Engaging your brain whilst swimming

One of the things I love about swimming is the ‘brain re-set’. It’s allowing your mind to wonder and drift off. It’s very easily done and beneficial in lots of ways. BUT…you shouldn’t be doing this all of the time. If you enjoy a challenging sea swim, like the odd race, want to improve…go faster and further…then you need to learn to engage your brain whilst swimming. Particularly in a race scenario, there shouldn’t be any points where you stop thinking about what you’re doing.

My old swim coaching used to say ‘‘if you want to get good at fighting, get in a fight!’’. If you want to be a swimmer that can adapt to the conditions and swim to a race plan and/or adapt that race plan mid-race, you need to practice engaging with your brain in training. No good trying it in the middle of a race. You also need to be able to think clearly when you start to get tired…which takes practice.

During either a pool or open water swim there will and should be times where you adapt your stroke technique, stroke rate, kick rate, breathing, sighting (when and where you sight), head and leg position, draft someone… This all needs to be practiced fairly regularly.

Technique - if you swim in the open water, swim with hand paddles for swimrun/Otillo events etc you need to think about the chop. Swimming directly into decent sized chop can be tricky, as it can catch the back of your hands and disrupt your rhythm and stroke. You should practice swimming with straighter arms and giving your hands increased clearance of the water. This also goes for your breathing and which side to breath on. You always want the chop hitting the back of your head.

Kick - whilst your leg kick is far less important in the open water, it’s still useful. Putting in a little ‘kick’ at the end of a race or to stop someone drafting can be a very useful tool. Conserving your kick rate when you start to get tired can also conserve valuable oxygen. Getting your legs a little higher in the water and promoting a quick flutter kick when you’re swimming with the chop can also be a good tactic. These all require practice and they require some thought whilst you swim.

Breathing - reading the conditions and knowing whlich side to breath to, waiting to be at the peak of the swell rather than the trough before you breath can also be a great tactic…that needs thought.

The difference between an average and good performance and an average and good swimmers very often doesn’t come from all those muscles you’ve been training in the pool and gym!

The ability to look back and evaluate a swim and make adjustments before the next is also a key factor in improving performance.

Learning front crawl in the sea

This year we’ve taken 3 people that don’t currently swim front crawl and we’re meeting them once a fortnight for swimming lessons. With each session they’ll have ‘homework’ to take away with them. The aim is to teach them to swim front crawl (or freestyle as it’s also known), over the course of the summer. We’ll then make a short documentary and release it at the end of the summer, charting their progress.

The idea is really to show exactly how straight forward it is to learn front crawl, particularly in the sea…where you have additional buoyancy. They may not (they won’t) be expert swimmers by the end of the summer but they’ll certainly make big steps forward. We’ll also set targets and goals throughout the summer and carry out some exciting swims, as they progress.

We’ll add to this article and video throughout the summer (particularly video footage), as we go.

SESSION 1 : really a meet-and-greet. We also set them some homework based on breathing. The idea being that you practise front crawl breathing in a controlled and safe environment at home, so that when it comes to swimming in the sea you’re ready and confident. It makes it far easier to think about your arm pull or leg kick, when you don’t have to think about your breathing.

SESSION 2 : We looked at what I call the ‘neutral’ position or ‘streamlined’ position in the water. A position where you lie stretched out in the sea and let the water hold your weight. From there, you then add the arm action and breathing. A poor leg kick is one of the main elements preventing a lot of people from achieving a good body roll. It’s also too much for the brain to focus on…simultaneously thinking about pulling and kicking, so we leave the leg kick ‘til much later.