough to require that much oxygen, I doubt you're breathing every third stroke, but more likely every other stroke. Still not equivalent to your running breaths, but getting closer ...

cramer

Dr. Hall, I appreciate your advice on both the swimming and supplements. Each person can choose what is best for him/her. The best part of an internet forum such as this is that anyone can post what he or she thinks. The worst part of a forum such as this that anyone can post whatever he or she thinks. Certainly your ideas and knowledge are thought provoking, please keep posting here.

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09 Cervelo P3
09 Pinarello Prince
10 Stevens Carbon Team

I have never been married, but at my age i think thats appropriate. Not sure what you were referring to (or perhaps you have the wrong google search?).

Regarding welcome- your swim advice i find very good, and for that you really are welcome. The supplements continue to not make any scientific sense to me.

A few questions about technique
-am i the only one whose elbow doesnt bend in the proper direction? when i am starting my catch, laying kind of on my side, with my arm in front of me, palm down, the natural way to bend my elbow is sideways- not up and down. Ie i can bend it towards my other shoulder or ear, but to bend my hand down towards bottom of pool in that position hurts to the point of breaking my arm- clearly my posiiton is wrong somehow- but how? Or is some torquing discomfort in shoulder area normal? My guess is that i am over-rotating my shoulders, and this high elbow pull should be done more on ones stomach than on ones side? (the geometry works better that way)
-your theory of WHY high elbows helps confuses me- you base your logic on the fact that the hand is stationary in the water, but it clearly isnt- during the pull the hand is DEFINETLY moving backwards in teh water- you can feel the water sliding past your fingers (and physics says that to get forward push, you have to move water net backwards, and something has to push it). So if your hand is moving backwards at some speed, and your body is moving forwards, some point (i would guess just below your shoulder) is stationary, but most of your lower arm is definetly moving backwards. So while i agree with the high elbow thing, im not sure i agree with your logic as to why it works. My guess is it works in the way that a canoe paddle works- generates a lot of thrust without slipping out.

N

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

When I am breathing hard running fast, it is 90+ breaths per minute, corresponding to right foot strikes (don't know why, perhaps I push off harder with the right side so better synchronzation like breathing out while bench pressing....). This is typically my breathing rate for the final 5K of any race or any distance, or for mile or lower repeats. In a tri, I breath every second out of the gate and every third once things settle down. Assuming 88 strokes per 100m at 90 second per 100m, that is still only 45 breaths breathing every second stroke for 90 seconds or 30 for 1 minute. While running hard I am breathing 3x the rate of swimming.

When I watch slow swimmers, they have these really long slow strokes, and they are perhaps covering 100m in 2 minutes or 50 m per minute.....breathing once every 3 strokes at say 25 strokes per length.....50/3 = 16 breaths per minute. Of course they are winded. Even every second stroke gets them to 25 breaths per minute. You ever notice how these guys are constantly out of breath....they are doing a hypoxia workout on a continuous basis, even though their actual work is not that high.

Dr. Hall


Let me add my voice to those thanking you for your presence here and the tips you’ve provided. You’ve already made a valuable contribution with some thought provoking suggestions on breathing, head position and high arm pull – and I probably missed a few. I’m anxious to try some of them and look forward to your future installments. If you keep your swimming tips separate from your product claims, you will find numerous Slowtwitchers eager to hear your wisdom. As for the latter, you’ve seen that this forum has members with sufficient scientific background to challenge the underlying mechanism of any performance enhancing device and experience with scientific studies to know when they are misleading. Bring you A game when you talk about your products.

I got a kick out of this. You drag the guy through the mud, then ask him for swim advice before he dusts himself off.

Thankyou all for your support. I am admittedly not an expert on supplements or nutrition, but i am not giving up on trying to convince all of you that 3 square meals a day is not enough to cut it for your best performances. In 3 Olympics we have witnessed that. With supplements, weeding out the good stuff from the bad, the placebo from the non-placebo, the legal from the illegal can be tricky. But for now let's stick to the swimming technique.

First, a few more salient points about Fundamental #1 Thick as a Brick. I first learned about the importance of head position in freestyle back in 2000 when i got on the tow rope at the Phoenix Swim Club. This was a clever device invented by Dr. Marty Hull of Stanford that tows a swimmer from above, via a belt at faster than race speeds. The idea, based on that fact that drag coefficients increase at higher speed, was to determine some of the little things that would make the stroke more efficient. Anyway, I discovered that by holding a tight streamline for 50 meters (under 20 seconds) my time would increase about a second by simply lifting my head, as opposed to keeping my chin tucked down. Same force...one simple change...one second difference. That is why little things (with our brick-like bodies) like head position and elbow position make a big difference.
With all due respect, you are wrong about the hand. Doc Counsilman, 30 + years ago at Indiana University sat on the bottom of the diving well with his scuba tank and 16 mm fast speed camera and filmed Mark Spitz and me with room and pool lights out. He put little strobe lights on our finger tips and filmed our hand movement as we swam across the pool. What he discovered is that the hand does not move forward or backward during the freestyle pull, but rather out, then in then out again. In other words, a sculling motion. The hand is not used as a paddle, as you suggest, but rather creates lift (Bernoulli's principal) to power us forward in the water. therefore, the drag (in the forward direction) is not created by the hand and little by the forearm, but rather the top of the arm, which is moving forward at a speed slightly less than the body. Next time you swim, if you are a decent swimmer, notice where your hand enters the water at the beginning of the stroke and where it exits for the recovery. You will find it is just about the exact same spot.

Now, on to Fundamental #2 Swim with your Body.

About 98% of the swimmers who come to TRC for technique camps, swim very flat (flat swimming means you are swimming like a surfboard that grew arms and legs). I call it the survival stroke, because it is the kind of stroke one adopts to finish 10 X 400 freestyle with 10 seconds rest, or any other long aerobic set. It is also a survival stroke because if you ever crashed in the middle of the ocean, it would be your best chance for swimming ashore. Why? Because it is easier....not faster, easier.
But no one said swimming fast is easy and nearly all of the fundamentals of fast swimming either require a cognizant effort (like keeping the head down and elbows up) or real work, like rotating the body. So why do we want to rotate the body while swimming?
I can actually think of 3 reasons why we want to rotate our bodies along the long axis while swimming that I believe to be true. There are probably some more I haven't thought of. First, if the rotation is relatively fast (snapping from one side to the other as opposed to turning like a rotisserie chicken), there is energy transfered to the forward motion of the body, similar to a bullet or torpedo spinning down the barrel to gain speed. Second, when one shoulder is down and the other up, it puts the arm doing the underwater pull into a stronger position. That arm gains mechanical advantage by engaging more muscle groups than pulling with the shoulder flat on the water.
Third, and perhaps most important (and I give credit for this thought to Dr. Jan Prins at the University of Hawail, who has one of the brightest biomechanical swimming minds on the planet) is the use of the core (hips, lower back, abs) as a stabilizing force for the pull.
Dr. Prins published a paper where he measured the velocity of baseball pitchers and found when he put them in the water (treading), the velocity of the ball was about half of the throw from a pitching mound. Why? Because there is no stable force (like the pitching rubber) in the water to push against. So what exactly are we pushing or pulling against when we are moving through the water in the middle of our ocean or lake swim? Our core. When we initiate the catch of the arm pull, we do so with the hip turned and stabilized (not rotating). This is called the connection. It is the most powerful propulsive point in the stroke (my belief...never proven to my knowledge). Then as we 'hold' the water and move forward we do so against a core that counter rotates, ie it rotates back against the pull to allow more 'traction'.
Tiger Woods could probably swing a golf club with his arms only and still hit the ball over 200 yards. Yet when he engages his shoulders, hips, core, legs into the swing, the ball goes about 350 yards. More effort to use the body, but a lot more power. Same is true in swimming.
Mike Bottom, arguably the best sprint coach in the world, further divides swimming with the body into 3 techniques: Shoulder driven, Hip driven and Body (Core) driven (which associates with a straight arm recovery). Nearly all of the fastest sprinters in the world use a shoulder driven technique. Distance swimmers are split, but most of the best ones use a hip (leg) driven technique (Phelps, Hackett, Thorpe, Hoff for example) In order to use a hip driven technique, one needs extraordinarlly strong legs which usually means many years of age group swimming. Even if you had them, i would likely recommend you not use the hip driven technique in the triathlon. Here is why.
The objective of the swim in the triathlon is kind of like the butterfly in the IM. It is really a bike/run race with a swim setting the stage. The IM is really a back/breast/free race. The objective of the swim leg is not to win the race, but rather to not put you in a position to lose the race.
The swim can destroy your tri in a number of ways. Here are just a few examples. You can be so slow coming out of the water, you are already out of contention. You could be in the pack or hunt, but had to work so hard to get there that you are spent. Or you can excel at the swimming leg but by using a hip/leg driven technique to do so, you become easy prey for the bikers and runners (a common mistake of many swimmers turned triathletes).
The finals of the men's 1500 swim in Beijing was an interesting race because the first four finishers (only a few seconds apart) used two very distinctively different techniques. Malouli (sp? Tunisia via USC) and Hackett (first and second) used a classic long 6 beat kick hip-driven technique while the Canadian and Russian (sorry don't remember the names) swam the race with a shoulder driven, higher stroke rate, mostly pull-propulsion freestyle. But they all used their bodies in one way or another.
My advice in a triathlon. Even if you are an accomplished hip-driven freestyler, learn to adopt a shoulder driven, mostly arm propulsion freestyle, keeping the head down (when not occsionally looking up to see where you are headed) the elbows high and swim on the freeway. I will explain what I mean by that tomorrow. And breathe as often as it makes sense. Save the legs. You will slip and glide through the swim with less effort and put yourself in better position to have the best tri of your life.

Respectfully,

Gary Sr.

It's a pleasure to watch your son compete, he's a great champion. As for the advice, I hope you have more to offer - I enjoy reading these posts.

These posts have been fun to read, so thanks! The detail in each post has been great.
The timing on the breathing seems to be something that takes a little practice. I also felt quite a bit shorter in the water. Not sure I liked that. I will play with it for a few more work outs. Thanks again for all of your tips. The videos on Utube were helpful as well.
Mitch

Cousilman? Bernoulli principle? Lift being the dominant force of swimming propulsion?

The seventies just called and want their swimming theories back.

Dear Aggiesdm,

I will pass on your words to Jr. I know he has proudly inspired many type 1 and 2 diabetics world wide who live a daily battle for glucose control. Good luck in your first IM!

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Let me be more direct: the idea that lift via Bernoulli's principle is a major component of propulsion has long been refuted. A casual observation of the best freestyle swimmers in the world (today) would show how straight their hands/arms move from front to back.

I was about to say I'm surprised to hear this, but, well, I'm not.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Yeah, WTF? I find it hard to believe that a doctor is making these claims. This crap flies in the face of . . . science. Placebo effect, sure. But oral oxygen and ATP?

I just re-read the original post. About half of it is about oxygen and ATP, and it ends with a sales pitch. I think critical readers are rightly finding fault with the science.

I've also done exercise with a pulse oximeter. I didn't desat. At all.

The one thing I can believe is the 100,000 patients. I went to see one and the tech did most of the work figuring out my refractive error. The MD spend about 5 minutes in the room. His appointment list outside the door (I was a nosy med student) had people at 5-10 minutes intervals.

Unfortunately, I'm thoroughly confused by this statement:

"What he discovered is that the hand does not move forward or backward during the freestyle pull, but rather out, then in then out again. In other words, a sculling motion. The hand is not used as a paddle, as you suggest, but rather creates lift (Bernoulli's principal) to power us forward in the water."

I'm kind of familiar w/ Berni's principle, but what I envision w/ the hand being in the SAME position would be analogous to your hand being in the same position after pulling on a hold rock climbing. My body moves relative to my hand and the rock/pool. I'm not able to scale a wall via Berni's principle.

So it is the side to side motion of my hand that creates a pressure differential and my body moves forward, being pushed by the area of relatively high pressure around/behind me? The "lift" created is in the horizontal plane (in the direction we want to move through the water)? So, I should not be pulling back in a fairly straight line w/ my hand similar to a paddle?

Thanks in advance for the advice.

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Vegetarian: An old Aboriginal American word for "Bad Hunter."

You're clearly not using liquid oxygen.

Are you really sure about these numbers, too? I just ran on the treadmill at lunch, and counted my actual breaths three times for a minute each time. Going about 7min/mile (which is a little more than moderate for me now), I had 44-46 breaths/minute. So for your 90 seconds, I take about 66 breaths running, and about 50 swimming. That's a ratio of about 4/3, not 3/1. Something's really bizarre here. Maybe it's just me.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Dear Runski,

For good swimmers there is very little forward or backward motion of the hand in the water, mostly side to side, but that is not what you perceive. Water is not a rock or a lane line so that is why there is motion from side to side, generating lift and propulsion.
The dilemma is that you cannot think of pulling the water from side to side. It doesn't work. You have to try to 'hold' the water which means that you feel as if you are pulling straight back (with elbows high) with the hand. However the body is really moving past the hand, not vice versa. You should also particularly avoid letting your hand approach the midline under your body as that puts the upper arm in a position of higher drag. In other words, stay wider with the pull.
Hope this helps.

Gary Sr.

I've swam at NAU, coming from sea level, and I could hardly flip after the first turn due to O2 debt. If your product will address that problem for me then I will definelty give it a try as I frequently find myself out of breath when at altitude, doing hills, or track repeats.

And right on, bring back the '70s. Peace ;)

I think if people are doing anything more than bilateral breathing in practice they are doing too much. I also don't understand the focus on breathing here, but whatever. In practice I try to not breathe. In competition I have a set breath pattern for the pool and a set breath pattern for doing open water or distance swimming (every other stroke, same side, and I switch sides if I feel lopsided or my neck hurts.) But all of this is personal and dependent on lung capacity and physiologic necessity.

Im still struggling with the "hand does not move back" bit

Ok lets simplify this:
-lets assume you are either using a pullbuoy, or swimming with a wetsuit on, either way not kicking much (for long distance triathlon, a fair assumption). Therefore all of your propulsion is coming from your arms
-lets furhter assume that we are trying to pull straight back- this is what my coach (very high end national swimmer pre-triathlon) has taught me, so i will go with it. It also seems to be what most swimmers i see in underater videos do

Then, if your hands arent moving back, how can you possible generate any thrust?
-the only way to generate thurst is to "shove water backwards"
-if your hand isnt moving backwards relative to the stationary water, what is? How are you thrusting water backwards?
-basic physics suggest that all of you CANNOT be moving forward or static relative ot hte water- SOME part of you must be moving backwards to generate any thrust.
-think of a rowing shell. The blades slip backwards slightly relative to the water. This is the affect i am thinking about here
-what is that stuff i feel sliding through my fingers if i open my hand when pulling? its water! given that the water is clearly going from palm side to back of hand side, doesnt that guarantee my hand must be moving towards palmside (ie towards back of pool) when i pull?
-think of another example- a paddlewheel steamer. the only way it goes forward is for the paddle parts to go BACKWARDS relative to the water. Or think of a tank wearing a lifejacket (big lifejacket). Its treads certainly have to go backwards to make the tank go forwards...
-last example- think about jet exhaust- in order to generate thrust, the jet exhaust has to be shot out backwards faster than the jet is travelling forwards- ie the exhaust has to be travelling net backwards vs its original speed
-In ALL these examples- to go forward, you have to shove the thing you are pushing against backwards. Why would swimmers be any different? If your bernoulli affect were valid, then you would have something. But my pull is straight forward/back. Bernoulli would be what you get when you do hand sculling- its not very fast as we all know.

btw, i dont disagree with your high elbow bit, i just disagree with your logic on how you get to it.

also- im going to the pool tonight- i will specifically figure out a way to test this.

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

Whenever I've heard 'hand does not move back' it's been tied to the concept that you're doing freestyle right when the hand enters the water, you 'anchor' it in place, pull your body forward based on that anchor, and then the hand exits the water at the same point it enters.

The easiest way to watch for this is to do a little bit of film of a swimmer next to lane lines that have short sections of alternating color floats- really lets you see what the hands are doing in relation to a fixed point that's easy to identify.

And then watch the film in slo-mo.

Ok now i have video to back up my hand comments:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7cES6C6Oww

this is phelps doing the freestyle. Look at second 25 to second 30- shot from above
you will notice 2 things:
1) His hand is moving almost straight back, almost no back and forth "bernoulli" bits at all
b) His hand is moving backwards relative to the pool a HUGE amount- by about 2 feet per stroke by my eye- look at second 26. Look also at 1:23

btw, this video is incredible- ive now watched it like 30 times. He swims more than 2x faster than i do, and he makes it look like he is working half as hard. Out of curiousity- i wonder what the "wattage equivalent" of his speed would be.

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

I agree that may be a good drill, or thing to visualize- but it isnt what actually happens.

Think about a kayak (ive done a fair amount of kayak racing and been coached in it). The coaches say "it should feel like you are hooking the kayak paddle on a peg on a board and pulling boat past the peg" but it isnt what actually happens- if you actually look at the blade in the water it is sliding backwards- it HAS to for reasons of basic physics.

Same with your hand- some part of you has to be moving backwards to get the water to go backwards which in turns gets you going forwards. There may be an exception very early in the stroke when your hand is stationary as you "glide" btu that isnt hte the thrust part of the stroke.

Exceptions i can think of:
-rotary motion (bernoulli, boat propellers)
-squirting type action (bellows shooting out jet of water, squid, etc)
neither apply to humans swimming though

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

Mr Hall,

You talk about Bernoulli's principal and lift, not pull in free style. Have you had a chance to read Dr. Romanov's description of swim technique in his Pose Method of Triathlon book?

Coming from a year round swimming background, I found his ideas to be spot on and very helpful in the pool. What also was interesting was his dissection of a number of swim theories as he uses physics to prove them wrong, and this includes the theory of pulling one self through the water vs. lifting the body.

http://store.posetech.com/...NIQUES_p/pmb-tri.htm

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wovebike.com | Wove on instagram

Cool video - I got a new favorite.
But he IS doing the sideways sculling, or "s" pattern with his hands. Look again at :56 to :58.
Also, in the later part when the camera is at the side, you can see it.

It looks straight in the beginning of the video, but I think that is due to the camera angle: his body is over the hand when he starts the little "s" move.

Back to my rock climbing example, in an ideal world (think frictionless bearing) you'd be able to "grip" the water, like rock, and the force applied from your hand arm would be fully applied to pull you through the water. In my mind, my hand moving through the water is bad, it's less than 100% force transfer to pull me through the water, similar to spinning your tires.

I don't want to shove water backwards, I want it to stay where it is, catch it w/ my hand and pull myself past it. According to Dr. Hall, both of our thinking is incorrect.

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Vegetarian: An old Aboriginal American word for "Bad Hunter."

Yes, in your ideal world, that is what you would do. Your ideal world is one where you have 100% friction on the water with your hands as you push, and 0% friction on your body as drag. Also, in your ideal world we would only have to take one stroke at beginning of race and coast the rest of the way. Given my swimming, i would love your world.

Sadly we dont live in that world- while you would like to grab a rock and pull back on, you cant- (unless you are on the last part of the course at the cancun 70.3). Since you cant, the very act of generating force backwards with your hand makes it move backwards (back to my rowing example).

I agree its not efficient- this is why you are faster with paddles on your hands (less slip).

Im not sayding hand slip is a GOAL, i am however saying the laws of physics require it.

Coming back to Dr. Hall- its my understanding that the bernoulli theory of swim propulsion has been left in the 70s. If you think about how mcuh it sucks to try to hand scull vs paddle a canoe, you will see why.

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

a pretty detailed academic treatment is here:

http://www.sportsci.org/...biomech/skeptic.html

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Proud member of the Guru Cartel, EH!

thoughts from a poor swimmer.

nfreeman - I would guess you're right that the hands will move backwards. It seems like the big difference is in how much. In a solid medium, i.e. the rock example, you are moving the solid item, but so incrementally as to be non-existant. In the liquid medium, how much your hand moves back is going to be dictated by how much drag you have. i.e. the goal is to reduce drag. I think when you look at the top level swimmers, they have thier technique dialed to the point they create very little drag which when combined with their speed allows them to get some benefit from hydroplaning. So for the top level swimmers, their hand stay virtually motionless and they are able to pull on the water instead of push it backwards because their dragis so much lower. For the rest of us with poor technique(i.e. high drag) and lack of speed, we end up having to push more than pull.

FWIW -I have noticed that when I think about pulling the water as a solid object instead of pushing the water back, my stroke gets smoother and more efficient. I'm still working on the body rotation though.

So, if I'm not faster with paddles what would that mean? Seriously.

3 choices:

You either have them on wrong, are dropping your catch pretty badly or have poor lat and shoulder strength. Everyone should be faster with paddles.

Good article! I will not dispute that there is a combination of drag and lift forces at play in the pull. But i cannot agree with you about the net hand velocity in the water. You cannot use these videos to determine the exact entry and exit of the hand, because the camera is moving above the swimmer and the angle of reference is changing. I suspect if were to measure the exact entry and exit points of his hand from a stationary camera, one would find them to be very close.
One thing is very clear about these videos. Phelps may be the least brick like of any human being...and he works at it. His streamline creates a uniarm above him on starts and turns and his elbow height is off the charts. All to reduce drag.

Gary Sr.

I have extremely strong lats and shoulders from rock climbing, so that is not it. I am fairly certain I have them on correctly, which would leave dropping the catch.... That may be a problem. How would I know if I was dropping the catch? I guess I don't feel like I drop the catch, I feel a very solid connection with my pull from the moment my hand enters to when it leaves. When I have paddles, it feels no different, and for the same exertion, I go the same speed.

With the "same exertion," you are doing the same work: your force applied per square inch of surface (hand, arm, paddle) per unit time is now less than it was before. Same exertion & more surface area => less force per unit of surface per unit time => same speed. If your hand speed remained the same, then you'd be pushing back with more force per sq inch per second. One of the points of using paddles is that you can increase your exertion, thereby increasing the force/sq inch/second.

Paddles aren't magic: they won't make you go faster with the same effort. They will allow you to go faster with more effort, where that increased effort without paddles would likely see you thrashing inefficiently.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

This is confusing.

Let me see if I get it. We'll start off the cycle with a breath on the left side. As I stroke with my right arm, I exhale the breath I just took and whip my head back to the right and breathe. Now I hold this breath as my left arm strokes. Right arm strokes and I breathe on the right side. Once again, I exhale as my left arm strokes and I breath on the left.

Is that right? That is a LOT of breathing and on top of trying to worry myself with an EVF etc etc etc. With this model I count 4 strokes and 3 breaths (4:3 or 60:45). Under my current model I get 6 strokes and 2 breaths (3:1 or 60:20)

I am guilty of the 1/3 breathing thing, but I've been working on this rhythm instead: Breathe on the same side twice, wait a stroke then breathe 2x on the oppposite side. So it's Breathe LEFT (stroke stroke) Breathe LEFT (stroke stroke stroke) Breathe RIGHT (stroke stroke) Breath Right (stroke stroke stroke). With this model, I am getting 10 strokes and 4 breaths (5:2 or 60:24).

So we have current method (60:20) work in progress (60:24) and GHS method (60:45). Clearly his method is much higher. Incidentally, single sided breathing offers a ratio of 60:30.

Someone mentioned opportunity cost and that bears repeating. If I get so wrapped up trying to increase my air uptake that I forget how to swim it's kind of a moot point right?

Intriguing, I will give it a try tomorrow to see how I do with this...

Sorry, Maybe I'm dense here. Is the goal of using paddles then to build strength or technique?

If it is just to build strength, then forget it, I have enough. Looking for more efficiency, not strength.

If the goal of paddles is to improve technique- Does using paddles change the way you catch the water, or make it easier to feel it if you're catching poorly/well? I ask because I don't notice much difference.

Sorry about the bit of thread hijack as well.

Welcome to ST Gary! Thanks for the insight.

Dear Turbomaster,

A cycle is two strokes in freestyle. So for each cycle you breathe once to the left then once to the right. Then you hold for one stroke and begin a new cycle, but this time the first breath is initiated to the right, then the left. Pausing for one stroke seems to pacify the brain and alternating the first breath of the cycle in each direction seems to soothe the semicircular canals. Hope this helps. It takes a little practice, but I love the added O2.

Gary

In addition to your time, you will need to measure stroke rate (# arm strokes per minute) and distance per stroke (divide the # strokes by the distance swum ie 50 yards or meters) to know how efficient you really are. Distance per stroke is perhaps the most revealing.

Gary Sr.

Thanks Dr. Hall.

I believe you've worked with my swim coach a few times...Gary Fahey. He is trying to get me to breathe more often and I am stubbornly resistant. But I know I need to work on it; the 3:1 isn't cutting it.

As to the O2 question though, isn't it not so much a question of O2 uptake but O2 delivery? Most reasonably fit triathletes don't have a problem with O2 uptake...that is why VO2 max is such a critical number. As i understand the layman's version of VO2 Max...it's the max amount of O2 your body can take in and deliver...and beyond that you can only sustain exercise for relatively short durations. The secret is being able to operate at or just below your VO2 max threshold for long periods of time ie making your lactate threshold closer and closer to your VO2 Max.

So I'm not sure I will try your breathing method just yet! I think I'll work on the middle of the road technique first. But I will at least try it once or twice to see if my brain can process it. I'm still trying hard to work on EVF and catch, much less a fairly complicated breathing routine!

Dear TJ56,

Please ignore the doubters and try it. I am in the process of getting some published studies on it. It is not, as one reader correctly pointed out, actually liquid oxygen, but rather O2 dissolved in high concentration (25%) of a slightly chorinated salt water. When held under the tongue (very vascular and thin membrane, similar to alveoli) the O2 seems to readily transport across into the blood stream.
We have a team of swimmers from Slovenia training here and I was showing the head coach a bottle this morning and she pulled out a bottle of the same stuff from her purse she had purchased on the airplane on the way over here. It was made by the same company (so much for the secret) and it turns out is the number one selling product on the duty free carts on international flights for several airlines.
Anyway, let me know if it works for you.

Gary Sr.

Gary, In your opinion, who are the three (or so) fundamentally, and technically, perfect swimmers out there today?

Dear Turbometer,

Yes. I know Gary. He is an excellent coach. Please give him my regards.
The VO2 max is determined by all of the cardiopulmonary systems involved, but it represents the most oxygen you can deliver to your cells during maximal exercise. Our requirements for ATP during maximal exercise go up tremendously and so too our need for oxygen. We can improve the system components with training, but getting more 02 delivered to the alveoli is probably the easiest and quickest change we can make via our breathing pattern.
I know this breathing pattern isn't for everyone and some may not even need it, but for us old folks (me), it is kinda nice.

Gary Sr.

"The VO2 max ........but it represents the most oxygen you can deliver to your cells during maximal exercise."

My understanding of VO2max is different. it is not what you can 'deliver', it's what you can use.
VO2max, i understand, is measured as O2 going in minus O2 coming out equals O2 used - done at max intensity. So there are several limiters. How much capacity you have in your lungs for O2, how much Hgb to pick up the O2, how much of the O2 in the blood gets to the place it's needed, how much get's picked up by the muscles/cells, how much picked up is used. Then there is also the issue of CO2 removal.

So, breathing patterns and increasing O2 intake will not necessarily be of any use if the additional O2 is not used. You are simply moving it in and out of the lungs and you may be compromising CO2 removal.

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"Competetive sport begins where healthy sport ends"

Dear Rhane,

Great question. First tell me the distance. Second, the strength of the swimmer. Pick any finalist in the Olympics. They match their technique to their strengths...they are all pretty close to perfect. Underwater, Natalie Coughlin, Phelps and Amaury Leveaux seem to be the best.

Gary Sr.

Gary, for the 1500m who would you say is your top pick for perfection?

Even though he didn't win last year, Grant Hackett still rules as 1500 King as far as I am concerned. Gary

Dunno what brand of liquid oxygen supplement Dr. Hall is selling, but if one simply google's liquid oxygen supplement there are about 35 companies who want to sell you their brand of liquid oxygen.

And the term is very misleading...it is not liquified Oxygen, that is, O2 that has been cooled to a liquid state. It is simply liquid that has O2 molecularly bonded to it in such a way that it decouples the chemical bonds to the liquid upon contact with other substances.

Can't vouch for the other stuff as to it's effectiveness, but liquid oxygen doesn't seem to be as big a secret weapon as once thought!

Late joiner here...

Super-oxygenated water has been a scam for at least 20 years. I remember seeing ads for it in bicycling mags back in the 90's.

And the ATP pill thing is so laughable. The body goes through hundreds of pounds of ATP during an event like a HIM - I used to do those calculations for my biochem classes when I taught them. Taking a 100 mg ATP pill would be like a grain of sand in the Sahara, even if all the ATP in the pill did make it to a muscle cell. ATP is continually recycled.

Just wrong on so many levels. Purveyors of these kinds of supplements feed on the gullibility of the ignorant.

100's of pounds eh? would love to see the math behind that one. Never tried these supps but have tried MANY more and some work really well, some I notice nothing

So hydrogen peroxide?? That's just silly.

wow this thread is too long to read.
OT. are you coming to Sugarloaf this year?

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

My wife might do the marathon at Sugarloaf but we're thinking of doing some trail races at Pineland Farms near Portland. She'll do 50k and I'll do 25k. Otherwise I'll do the 15k in Kingfield, it was a fun low key race.

http://www.mainetrackclub.com/pinelandfarms.html

That looks like fun too.

I want to add another nice piece of pottery to my collection from Sugarloaf ;-)

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

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Very funny, but how long did it take to write that?

molecular weight of ATP = 507g/mol

rough estimates:

sedentary daily O2 consumption is approx 1 mole of O2 per hour

1 mole of 02 produces approx 6moles of ATP

Therefore:

24 mol O2/day x 6 mol ATP/O2 mol = 144 mol ATP/day

144mol ATP/day X 507g/mol = 73008 grams of ATP per day

or 73kg, or 161lbs

those are rough estimates, but on average the body produces and consumes it's weight in ATP every day.....without the extra energy expenditure of exercise. So it's safe to say that ATP production and consumption would be much higher (probably 100's of lbs) for an IM.

That is the truth.

This thread has gotten better and better.

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Twitter @achtervolger

Hrm. The hydrogen peroxide theory has been around for a long time, and debunked quite thoroughly, even though a lot of products still persist. PT Barnum was right...

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

To provide more information in addition to what coachct said,

The "average" sedentary male (150 lbs) uses ~2000 kcal/day, which correlates to 83 kg of ATP per day.

At any given time, the "average" body has only about 250 g of ATP in it, total.

ATP is continually recycled - each molecule gives up its third phosphate to produce ADP (adenosine diphosphate) and Pi (inorganic phosphate). The ADP is then rephosphorylated to form ATP in the mitochondria by a process called oxidative phosphorylation. Each ATP is recycled about 300 times. All standard college biochemistry textbooks have this information in them.

So the math works out to about 131 lbs of ATP used during a 2 hour run (like an "average" 1/2 marathon). You can approximately triple that for a HIM (although biking and swimming are not weight-bearing), and maybe multiply by a factor of 4-5 for a full IM. So the body is going through hundreds of pounds of ATP during an endurance event. Even for a sprint, taking an "ATP pill" will do virtually nothing for you, unless you want to factor in the placebo effect, which could be very real.

cool stuff, thanks both for the explanation, very surprising. anyone who doubts supps entirely though let me know, I will recommend 2 or 3 that are instantly noticeable, none of which are illegal

Just a question on this - why a limited lifespan? ATP/ADP is a fairly simple molecule, not like a big protein or DNA. Does it accumulate "damage" of some sort? Or is it just kinetics; some molecules just fall apart eventually?

How much should I breathe while doing backstroke?

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So I finally got over to the pool today, and I tried a version of your breathing technique. Something like a 3 stroke breathing, to two down though, and it felt really good. Times were as good or better than usual, and checked my HR and it was lower for standard times. Of course I'm really out of shape right now, so this really helps out. I imagine that when I get fitter, I will adjust it again, but definately take more breaths than I used to, and alternate from side to side. And it took very little time to get used to it, and I also found that when I push off the wall, I'm more centered for some reason too.

I've always been a big proponent of breathing every stroke, and this just takes what I've known to be true even farther. Thanks for the tip, never too old to learn new tricks......

Monty,

Glad to hear it is working for you. The more i use the technique the more i like it. Of course, my 57 year old lungs and body needs all the oxygen it can get.
I took the day off from ST today, but tomorrow will post my thoughts on fundamental #3. Stay tuned.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

.
My advice in a triathlon. Even if you are an accomplished hip-driven freestyler, learn to adopt a shoulder driven, mostly arm propulsion freestyle, keeping the head down (when not occsionally looking up to see where you are headed) the elbows high and swim on the freeway. I will explain what I mean by that tomorrow. And breathe as often as it makes sense. Save the legs. You will slip and glide through the swim with less effort and put yourself in better position to have the best tri of your life.[/reply] why is shoulder driven better than the third option (core) ? also, tried breathing every stroke, but had a hard time figuring out when to deeply exhale ?? appreciate your thoughts.....

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what means this word 'change'? .....
Rappstar

Dear rrfr,

Core (or Body driven, as Mike Bottom calls it) equates to connecting the hip and shoulder together in one motion. He also uses it with a straight arm recovery that warrants an entire other discussion. With shoulder driven, the hips remain relatively flat and the stroke rate is faster.
Nathan Adrian, who trained with Mike and The Race Club, and is arguably the best up and coming US sprinter, switches from shoulder to core driven in the final 10 to 15 meters of the 100, partly, like with Michael Klim in Australia who switched to dolphin kick, is to maintain the higher stroke rate. Using that technique he won the swimoff at the Olympic Trials and then placed 4th in the final to qualify for the relay.
Regarding the exhale, don't think about it so much. Just let it happen. When you breathe on two successive strokes, you just have enough time to exhale and catch the next breath. Hold your breath only on the single stroke when you don't breathe. Just don't overthink it.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Dear Axles,

In backstroke, breathe once per stroke. Let the head go back as the hand passes the vertical on the recovery. You should get a thin wave of water passing over your face and goggles. Otherwise your head is too high. When the water goes over the face, you hold your breath. When you come back up, you breathe, simple as that.

Gary Sr.

Monty, I tried it at the pool yesterday (first swim in 4 weeks....that's another story). Although it felt weird, it did not take time getting used to it. I did not check splits to see if I was any faster or slower. I suspect that initially I might be slower, not due to less oxygen, but because my timing feels off. I'll check my splits next time I go to the pool.

Dev

...anxiously awaiting your update on fundamental #3...

Thanks for posting your thoughts and instruction. I am a shamefully poor swimmer, so I welcome these long, helpful discussions on swimming technique.

Travis

Ya, at least for us swimmer types it seems to come very quickly. Not sure if that holds true for the non swimmers here, maybe a few can try it and chime in on their results. If you have'nt been in the water for 4 weeks, then I bet it was a big advantage for you. I was just out for a week and a half, and the extra O2 did me a lot of good, to the point that besides feeling better, I was actually hitting times a few seconds faster that I thought I could.

What I focused on was to take 3 breaths in a row out of every turn, that way I could stay down longer and get a good dolphin off the wall. That turn is always the killer when it comes to burning up the O2 tank. Usually I have to take at least 1/2 lap to recover from the turn, but now it comes right after the 3rd breath, and I'm good to go. It really is kind of fun to have learned something new after 40+ years in the water. Like a kid with a new toy, and I just want to go play with it all day now.....

Dear Hokiebird,

Thanks for the input. Keeping in mind that I am a scientist (at heart at least if not in mind) and yet know enough to be dangerous, consider this.
The key point is that ADP is recycled to ATP and back again. You say about 300 times but is that per day, per hour, per minute or per second? Obviously it must go up with demand (exercise). But adding up the total weight of this recylced molecule over a day is very misleading. You are simply weighing the same molecule over and over again. No one would believe that we produce 131 lbs of anything daily since our weight doesn't change and we ingest perhaps 2 or 3 lbs of food or liquid and excrete perhaps a half pound through the kidneys and colon. The rest we metabolize into something and/or burn off.
If what you say is right and that have 250 g of available, recyclable ATP in the body's cells and we eliminate the percentage of that in the brain, retina and all other metabolically active organs that don't contribute much to fast swimming, running or biking, how much is left in the muscle? And of that amount of available ATP in the muscle, does adding 100 mg daily to the pool make a significant difference? And how much of the ingested ATP actually ends up in the muscle? Perhaps.
Creatine has been shown in many studies to reduce % body fat, increase lean muscle and improve athletic performance. Most athletes believe it works. Creatine, like Adnosine, is another form of available, recyclable high energy phosphate. Yet we don't need to ingest 100 lb of creatine per day to see a benefit. Is there a difference between ingesting creatine and adenosine?
Lastly, I want to leave you with one other thought. It appears that intravascular ATP causes peripheral vasodilation. A couple of animal studies have shown that and if you take enough of it, your fingers will tingle, a clinical sign of the same. Perhaps we are looking under the wrong rock. The benefit (all or some) may be in decreasing the resistance of blood flow to the muscle (improving delivery of O2). Nervousness or cold temperatures cause peripheral vasoconstriction and seriously inhibit our athletic performance. Maybe ATP does the opposite.
Food for thought....but not 131 pounds worth.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

Hello Dr. Hall

This is a great thread. This week have been utilizing this breathing pattern. I like it, a lot. Like you said, in addition to the O2 equation, the added benefit is constant rotation onto the lats.

I am not a "swimmer" but I do take pride in being at least decent in the water. Will hit the pool today for 5000 to get 16 for the week (last swim for the week....go long on the bike tomorrow). So I have been practicing this.

Just a couple questions:

1. Rotation? even when not breathing, I always try to have the rotation so that I can see a swimmer on either side, whether pool or open water. Is there such a thing as too much rotation.

2. Head position? Cecil Colwin states that seeing hand entry is a FUNDAMENTAL. That means one can not being looking straight down but rather more forward and head up. Maybe there are two schools of thought on this topic.

3. Other strokes? Thanks for the backstroke. The breast is obvious. How about the fly? I often see other swimmers alternating. I would assume every stroke. I do every stroke. Because my technique is lousy, I hit O2 debt at the 50 ( my goal this year is to be able to fly a 100 so that I can then swim a 400 IM).

I am still base training so the emphasis is aerobic endurance and force. And for swimming, the major emphasis is stroke improvement. Doing sprint and VO2 training comes later. In addition to standard drills, the two "training sets" I do are probably not done by many so am curious as to your opinion.

20% of swim yardage is with a band only. That goes for the day and for the weeks total. So if I swim 5000 today, 1000 will be banded. (I do cheat somewhat; I put the innertube just under the patella). This is swum aerobic, 5 second rest. I believe that this is the best drill to put it all together?

The other drill I do is a fun set. 10x50....scy......swim easy tarzan polo head-out-of-the water watching the entry until approaching the wall then smoothly duck in for a couple strokes to pick speed up for the turn, then kick on the back to return (alternate flutter, breast, and dolphin) then repeat, no rest. Recovery is done on the return kick length.

What do you think? I may have it all wrong but I do feel I am improving. Of course the proof will come once the "fast" training begins and I improve upon last years times.


thanks again,
Conrad

OK, after taking a day off to lick my wounds i am now ready to offer Fundamental #3 Swim on the Freeway.

This fundamental pertains to inertia. Inertia simply means that it is more efficient to keep an object moving (in any medium that creates drag whether streamlined or not) than it is to get it moving in the first place.
We may remember the days when we could afford to look at new cars. Recall the sticker on the windshield that gives us two numbers for fuel efficiency, a higher value (say 26 mpg HWY) which means on the highway and a lower value (say 18 mpg) for around town. So why the difference? Why are we more efficient on the freeway driving 70 mph than we are in town where we average 30 mph? It has to do with the amount of energy it takes to get a big 4000 pound vehicle going from a dead stop. If you have ever tried to push a stalled one, you know.
Or even better yet, if you have ever had the misfortune of misjudging your flip turn and pushed off against nothing but water molecules, same problem. Ugh. The amount of energy to power you up again to race speed is overwhelming. The race is long over for you.
Because we swim in water and we are bricks, we are particularly prone to of the hazards of inertia. The reason is we decelerate so quickly without power. Budd Termin at the University at Buffalo published a nice paper a few years back showing that all breastrokers (even really good ones), after their push off the wall, underwater pull and dolphin kick, all of which help propel them forward, come to a complete stop (zero velocity) by the mere act of bringing their arms tightly forward and their thighs forward to prepare for the first stroke. Dead in the water in less than 1/2 second...once again proving that we are bricks. Breastroke, by the way, is not a 'freeway' stroke. It is an inefficient 'stop and go' stroke, or as Gary Jr calls it, 'the potatoe sack race' of swimming.
The point is this, once we power our bodies up in the water, we want to keep them powered up. In freestyle, I believe (though this has never been proven) that the highest velocity point in the stroke cycle is when either hand first enters the water and 'catches'. Why? Because we are in the most streamlined position that we can be in at that moment and we are mechanically in a stronger position at the top of our stroke (arm above our head) than we are as our hand moves (relative to the body) rearwards. Think about it, by the time our hand reaches our waist about the only decent muscle left pushing is our tricep. Above our head, we engage our deltoids, pecs, lats, biceps, triceps....all working on our behalf.
Ok. So if i am right and this is the highest velocity position (I shall call it the power position), we can only be in this power position for a limited time. And there is always some delay (since we only have two arms) from the time one hand leaves the power position and the time the other gets there. During this time, we begin to decelerate (slow) and the amount we slow depends on the time it takes us to get the other hand back to the power position and how well our other propulsive force (our legs) are maintaining our velocity. Most of us don't have the legs to do that and even if we did, as I explained in describing the hip-driven freestlyle, we likely don't want to use them in the triathlon swim. So the other option is to get the hand back to the power position quickly.
If, for example, you were cruising at a top speed of 3 mph and took you a full second to recover your arm, you likely won't drop to 2 mph like our earlier dive example where you are slowing at 1 mph each second, because you are still kicking and the back half of your arm stroke does provide some propulsion. But you might slow to 2.3 mph, and then you have to power back up to 3 mph again. The point is that you would be much more efficient if you only dropped to 2.7 or 2.8 mph and the way to do that is to get that hand back to the power position faster (increase your stroke rate)
Many studies (including Budd Termin) have shown the parabolic curve when comparing stoke rate to velocity. The faster the stroke rate, the faster you swim up to a critical point, at which turning over faster actually makes you go slower (loss of efficiency). Virtually all of sprinters in the finals of the Olympic 50 m are at or near the top of their curve. Most of us never get close.
But wait! What about Phelps and Thorpe, who look like slow motion and are turning over so much slower. Why are they going so fast? Legs, legs, legs. They each have Mercury outboards behind them that keep them on the freeway (maintain speed) in a different way.
So for the rest of us mortals who want to stay on the freeway, we must rely on increasing our stoke rate and holding the power position as well and long as we can with each hand.
In teaching this concept, I found it initially challenging to get swimmers to change their stroke rate and get them up on the curve. But then i developed a drill that really works. It is to use the freestyle with the dolphin kick....but to do it with a 1:1 ration between arm strokes and kicks. In other words, one kick, one pull...not two kicks one pull. Once you get the hang of it, you will find the groove or sync and feel pretty good doing it. It requires effort but is guaranteed to get you out of stop-and-go swim mode and onto the freeway. You can also use it for backstroke, but it is even more challenging since most of us are so accustomed to turning over way too slow on our back.

Finally, and the last thing i will leave you with, because i hate telling you about these fundamentals without telling you how to learn how to do them, are the four best drills I know for teaching the fundamentals. However, I don't have the energy to redo them so please go to our website http://www.theraceclub.com and read the latest Aqua Notes I wrote and perhaps you will find the other blogs interesting as well. All for now.

Yours in Swimming,

Gary Sr.

Welcome and thanks

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"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life".
Zappa

My Home Pond

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"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life".
Zappa

Let me tell you about this guy you need to teach how to swim... He lives in Madrid and his name is Joaquin...

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No kidding? Did you do the 4th Street Clinic Tri in April? I did the mountain bike part on a relay team. (My in-laws were feeling out the triathlon thing to see if they wanted to do one solo. They must've liked it because they did a sprint tri about a month later.)

1. A year or two back, there was a backstroke study by Russell Mark (US Swimming's biomechanical guru) floating around and the conclusion was that, even though all the thought about teaching proper backstroke was Roll, Baby Roll, the elite level backstrokers they were breaking down and diagramming actually often swum significantly flatter that what you'd expect to find. Could be because it does take energy to move from side to side and too much body roll ends up costing you more in terms of fatigue than you gain from better physics.

Given the similarities between free and back, I'd bet that there's a similar point where you can go past an optimum amount of body roll.

2. I'm in the camp that says put the head wherever it's most comfortable. However, you shouldn't be relying on it to keep your hips in place when your back muscles/abs/core muscles will go a much more stable job of keeping your butt up instead.

Dr. Hall


it seems that somewhere around 50-75g is closer to the mark, meaning the ATP is recycled ~1000 times per day.


The number of studies are limited, but looking at short term power and strength, ATP supplementation has no effect as a single dose ( http://www.jissn.com/content/5/1/3 [/url]), nor as a chronic dose ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15179168).


ATP is broken down and absorbed as adenosine and phosphate, and seems to be reconstituted as ATP in plasma. I can't find anything suggesting skeletal muscle ATP (or AMP, or ADP) stores are enhanced.


There is a broad body of evidence demonstrating that Cr supplementation effects performance. It's not an issue of belief - it does work, especially for the % of the population that show significant increases in [Cr] after loading. Adenosine and Creatine are not the same thing, and even subtle changes in chemical structure can drastically effect the function of a protein. There is evidence that supplementation with Cr increases skeletal muscle [Cr], but the same cannot be said for ATP supplementation.



Elevated plasma ATP does seem to cause vasoconstriction [edit correction: vasodilation] in rats and rabbits, but chronic (30 day) supplementation in rats actually resulted in a decreased in plasma ATP....not exactly the response you'd want, I suspect.


If I could point to one fundamental issue related the potential effectiveness of ATP ingestion in improving sport performance, it would be this: training induces adaptations which result in an increase in the rate of ATP synthesis, both through increased capacity, and enhanced enzyme activity. But the pool of ATP in the body doesn't seem to be rate limiting, and I haven't yet found anything to suggest that the resting concentration of ATP in skeletal muscle is higher in response to training. These issues would seem to contradict the notion that increasing skeletal muscle ATP concentration via supplementation (assuming that were even possible) would have a significant ergogenic effect.



Respectfully, your posts on this are pure conjecture. If I've missed something, I'd love to see the studies - and I'm looking forward to seeing the studies on Liquid Oxygen you mentioned earlier - but I think you're fighting an uphill battle.

CT

you might like this

http://advan.physiology.org/...content/full/25/2/70

I'll bite.
What are these supplements and where can I get them?
Just by chance do you have some independent scientific studies -to support the "instantly noticeable"?
How do you know that "none of which are illegal"?

I would imagine that none of the "supps" that you have exposed yourself to have FDA approval.
None of which have been tested by independent labs to find the contents are only that purported.
There are of course many reports of athletes taking "legal" supplements as claimed by the maker which test positive when looking for PEDs.

The "supplements" for both weight loss and strength gain are absent FDA testing for content and purity so that the thyroid hormone and growth hormone / testosterone respectively found in such "supplements" only come to light when an athlete test positive or adverse effects become so common that the FDA has to ban the selling of the "supplement".

http://www.ergogenics.org/300.html

http://www.ispub.com/.../ijen/vol3n2/otc.xml

KLG

Err, you'll be going your fastest once you've finished applying force, not just beginning.. and as long as your hand's accelerating through the water, you'll be going fastest later in the stroke. Here's the velocity plot for Popov.

Understood. I think you meant to say that ATP causes vasodilation not vasoconstriction. I am sure you know more about it than I do. However, I would not be surprised to learn that the benefit we are seeing (anecdotally) from the use of ATP is related purely to this response.
One thing I believe we can all(?) agree on is that there is a place for the use of supplements in athletic performance. Our World Team swimmers were taking approximately 10 different products (all legal) in preparing for Beijing.

Regards,

Gary Sr.

correct, I meant vasodilation (now corrected above). it's possible that it effects performance via vasodilation - certainly other vasodilators applied topically can increase VO2 during exercise, but I haven't seen a study on ATP supplementation and endurance performance, yet.

thanks
CT

Dear Tim,

The graph actually points out exactly what I was stating and that is that the fastest velocity occurs in the most streamlined position. You are looking at the back hand, but notice the front hand is in the extended, catch/lift position (or power position) as I call it. What you call later in the stoke is the beginning of the next stroke (and both arms are applying force). Also notice that the slowest velocity occurs when the arm is pointed straight down, where the greatest amount of drag is induced by the (upper) arm. I wouldn't have expected the drop in velocity to be this great, but am not surprised, considering our shape.

Gary

Your lack of understanding of the basic principles in human propulsion is as amusing as it is mind-boggling.

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i think he might know a bit more about swimming fast than you tho paulo ;)

I'm sure he does. But clearly physiology and the physics of swimming are not his strong suit.

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Not really.. it's the fastest velocity because its the end of the stroke, nothing to do with the streamlining. The slowest velocity occurs at the last moment before power is applied again. The streamlining/drag merely effects the rate of slowing down.

To separate out the two effects, if you were to do an exagerated catch-up you would be still going fastest at the end of the pull, not when you reach the most streamlined two-arms forward position.

Not to be rude, but this pretty basic stuff.

Sorry Tim,

I respectfully disagree. Because two arms are involved simultaneously in a portion of the underwater pull, one cannot separate the power effect of either arm.
According to Dr. Jan Prins, the only way to accomplish true velociity of the body is to use a stationary camera and a stationary point of reference behind the swimmer.Then to determine the propulsive power (velocity of body) of the hand throughout the pull, the swimmer must propel with one arm only. no kick. no second arm.
I still think you are not looking at this correctly, but it clearly cannot isolate the effects or power of one arm vs the other.

Gary

Well that depends on how you swim.

Here's a random bloke swimming without both arms pulling simulataneously at any point. When do you think he is at his highest velocity: beginning of the catch, or on finishing the stroke?

http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=related

In both the picture and in real life, the beginning of one stroke and the finish of the other occur simultaneously. So the answer to your question is both. Unfortunately, in this analysis you shared, one cannot separate out the contribution of power of the two arms. My opinion, much more power at the beginning than at the end.....but how much each part contributes to this point of peak velocity, we don't know from this. But you do see where the velocity is the lowest in the middle of the underwater stroke when there is only one arm pulling, right?

Oh do behave... he doesn't start the catch until his recovering arm is by his head.. there's no moment where both arms are pulling.

Why pay for cable when we have ST...

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but how much each part contributes to this point of peak velocity, we don't know from this.[/reply]
Only if "we" don't know the differences and relationships between velocity, acceleration, force and power

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Dear FLA Jill,

Rotate all the time, whether breathing or not. You can certainly roll too much but i have rarely seen it. In order to bend the elbow to reduce drag on backstroke and not break the surface with your hand, you have to roll the shoulder. Look down when swimming slow and up perhaps 10 degrees (no more) when swimming fast. Looking at your hands forces your hips lower in the water.

Gary

Conrad. My theory is this: Fast sprinters are planing to a degree on the water due to the very high speed. If your shoulders are out of the water, then your head can be as high as you want with no drag penalty.
But as the pace slows, such as in longer races and us mere mortals, the shoulders are in the water. So ANY amount of head above the surface of the water creates an eddy behind the head as the water rushes to fill this spot. You should be able to barely see your swim suit with your lower peripheral vision for the lowest drag in the water...ie almost looking back underneath you.

You should be able to readily feel this difference when you push off the wall streamlined. Just try it a few times with your head down and with your head up. Very noticable.
One thing you must note if you're going to compete in swimming, is that you should also never look up at the wall you are approaching before your flip turn. It's a bad habit. You must learn to key off the 'T' of the lane line or you will scrub speed as you enter the turn. It could be a quarter second per lap lost.

I certainly don't have 40+ years in the water, but would love to describe something new I tried as a result of this thread.

In today's workout rather than exhaling slowly underwater I began holding my breath until the last second, then forcefully exhaling before the next breath. It made a noticable difference in my perceived exertion through the workout. I found how important it is to hold my breath off the wall especially.
Up 'til now I've been slowly exhaling every moment my face is in the water.

I didn't try breathing every stroke, but that's something I'm saving for a solo workout, not one with a coach and a clock.

Hi Gary Sr....if I can paraphrase your last post, when you urge us to get out of stop and go and get on the highway, basically you are staying is that we want to get as close as possible to sustainining our momentum and not slow down between strokes....the way to do this is higher stroke rate (which also gives us more oxygen....which is supported by your previous posts). So the one beat dolphin kick is there to increase cadence cause 2 beat dolphin gives us more time between strokes? correct?

This is all excellent stuff.

Monty, just these post by Gary Sr. have encouraged me to get back in the pool, cause I am motivated to try new stuff.

As for Tim Sleepless and others, you guys can win the war of being smarter than Gary Sr on an internet forum. There are others on this forum that are willing to hear him out, separate the golden nuggets that will help us and go apply them.

Gary Sr. please keep posting from your years of experience. Most athletes like myself do not have access to this level of experience and background and are HIGHLY appreciative of your taking time to enrich our sporting lives for free.

My suggestion is that each time you start a new topic, open up a new thread so it is easily searchable in the future as a reference material.

sincerely

Dev

Thanks Dev,

Appreciate the comments. Go on our site (http://www.theraceclub.com) and try all of the drills i explain in more detail. I am sure they will help you...and yes you only get one dolphin per arm stroke. Not easy but it is sure to get you moving!

Gary Sr.

What if Dr. Hall is wrong? That's why the scientific process has peer review: nobody should take anyone's word for something just because that person is successful. Give it more weight? Perhaps. But to blithely accept at face value anything said is the wrong path.

How many people would be tossing their money down the tubes if nobody called Dr. Hall on that liquid oxygen nonsense? How many people would be breathing every arm stroke thinking that Perkins and other greats do it, when in fact none of the top swimmers do it, if people here didn't call Dr. Hall on it?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Gary, as one who is the same age, and followed many of you during a golden age of swimming, I wanted to thank you so much for your input. Let me tell you, though, that the ST gang will remind you of the toughness that Doc taught you at IU. Keep supplying us with the nuggets, as many of us are honored to have someone like you contribute. It's funny that within the past 3 weeks, I have had the pleasure to get great comments from 2 legends...Gary Hall, and Frank Shorter.

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Gary Geiger
http://www.geigerphoto.com Professional photographer

TEAM KiWAMi NORTH AMERICA http://www.kiwamitri.com, Rudy Project http://www.rudyprojectusa.com, GU https://guenergy.com/shop/ ; Salming World Ambassador; https://www.shopsalming.com

Well hopefully pointing out the factual and logical flaws will help people separate the nuggets from the nonsense.