. . . and boy, are his toes flexible! I also learned a little bit about swimming and Doug learned that he can get me to say anything he wants with one finger.
Now on to some serious stuff. Doug Stern was in Austin this past weekend visiting his son who goes to grad school at UT. While he was here and since Austin is the Center of the Triathlon Universe, he worked out a deal with Austin Tricyclist to use their endless pool for a 2 hour swim session. About 5 people total showed up and I got a lot out of it. I’ve been reading Doug’s posts on ST for quite awhile now so i’ve heard a lot from him, but it was good to see some of the things that he was talking about in the first person. Also, it was great to have him video tape me swimming.
Some of the things that i learned was more of the importance of Doug’s “don’t flip your hand at the end of the stroke” mantra. I saw it first hand at what was happening and pretty much everyone does it. I do it a bit. My biggest thing was that when i breathe, I’m totally looking way too far back, especially on my right side. This is causing my legs to splay out and pushes my hip out to the side. According to Doug, this slows me down quite a lot since I’m exposing more of my body to the oncoming water. Some of this may be exaggerated by the fact that I was in the flume.
Now, I also don’t do everything bad. Doug was commenting on my good flexibility in my shoulders and ankles and the fact that I swim with a great, high elbow recovery. My arms are bent and I try to keep my hands close to my body.
After Doug’s visit, here are some things that I’m going to try to correct when I’m in the water:
Don’t look so far back when I breathe
Keep my arms farther apart and do the catchup drill with something that keeps my hands at least a foot apart
Work on the hand flicking out of the water
Less splashing
Keeping everything in a straight line
Looking up to watch my hand enter the water instead of looking at the bottom of the pool the entire time
Stretch my toes and ankles to get more flexible
Try to feel the water on the upbeat of the kick as well as the downbeat
Do more kicking drills and more kicking drills on my back
The 2 hours with Doug was a great experience and I learned a lot. It was also finally nice to meet Doug and see what he’s like in person, and touching his feet was a side benefit. Also, he has some very NYC glasses as well.
Cool post Eric, very insightfull, you should do well with his advice.
I wish he would come down to south florida, he would make a killing down here, hint to doug, PM me and Ill hook you up with a bank full of clients :)))))))
Your gonna pay for that comment on the next bridge repeat, Im gonna smoke your little fine ass up that bridge and then give you the lance stare down, oh wait, someone is waking me up, damn, HA, you will pay sooner or later!!!
And dont bring your ringer Andy to compete with me, heheheeehehhee
nothing to say about hairy feet, but i swear there was a thread here last week, that Doug was somewhere on, talking about how you SHOULD look back when you breathe, specifically looking at the back wall of the pool as you breathe, to accent your roll; i’ve been trying that ever since & wondered about it…so are looking about to your side or still slightly back ?