The document discusses strategies for off-season swimming improvement. It recommends focusing on developing proper technique through drill practice and video review before building strength. The most important body part is the brain, as swimming requires developing new neural pathways. Flexibility and neuromuscular strength specific to swimming motions are also essential. Common roadblocks to success include impatience, unwillingness to change, and lack of progression from basic to advanced skills. The key is taking a step-by-step approach with attentive repetition of proper form.

1. Off Season Swimming
With TEAM Pursuit Athletic Performance
Coach Al Lyman, CSCS, FMS, HKC
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2. Tonight’s Discussion
• Should you really spend time now, trying to improve?
• Common roadblocks to success
• What’s the most important body part for swimming
success?
• Basic concepts and essential attributes
• Assuming I might want to improve, where should my
focus be?
• Strategies for improvement
• Review: Common roadblocks to success
• Q&A
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3. Common Roadblocks To Success
1.
A lack of an appropriate progression from A to Z (baby steps).
2.
Impatience (relates to #1).
3.
An unwillingness to CHANGE (pride and stubbornness).
4.
Not seeing the learning process as a journey of discovery and
growth – an fun adventure (relates to #2).
5.
Impatience (relates to #1 and #4).
6.
A lack of necessary flexibility (and an unwillingness to make a
commitment to improve it – relates to #2, #3, and #4).
7.
Time management.
8.
A lack of enough L.S.D. to make it ALL palatable!
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4. Question: What is the most important
body part for swimming?
Answer? (Hint) Every human
movement, thought, or feeling, is a
precisely timed electric signal traveling
through a chain of neurons – a circuit
of nerve fibers.
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5. Your Brain – Hard Skills – Myelin
• Swimming correctly is a “hard” skill (vs. a soft skill)
• Groove a groove = easy! Change a groove = hard!
• Baby steps - slow it down - attentive repetition
• Sweet spot at the edge of your capabilities
• Practice makes myelin – myelin makes permanent!
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6. Basic Concepts
Efficient swimming is summarized by these two…
• You want to learn to REDUCE DRAG.
This means rigidly maintaining a relaxed and streamlined
position during every phase of the stroke.
• You want to generate MORE PROPULSION.
You do this by “leveraging” your arm strokes by rigidly
holding relaxed correct technique.
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7. Fundamental attributes that every single good
swimmer possesses:
• Efficient (and correct) technical SKILLS / HABITS.
• High levels of FLEXIBILITY
o arms/shoulders/back/ankles.
• Swim specific neuromuscular STRENGTH
o the muscular strength that comes by moving well (correctly)
and consistently.
• A willingness to LEARN and CHANGE…
o …while at the same time, enjoying the process of learning
and changing.
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8. How can you apply this to YOUR
swimming?
• Commit to never taking another “incorrect” stroke
• Chunking: small pieces, one at a time
• Practice-practice-practice, in and out of the pool
• Slow down – be aware of what you are doing
• Drill over short distances - one skill at a time
• Combine swim practice with appropriate dryland
(strength and flexibility) training
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9. Where Should My Focus Be?
The Catch
• High elbow / early vertical forearm:
o Analogy: paddling a canoe
o your forearm is the “paddle”
• Not propulsive:
o it is preparation for the propulsive phase of the
stroke (the pull)
• A very specific “hard” skill requiring perfect,
progressive repetition to develop
• Requires swim specific strength to hold over time,
without deterioration
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10. Source: Haydn Wooley – Future Dreams

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13. Strategies for Improvement
The focus of your off season swim training should be:
• developing the “correct” neural pathways by practicing
only “good” form, not reinforcing bad habits.
• developing more flexibility to allow for “correct”
movement patterns.
• developing “swim specific” coordination and strength to
be able to do what you know you should do.
• the focus is NOT on the pure strength of the muscles,
but on their correct coordination.
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14. •
If flexibility is a limiter, commit to stretching daily, and before and
after each and every swim.
•
Master correct catch technique OUT of the water first, before
attempting to apply it IN the water.
•
Practice progressive drills regularly, doing them slowly and
thoughtfully. When you are drilling, focus on improving only one
skill at a time.
•
Use any and all “tools” that you have available to you, to progress
from one stage to the next stage.
•
Video yourself regularly to ensure you’re swimming correctly.
•
Swim short segments of easy intervals to help you first change
habits and then instill them until they become the “natural” way you
swim.
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15. 4 Steps to Developing Swim Specific Strength
1. Dry-land practice: grooving the groove of a “correct”
catch
•
High elbow early vertical forearm (EVF)
2. Tubing exercises: 1. elbow “pops” 2. full “catches”
•
See video
3. Relentless drill practice
• Short segments; focus on only 1 skill at a time
4. Small bits of full stroke swimming (baby steps)
• Done for only as long or as many strokes as you can do
perfectly
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17. Common Roadblocks To Success
1.
A lack of an appropriate progression from A to Z (baby steps).
2.
Impatience (relates to #1).
3.
An unwillingness to CHANGE (pride and stubbornness).
4.
Not seeing the learning process as a journey of discovery and
growth – an fun adventure (relates to #2).
5.
Impatience (relates to #1 and #4).
6.
A lack of necessary flexibility (and an unwillingness to make a
commitment to improve it – relates to #2, #3, and #4).
7.
Time management.
8.
A lack of enough L.S.D. to make it ALL palatable!
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18. Questions?
Thank YOU for joining me!
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