Swimming, 6th March 2017

Posted on March 15, 2017 by james

This was a tough swim. I was feeling very tired, so just stuck to front crawl and did some turn practice, totalling 2,800m.

Total distance for the month: 9,000m
Total distance for this year: 67,600m

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Swimming, 3rd March 2017

Posted on March 4, 2017 by james

Short session today. There’s not much time on Friday afternoons. I stuck to front crawl again, but only did 2km as 8 x 250m. Felt as though I was working quite hard, too. I wasn’t timing myself, but against the wall clock the first 500m was faster than I’ve done it before, as was the full 2km.

On the negative side, when I got out one of the swim school teachers told me that my fingers are dragging in the water on the recovery, which I can’t actually feel at all, and my old habit of having my hands entering the water too early has returned, so I’ll have to work on those next week.

Total distance for the month: 7,200m
Total distance for this year: 64,800m

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Swimming, 2nd March 2017

Posted on March 4, 2017 by james

Another “front crawl only” session of 2,700m, and with only one other person in the pool for the entire swim. I’m starting to get to grips with the early vertical forearm, but I think it’s going to take a while yet. Plenty of turn practice, too. Hopefully I’m not too far from being able to incorporate them into my normal swimming.

Total distance for the month: 5,200m
Total distance for this year: 62,800m

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When your house electrics get a bit too exciting

Posted on March 1, 2017 by james

I had to open up the consumer unit to replace a fuse recently. I’m coming to the conclusion that we really need to get a sparky in and get our electrics tidied up a bit. Looking at this lot makes me feel uncomfortable.

That’s not everything either. There’s the solar PV meter just off to the left of the photo too.

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A new tray for the cider press

Posted on March 1, 2017 by james

Fresh from my success wrangling stainless steel for brewing, I thought I’d make up a new press tray for the cider press also from stainless steel. The starting point was one of those stainless industrial catering trays you see on hot food counters all over the place. They appear to come in sets of standard dimensions so that trays of various sizes can be fitted neatly together on the counter. I chose one just large enough to take my press boards with a little space left over. To that I added a tap, deck fitting, back nut and a connector tail for a pipe.

Just as with the brewery kit I was going to use a Q-Max cutter to make the hole for the drain, so first up I had to drill a pilot hole in one corner.

A nice long Allen key makes light work of using the cutter, and a very tidy round hole is the result.

I fitted the pipe connector to the tap using some PTFE tape to seal the threads.

All that remained was to fit the deck fitting to the tray using the back nut to hold it in place and then screw the tap onto the end of the deck fitting, again using a little PTFE tape to seal the threads.

And here it is in action. Very much neater and cleaner than its wooden predecessor.

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Championship Swim Training Book

Posted on March 1, 2017 by james

I’ve had this book, by Bill Sweetenham and John Atkinson, sitting on my desk for a few weeks. It was recommended on the Swimming Coach course. I’ve started it a few times and struggled, largely I think because it comes across as being very prescriptive with inadequate information to back it up, but also because there are quotes such as “full recovery is not the same as complete recovery” that are left unexplained when to many people it would seem perfectly reasonable to consider them the same.

Anyhow, last night I couldn’t sleep so I got myself a drink and sat downstairs with the book (having handily left my glasses on the bedside table) to make another attempt. I still struggled with it for the above reasons, but also found much that was useful, both in terms of explaining the origin of the planning information I get to see and providing descriptions of many drills that I’ll attempt to make use of in the future.

I can see myself returning to this book on a regular basis for ideas about session plans and sets, just ignoring the bits that I feel don’t work for me or my swimmers.

I have a couple of other swimming texts to work my way through at the moment. “Science of Swimming Faster” arrived this morning and there’s an e-book by David Salo (who has coached the likes of Sarah Sjostrom and Katinka Hosszu amongst many others) that looks interesting. As someone with a background in science and engineering the former appeals to me. Backing up the demands we make of swimmers in training with scientific evidence (or even seeing that it’s open to challenge) is something I feel very comfortable with. The latter was recommended to me as an alternative view to the high volume training proposed in the Sweetenham book. That’s also potentially interesting as we have relatively little pool time as a club, so it’s important to make the best of that which we do have.

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Swimming, 1st March 2017

Posted on March 1, 2017 by james

I felt very tired today so I opted for “easy” and just did front crawl rather than the session I had planned. I think I might carry on that way for the rest of this week just to get back into the rhythm of things. I don’t seem to have done too well over the last couple of weeks. Once I was in the water and got going I did actually feel much better and worked on my “early vertical forearm”. There’s a little stiffness across my shoulders this evening, but it’s in no way extreme. Just the muscles knowing they’ve been doing work they’re not used to I reckon. More turn practice, too.

Total distance for the month: 2,500m
Total distance for this year: 60,100m

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Swimming, 27th February 2017

Posted on February 28, 2017 by james

Forgot to take my session plan, so I just swam 2.7km front crawl and did turn practice. My turns are definitely improving. Breathing on the stroke before the turn is becoming more rare and I’m becoming more comfortable with turning off whichever arm I need to use, and also coming off the wall fairly straight as a general rule. I think what I need to be working on now is more control of my arms in the turn — they can get a bit wild sometimes, and better breathing control during the actual body rotation. I’m probably exhaling too much which leaves me gasping for air by the time I’ve surfaced and managed three strokes.

I’m also attempting to get a more pronounced early vertical forearm. I can feel a significant difference when I get that right as there’s far more pressure on the forearm during the pull, but it’s also quite tiring as I’m probably transferring the load of the pull to muscles that aren’t quite so used to it. I am wondering if a side benefit of “EVF” is that it stabilises the arm making it less likely to drift excessively under the body during the pull (especially on breathing). That’s a problem I seem to see very often with my age group swimmers.

Total distance for the month: 25,400m
Total distance for this year: 57,600m

Not as much as I wanted for this month, but we’ll see how it goes next month.

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Swimming, 23rd February 2017

Posted on February 26, 2017 by james

Couldn’t swim the previous day due to clashes with other stuff, so again I fell back to the old standard of front crawl and turn practice. Swam 2.8km front crawl in the end, practising my turns along the way.

Feel as though I’ve not really got near as much swimming done as I should have this month, but I guess with the mess of half term it may be excusable.

Total distance for the month: 22,700m
Total distance for this year: 54,900m

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Example videos to show swimmers

Posted on February 22, 2017 by james

I’ve been hunting for example videos to which I can direct the swimmers I’m coaching as examples of what I’m asking them to try to do. I’m not interested in getting them to copy a given swimmer’s style at all because there will be elements of any swimmer’s stroke that are specific to that swimmer and wouldn’t suit others. It’s more about getting the idea into their heads about a specific component of the stroke. Ideally I’d like to be able to say to them “We’ll be doing X next session, go and have a look at this video or this set of videos because it demonstrates that particular aspect well”. Probably I should write a little summary of the things I want them to look at and things they should ignore too.

This is one example I found earlier this week:

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I like the way this shows very clearly the “early vertical forearm” and that the upper arm hardly moves at all until the forearm is vertical, maximising the use of the entire lower arm and hand as a “paddle”. The arm nearest the camera shows it most clearly I think. The motion of the arm away from the camera isn’t so clear due to the angle. Obviously his legs aren’t doing much work though, so I’d ignore them 🙂

I quite like this one for the same reason:

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As it’s a training rather than competition swim it doesn’t look as though it has quite the urgency that it might, but I also like the obvious relaxation of the arm, wrist and hand during the recovery.

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