Summary: Welcome Effortless Swimmers to another week of Swimming News. This week we look at what to do if you are getting gassed quickly in your races. How to have more energy for the second half of your race. We also give you some sprinting tips that will help bring down your 50m and your 100m times, and we look at some ways to improve your kick without following the black line up and down. 00:30 - Getting "Gassed" Quickly? 00:58 - The Two Things All Good Sprinters Have Are... 01:18 - Three Ways To Improve Your Kick 02:21 - Is Scull Important? 03:23 - The Chopper Rescue Story 03:43 - 10,000 Fans Giveaway! You can join Swimprove here These are the workouts we do in training (for triathletes and pool swimmers) Getting "Gassed" Quickly? If you find in your races that you are getting gassed quickly and you haven’t got that much energy at the back end of your race...it might be because you are not breathing enough. When I do video analysis for swimmers in our Swimprove membership community, the swimmers that are having trouble backing up the second half of their race are usually breathing every 3-4 strokes. It is denying their body the oxygen that it needs to fuel itself for the second half of the race. If you try breathing every two strokes or a mixture of every three and two, then you might find you have more energy to finish off strong. The Two Things All Good Sprinters Have Are... If you want to improve your sprinting then let’s keep it really simple. If you have a strong kick and a high stroke rate (and you are able to maintain your stroke length) then you will improve your sprinting. Next time you are in training if you are thinking about having a strong kick and a higher stroke rate, they are two of the fundamentals of being a good sprint freestyler. Three Ways To Improve Your Kick There are a few ways to improve your kick without following the black line up and down. A few things that we like to do in training are: Vertical kick: Where you are in the water, you are upright you either have your arms crossed against your chest, your hands out or your hands in streamline position if you really want to challenge yourself. If you do that for a couple of minutes at a time you will find that your kick develops and becomes much stronger very quickly because vertical quick if quite challenging. Kick against the wall: You might go 60 seconds on, 30 seconds off. But for that 60 seconds if you do 40 seconds at a medium pace, 20 seconds hard that will tire you out pretty quickly and improve the strength of your kick. Partner kick: If you have a partner in the water grab a kickboard, someone goes on one side someone goes on the other side and you are kicking against each other trying to push the other person backwards. If you are doing that for 40-60 seconds at a time it is very challenging and very tiring but a good way to develop your kick. Is Scull Important? When I have new swimmers join the squad a lot of times they will ask why we do sculling, because we do quite a bit of sculling in our swimming training. There are two reasons why I like to do it. The first one is it works on good positioning for your catch. If you are doing a scull out the front then we are practicing the catch position for our freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke as well. Where you have a high elbow and your hand is lower than your elbow and you are just practicing that initial catch position. That is one of the reasons, the other reason is it is good for practicing your feel of the water. When you are pulling through, if you are slipping through the water then you haven’t got a feel for the water. If you are practicing scull then you will you get a feeling for what it’s like to hold that water and move yourself through it. A few keys with sculling if you look at the video is you want to keep your hand your forearm very straight so that you can hold water with that whole part of your arm,
