In our private workshop with the MaratonIST Triathlon Club of Istanbul this weekend I used one of our practice sets to show how we turn even those passive rest moments (= being still) at the wall into valuable training opportunity. Those moments are not just about recovering heart rate, but just as importantly, those moments are about recovering the attention. For adult athletes with a limited time budget for training (especially for these who are training for Ironman), small otherwise neglected moments in practice can also be used to one’s advantage.
Here are some points I shared:
Don’t talk to the people next to you (at least in the middle of high-concentration sets). This is time to examine and decide.
Use nasal breathing while recovering- keep the mouth closed. This triggers the parasympathetic nervous system to help calm heart rate.
Use this moment to think about what you have just done and what you intend to do better next.
Ask yourself:
- What was successful?
- What did I do to make that happen?
- How will I repeat, protect or improve this in the next moment?
Or ask:
- What failed?
- What detail caused it?
- How will I correct this in the next moment?
Make a decision about your intention for that next moment. Then do it.
In practical terms, this decision may mean, if successful, that you use the same Focal Point, and reinforce your attention upon it. If unsuccessful you may change the Focal Point, or correct the way you used that previous one.
I reminded the group that Success and Failure should mean very little in these moments on an emotional level – they are just information to sustain the improvement process. Failures are useful in a practice for exposing what hasn’t been mastered yet, while (repetitive) successes are useful for imprinting the pattern so that it is easier to reproduce in the future.
Also, when something fails (or when something succeeds) one should not leave it as a mystery why. The whole point of the high-quality, mindful practice is to scan the training situation – in the case of failure – to find the cause so it can be corrected, or – in the case of success – find the cause so that it can be protected and more deeply imprinted.
Turning off attention (tuning out) is not necessarily a great way to rest your brain – from a neurological point of view, simply changing the aim of your attention, or viewing the detail from a different direction can provide rest in one part of the brain, while maintaining mental momentum by keeping things firing in another.
***
Got people who try to talk to you at the wall? Here’s my approach to protecting my concentration: I submerge my body under water until only the head from nostrils up is above the surface. I use nasal breathing at the wall so the exhale from my nose makes ripples on the surface of the water. I can even make a short meditative focus on my breath this way as I feel my heart rate quiet down to the level I intend. I either closely face the wall (if higher than the surface of the water) or look down the lane, making it obvious I am concentrating on something. I don’t make eye contact. It takes a fairly rude or oblivious person to disturb me in this position.
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Thanks for this post! I have been feeling a little guilty or underwhelmed at my supposed lack of progress which I have arbitrarily measured as continuous swimming range at escalating estimated swim pace. I have recently not established clear goals, except to slowly decrease Tempo Trainer stroke periods, trying to maintain my prior SPL. As this latter number is rather high for my liking, I have been mildly dissatisfied with the lack of progressive decline in my SPL; all the more dissatisfaction with the need to rest briefly in the middle of 100m sets, which reflects a mild failure to do a 100 m set in one go. But as my form deteriorates with this fatigue, I have thought this better than imprinting bad form.
I have been fighting with a little guilt at perhaps not having enough intestinal fortitude to press on despite fatigue to make progress in the range parameter. I now realise that my present strategy is sound. Especially since at my 50 and 100m rests while I rest, I am fully mentally focussed on thinking what might have gone less than perfectly in the segment I have just done, from a technique viewpoint, and what useful tweaks should I try on the next set to see how I can decrease SPL with the least possible subjective effort, focussing on relaxation as much as possible. I know now that I am processing the information I have at this point as well as I can, and I should basically stay the course.
Hi Su-Chong,
There are a couple ways to ‘stretch’ your capabilities.
If you are not seeing progress then we know something is holding you back. It could be something in your method, but it could be some internal element in the body (not properly bracing, force not flowing smoothly through the body, shape problems, etc). I can only guess, but you can ponder these things.
Here’s a way to modify your approach:
Let’s say the SPL you are currently capable of is N. You are doing 100m repeats at N SPL (with some rest) – the purpose of this is to more deeply memorize it, and allow the brain to find easier ways of producing that N SPL. But it is not likely that by doing 100m repeats at N SPL that one day you will magically start doing N-1 SPL. You may need a different kind of approach to bump down.
You can stretch your capabilities (or bump down) in a different way. You can aim for N-1 on 4x 25m with good rest in between (like 10+ deep breaths). The goal is not making more power, or pushing for endurance, but provoking better concentration and allowing more time (more repeats) for the brain to adapt. So the rest at the wall needs to give your heart time to recover really well, since you don’t want energy to run out (muscles to fatigue) before the brain has been given enough repeats to really start finding some new solutions to improving body shape.
You’ve got a limited energy supply for any practice – some days you will try to hold your best SPL for more distance with less rest – stopping when you’ve used up your ‘muscle’ energy. Some days you will do shorter distances, but at higher SPL challenge level, with more rest, stopping when you’ve used up your ‘mental’ energy.
Keep in mind this seemingly paradoxical idea – you are aiming at making N SPL easier, yes. But in order to get to N-1, you will have to add more power simply because your body doesn’t know how to create N-1 using better shape and less muscle yet (if it did, you’d already by swimming at N-1!). Once you get a foot-hold on N-1 SPL, then you stay there and give your brain/body time to find the ways to make N-1 feel easier. To make that first step into N-1 you will need a bit more effort and will feel higher heart rate at first (thus needing more rest), but once you make a step up in challenge, your brain will get busy adapting your systems to it.
It’s something like this: Step up, take time to adapt, take time to imprint. Step up again, take time to adapt, take time to imprint.
Always look forward to your posts. This is probably one of the shortest post, but contains a lot of important ideas. I like the idea of breathing thru the nose when at the wall. I have been doing this, and it really helps to calm me down. The idea of thinking about what either went wrong or right is actually a lot harder than swimming. It takes a certain amount of insight and self awareness to assess why something went right or wrong.
Also like your advice on what to do when you have someone next to you that wants to chat.
You also suggested that if you failed, try a different focal point. Is there anywhere in TI literature a list of focal points and what areas they particularly pertain to (balance, streamline, propulsion))?
Tks for the article
Hi Sherry,
I need to update and post the TI Freestyle Drill Sequence outline on my Resources page. I have just made a note to do that.
One thing about the drills and focal points is that most of them have an effect in all three zones (balance, streamline and propulsion). Few of them have an affect only in one zone.
For example, by using ‘Weightless Head’ we can examine its effect on balance, as well as streamline, and even in synchronized propulsion. A head in anything other than neutral (or spine-aligned) position will cause a chain reaction curvature or muscle imbalance in the spine – making it weaker. This will negatively affect the swimmer’s ability to establish front/back balance, his ability to maintain a torpedo (or laser) streamline, and and his ability to send rotational force smoothly through his body – all because of a tilted head. (Try looking up at the sky for a few minutes the next time you go running and see how it feels on your spine!)
So, you might see that a simple list of all the focal points with a check next to the drill and the BSP principle each applies to would almost necessitate explanations for each one. Hence, the reason I write many blog articles to explain the inter-relationship of these pieces.
However, I will work on that outline, because we need one available to go with the newly refined ‘Ultra-Efficient’ Freestyle Drill Sequence that Coach Terry has unveiled. And I will repost the one that goes with Perpetual Motion Freestyle since that is still quite valid and many people reference it.