I Can Learn Even From A Lousy Workout

SWIM

PC 32m outdoor pool, 1728m, starting at 16:20. The water was 26 degrees C. Sunny.

• 6x 64m (1 lap) focus drills
• 12x 32m (1length) sprint. Aim for :25 with 19 SPL
• 64m (1 lap) recovery
• 6x 64m sprint. Aim for :52 with 19 SPL
• 64m recovery
• 2x 96m sprint. Aim for 1:20 with 19 SPL
• 64m recovery
• 1x 128m sprint. Aim for 1:50 with 19 SPL
• 64 recovery
• 128m EZ

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY

• The traditional swimming mindset of ‘just go harder’ is like a black hole that will suck me back in if I don’t keep these fundamental principles of swimming physics (TI’s ‘fish-like swimming’) in the forefront of my mind and intelligently plan out my training.

COMMENTARY

This was not a successful workout. I didn’t have a focus or plan before coming. I hadn’t taken time before my lessons for the day to think through what I needed to work on, and so after lessons, preparing to swim, I sat there a bit blurry-headed wondering how to make it meaningful today. In the absence of intelligent reasoning I was sucked back into my old-school thinking- do something ‘fast!’- so I wrote this out thinking only about making fast splits, not about the smart way of achieving them. I was blindly aiming to swim hard, without respecting the physics of ‘preserve SL first!”. So I jumped into it and started tightening up right away, going SLOWER and SLOWER rather than loosening up and naturally going faster and faster, as when I have remain loyal to SL.

I need to train to swim faster under control, with negative splits, not by pumping out over and over again as quickly as I can, seeing how much exhaustion I can endure. Like a man trying to harden his skull by bashing it against a wall enough times…

I need to keep true to the new path I am following with TI. I’ve tasted traditional swimming mindset and experienced the harsh reality of how it limited my potential rather than expanded it. I can’t mix the old with the new, and I still need to employ some discipline to keep from falling back into the 1-dimensional speed-only rut. Speed will come, but not by focusing on it directly. It comes as a product of intelligent, quality swimming.

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