Opportunities of Swimming Improvement

In this article, I will cover the basic techniques I have used to get the most improvement out of my clients in their first and second sessions with Dobkanize. I will be using actual data to determine which opportunity is the most common and will report on effectiveness.  I like to use the term opportunity.  Many people think they swim slow because they are swimming wrong.  This can be a serious roadblock to getting faster.  When you think it’s all wrong, you question everything and get nothing. 

The swimming motion is very alien to people who haven’t done it their whole lives.  It is all too easy to think you need to re-invent yourself in the water.  It may be that there are lots of things you can do to get faster.  But it is also true that most people learn one step at a time.  I always try to pick the one or two things that you can do to get the most improvement in the least amount of time and effort.  My new clients do not swim perfect, and I don’t try and make them perfect.  But they do a great job at exploiting the best opportunities and this is what matters.

 That first session is almost always dedicated to arm movement.  It’s not that the legs and efficiency aren’t important (far from it).  However, the biggest bang for the buck for a beginner is always in the arms.  Efficiency and kicking is saved for later.  Why would you care about being more efficient at slow swimming?  Fifty percent of nothing is nothing.  Good kicking is much tougher to learn, and the improvements more gradual as a result.  Thus, I focus on kicking in later sessions.  The opportunities I have found in my clients are listed below, in order of most frequent occurring.  I have data for first tier opportunities (if you can only work on one thing, do this).  Here they are:

Opportunity #1 - Elbows
The greatest opportunity facing my clients is elbow positioning.  These athletes comprise a whopping 76% of my client population.  The elbow is the most important joint to think about when swimming, period.  I think about it non-stop, and so should you.  A windmill makes a good illustration; picture one spinning around in the wind.  Then picture cutting the blades in half.  The mill would spin more slowly, just as your arms pull your body through the water more slowly when your elbow isn’t holding the forearm in place.

The great thing about this opportunity is that it is relatively easy to exploit.  On average, my clients improved 6.7% with elbows versus my overall client improvement of 5.8%.  The typical time of improvement is just 3 weeks.  Two factors make this opportunity successful.  One, a limited number of joints and muscles are involved, which means you can focus better.  Having a steady elbow is independent of the overall rhythm of your arms, legs, head and torso.  Second, the improvement usually feels sudden and self reinforcing.  Picture being that windmill with broken blades, and then think about getting the blades instantly fixed.  You feel the difference, which allows you to act on it. 

Though elbows are easy to exploit for most, they can be challenging to some.  A common cause is a lack of flexibility in the shoulders.  When standing, raise your elbow over your head and pull it towards your head as far as you can.  If it doesn’t go very far, chances are you will have a difficult time internally rotating the shoulder and holding the elbow high enough through the pull.  For athletes with flexibility issues, the time to improvement goes up dramatically to 3 months instead of 3 weeks.  It takes that long to make the changes to the joint and ligaments that are necessary to improve flexibility.

Opportunity #2 – pulls wide or pull crosses over centerline
Basic arm pull trajectory issues comprise a smaller population of clients at 14% of the total.  About half of my clients pulled wide, which means that the pull was outward from the center of rotation.  A wide pull does not generate as much power for the same energy expended because the large muscle groups (lats and pectorals) cannot be utilized as much.    The other half pull over the centerline, which means that at some portion of the pull their left arm is pulling on the right side of the body and vice versa.  A crossover usually occurs at the midline (at the mid distance between the catch and stroke finish).  However, some clients also pull with a crossover at hand entry.

This opportunity is the hardest to exploit, and clients with this type improved the least at just 1.5%, (compared to my client average of 5.8%).  The reason is that the opportunity is very dependent on rhythm and system / muscle coordination.  Most clients pull with suboptimal trajectory for a reason.  Sometimes they rotate the shoulder sooner than they should, which means the arm has to cross over in order to finish the pull.  They can have strength issues which encourages them to pull wide because it feels easier.  They can also cross over at the centerline because they are over rotating the shoulders (described in detail in opportunity #3).

Since a correction in wide/crossover pulling must alter rhythm, coordination and strength, it is difficult to feel the difference immediately.  Unlike an elbow improvement where you get instant feedback, improving wide/crossover will feel clumsy and slower at first.  For clients that are serious about improving wide/crossover, it typically takes 2 months to see results (versus an average of 3 weeks for elbows).  It is easy to get frustrated.  However, the ones who work on it day in and day out do get better.

Opportunity #3 – Over Rotation
It is true that shoulder rotation is a big part of swimming fast.  However, a small portion of clients (7%) rotated so far over (in some cases in excess of 180 degrees) that they had to expend energy to get back.  This came in the form of a scissor type kick and/or a sweeping arm motion that is clearly for rotation and not forward movement. 

This is harder to optimize and has less improvement than elbows, but is easier than a crossover/wide opportunity.  On average, the improvement is 2%, (versus my overall client population of 5.8%).  Like crossover/wide, a correction requires changes in rhythm.  When you are used to your stroke taking so long (because you are rotating so far), it is challenging to know what to do all of the sudden the time taken to do a stroke is reduced.  The stroke rate (strokes per unit of time) can increase by as much as 30%.  Another challenge with over-rotation is that it causes the client to compensate with other sub-optimal techniques.  Some have a pull that crosses over the centerline at hand entry so that they can sweep inward and flip themselves over.  This means they have to think about a lot of things at once, which is very tough to do.  The time to improvement for this opportunity is about the same as for wide/crossover (about 2 months).  And just like crossover, the ones who get better are the ones who work on it all the time.

These are the common opportunities that I see new triathletes facing.  As such, they are always the big three that I have in the back of my head for a first time session with a triathlete.  The opportunities aren’t the final stop on the road to perfection.  But they typically take a client on the longest leg of that journey.  Elbows always get first focus, just as a windmill needs its blades at full length in order to function.  A smaller portion of clients have the elbows optimized but have various rhythm issues that manifest themselves as over-rotating shoulders or wide / crossover pulling motion.  I am always looking for what will get speed for my clients, and the big three have been the standard throughout my swimming and coaching career.  Until next time, happy training.