Exercise Physiology MD

admin December 18th, 2007

Should I use paddles to help with my pulling drills?? Also should I wear fins when I am doing my kicking drills??

That’s a big “It depends”. That’s a big “It depends”. The use of aids in swimming changes the nature and benefit of the drill you are doing. Paddles and fins can be used for strength, flexibility or technique improvement depending on how they are integrated with your workout.

Paddles for strength…
The use of aids in swimming changes the nature and benefit of the drill you are doing. Using paddles, for example, can help you in performing a force or strength workout, where the purpose of the drill is specifically to get stronger. More surface area requires more force production to perform the stroke. The benefit is that your shoulders/lats, etc get a better strength workout, but the downside is that it can increase the risk of injury if done excessively.

Paddles for technique…
Paddles can be used for certain types of technique workouts…if you let your hand slip or spill water, or you drop your elbow during your pull, this effect is magnified when you have paddles on. In this case, the paddles can help refine technique, but should then be used sparingly, say 25-50 with paddles to get an idea of the stroke areas that need work, then 25-50-100 without to practice newfound skill and repeat. You can see how this workout with paddles would help with technique and skill, whereas a workout of 5×100 with paddles on would more more geared towards strength development. The bottom line is that paddles are a versatile adjunct to swim training, but need to be used appropriately within a specific training plan.

Fins…
Using Fins for stroke drills
Fins can be useful in several ways as well. One of the ways I enjoy using them is when I’m doing a new stroke drill where my speed may be too slow so that I’m sinking while doing the drill and therefore unable to concentrate on the drill because I’m underwater! An example for me was when I started doing one arm stroke drills. I was so bad at them that I was really slow and sinking. By putting fins on, my speed was up and I was staying on the surface of the water, and therefore got more benefit out of practicing the one arm drills. So the fins were helpful not for my kick, but so that I got benefit out of a new drill. Now I am much better at the one arm drills and don’t need fins to help me get through them.

Fins for flexibility
Fins can help some people develop ankle flexibility. They can also help with leg/kicking strength in a similar way that paddles help with arm strength. Since it requires more force to move a larger surface area through the water, wearing fins helps develop strength in the legs, in particular the hamstrings and gluteus muscles. For people with a weak extensor group, this is a fantastic addition to your swim training that helps your overall athletic development.

But in triathlon, we are not really relying on kicking for speed or power production. The large muscles of the legs consume a lot of energy that is not adequately recouped in the swim leg of a triathlon for two reasons. The swim leg is relatively short compared to the bike & run, and the amount of propulsion added by legs only is not nearly as much as that provided by arms and trunk rotation.

I am still a big fan of kicking drills without fins to improve your kick… but I don’t think that fins are a requirement for this aspect alone..

Fins for balance…
One more example is using fins for people working on balance drills. By keeping speed up just a little, you can practice/experiment with horizontal balance if it is still a new skill. But ultimately, you need to be able to swim with good technique without the use of paddles, floats or fins. The use of these swimming adjuncts should be deliberate, with a purpose, and limited in your total workout. Your aim is to reproduce the benefit you get from them (balance or technique for example) without having to use the aids.

Afterward:
The points regarding conserving leg strength and keeping HR down during the swim are debatable, and were debated on another popular triathlon site. My personal thought is that each person needs to find their own break even point between good technique, the contribution of kicking to their total swimming speed in any given triathlon distance, and their personal energy reserves. All of this will depend upon your personal background, strengths and training focus in each of the 3 sports and is something that your coach can help you sort out individually.

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admin June 25th, 2007

This morning I swam next to a lady that I swim with at Masters. She has a beautiful long stroke and glides through the water .. and her kick is so fast. On my warm up she was keeping up with me just while kicking.. how depressing! But .. back to the point.. her head is very high in the water, so I tried it today, feels okay, but thought you were suppose to keep your head down?

Any opinions .. head up (water line maybe at eyebrows), or head down (water line on top of head)?

THere is a difference between “looking” and “lifting”

Your neck is made up of 7 bones and yoru skull sits on top. Yoru skull with brain in side weighs about 10 lbs. If this 10 lbs is LIFTED out of the water by extending EACH JOINT in the cervical spine (neck), then that 10 lbs of water displacement is lost and something has to sink…typicall since your lungs are the fulcrum, it will be your hips.

Looking forward while swimming, however, can be done by extending ONLY the atlas-occipital joint, or the joint between your skull and your first cervical vertebra. Looking at the attached pic below, you can see that if the extension comes only from this joint, the center of mass of your skull/brain will not change very much and should not affect body position much.

However LIFTING your head, even if it’s not all the way out of the water, is going to change the center of mass significantly resulting in something else sinking.

For people with poor swimming balance who do not know what it feels like to swim balanced, keeping your head looking down and pressed down is probably the best way to figure this out. Once you know what this is supposed to feel like, however, extending your skull at the first joint should have minimal impact in yoru balance…but if you have a bad neck, it will hurt like the dickens after awhile. For that reason, I look down while I swim, only looking forward to keep from hitting the wall.

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admin January 17th, 2007

This is a response to a forum post over on Beginner Triathlete about so-called “Hypoxic Breathing” swim drills.

People have died doing these drills. There is no physiologic benefit from doing them. The name is a misnomer. If you want to swim uninterupted without worrying about breathing, use a snorkel. I believe the benefit that renee is trying to describe comes from not having your form break down when you roll (or don’t roll, or lift your head, or claw your way to the surface) to take a breath.

A far, far better solution is to have someone work with you to learn how to breath properly. The number of strokes you take per breath is irrelevant. There is no right number. You need what you need. The body’s need for oxygen consumption and getting rid of carbon dioxide is dependent upon how much energy you are using and in what form you are using it (aerobic/anaerbic, etc). When I start my swim warmup, I will frequently swim 7 to 9 strokes without breathing only because I am swimming smoothly, I have not gotten my oxygen consumption up by working hard, I am not generating a lot of waste products due to the low effort. When I have the urge to breath, I breath. When I am doing long endurance sprints, I may breath every 2 strokes. When I am rested and doing a single 25 yard sprint, yes, I can do it with no breaths. But not because I am forcing myself to do it. It is because 15-20 seconds of maximum effort requires little oxygen.

A novice swimmmer who uses all the energy they have just to stay on the surface of the water will need to breath every stroke because of the amount of energy they are using.

Do not play with basic needs of your body.

There is a mantra in Emergency Medical Services:

Air goes in and out,
Blood goes round and round
Pink is good and blue is bad.

That’s really all any EMT, Paramedic or Emergency Medicine nurse or physician needs to know. If it’s good enough for these professionals, it’s good enough for the recreational swimmer.

Air goes in and out.

Don’t forget it.

Practice it daily. Frequently. You’ll get really good at it.

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