From Barge to Yacht

On my way to a personal record in the 200 Backstroke event at the 2010 Ozark Championship

My swim coach is some kind of wonderful. Two years ago if my triathlon coach hadn't shoved me out the door and into a Masters swim group, I might never have crossed paths with Hap, who gets up at o'dark-thirty several times a week to be at the pool and herd a bunch of driven (sometimes whiny J) athletes across the 4,000 yard goal line. The fact it's in excruciating multiples of 25 yards doesn't seem to faze him one bit. He hands out the swim sets like he's handing out candy; at least he expects us to receive them as if they were J. In our lane we often stand there, slack-jawed, and I can't tell if it's because it's only 5:15AM or we're in shock over the interval times he's given us to complete. You want us to do WHAT in HOW MANY MINUTES??

Inevitably we almost always end up finishing within the given interval. It's funny how he knows exactly where the "challenge" line is, which means he also knows where my "sandbagging" line is. I rarely get a pass to loaf. Putting on the Puppy Eyes alone doesn't work. I had to have raced or trained with serious intensity the weekend before to get a reprieve from the intervals du jour. Otherwise it's Go Big or Go Home, as my tri coach Jen likes to say J.

I'm holding my own in the water and to be honest it hasn't come easy; it's been a lot of hard work, and I'm still learning. However, as Tom Hanks said in A League of Their Own, "It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great." A good friend and former Junior Olympic swimmer once told me there aren't many good swimmers. It simply takes a lot of time, patience, and perseverance; and in today's microwave society, 2 extra seconds at the stoplight is too long, never mind 2 (or more) years in the pool.

The key to swimming is learning how to swim. The key to swimming fast is learning how to stop moving through the water like a barge and more like a yacht. A barge can carry a large load, but it's never meant for speed. A yacht is sleek and its rudder is tapered to a point beneath the water's surface; it's meant not only for comfort but also for remarkable speed, especially given its size.

This principle is key when wanting to go fast for longer periods, actually anything more than 50 yards. The muscles wear out rather quickly when they're consuming precious oxygen at a rate greater than the lungs are bringing it in; it is imperative to move through the water as efficiently as possible. This is not to say strength and power aren't important, they are, but using the water to your advantage brings big gains that cannot be had by simply muscling your way from one end of the pool to the other. You must be more on your side, ie, like a yacht, than on your stomach like a barge. This reduces drag and also has the added benefit of being able to "unwind" like a loaded spring when snapping the legs and hips, and initiating the roll from one hip to the other, thus producing forward propulsion from the power core of the body, not from using your arms to pull your way through the water. Think of the power generated by Albert Pujols when he slugs a home run over center field. The rotation begins at his feet and gathers momentum as he prepares to snap his hips, finally culminating in his arms/bat coming around to connect with the ball. If he stood still and simply swung his arms, there is no way he could put the same force behind the bat when it hits the ball. The same is true of swimming fast.

Swimming is a worthy sport for several reasons. The first is that a person can swim literally until the day he/she dies. In contrast to running or even walking, swimming has such little impact from the forces of gravity that one can still get a good workout due to the large number of muscle groups involved, despite the condition of many joints. This is heaven for weary knees and ankles, even weak hips.

Second, swimming is the only sport where you actually feel better coming out of the water than when getting in. The sense of cool water moving around you can be therapeutic and refreshing, thus further enhancing the overall feeling of satisfaction. This is usually not the case with other sports such as biking or running, where the workout almost always results in fatigued muscles.

Third, swimming promotes strength as well as elasticity in muscle fibers, which translates to less vulnerability to injury throughout a person's entire life. When properly taught, the body learns to stretch out in the water and use muscles in a way that causes them to work together to produce correct stroke technique. This can only be done by the brain telling the body exactly which muscle fibers to recruit for a given movement at any given time. The heavy involvement of brain activity keeps neurons fresh and firing, and may actually promote healthy cognitive functions well into the sunset years of life.

I'm still a student of swimming and will likely be one for the rest of my life. It's ok though. The rewards have been more than worth the price. Yes, people look at me screwy when I tell them the alarm goes off at 4:08 AM, and I'm in the water by 5:15. But I've made a lot of new friends, I'm more fit than ever, and I'm home from swim practice as most people are reading the paper and enjoying their first cup of java for the day. More importantly, the discipline of working toward a not-so-immediate reward spills over into other areas of my life and is always waiting with the gift of that lesson to be learned: many things in this life (and the next J) are definitely worth waiting and working for.