SWIM SMOOTH PLATFORM. Any users in the haus? Opinions?
I recently asked the following question to RnP and P suggested I asked the haus for opinions. So here it goes:
One area where I personally feel we have "less resources" within the team is swimming. I understand and apply EN's swim philosophy but (being a self-coached-athlete) felt tempted today to sign up to the Swim Smooth offer (email send last week announcing their new app) in an effort to help me improve my form. Is it worth it?
One area where I personally feel we have "less resources" within the team is swimming. I understand and apply EN's swim philosophy but (being a self-coached-athlete) felt tempted today to sign up to the Swim Smooth offer (email send last week announcing their new app) in an effort to help me improve my form. Is it worth it?
0
Comments
I recently purchased the DVD set from them based on feedback from some members in the haus who had success. Couldn't find the thread now, but think it was Rian Bogle maybe. Anyway, while it's too early for me to able to tell you if I've had "success" in terms of a quicker swim time, I will say that I'm very happy with how it's increased my depth of "resources".
For me (1:09-1:12 range for IM swim, and wanting to get to 1:04 area) I strongly feel it's going to be about "drilling" proper body position, roll, arm recovery, and catch into my "muscle memory", and the DVD's provide a wealth of drills in each of these areas. And for me anyway, I needed to SEE them being done, which the e-swim book didn't provide.
The DVD set also came with a 12 or 14 week (can't remember) workout plan to work you thru these drills in a systematic way....haven't started it yet, just been fooling around a little with some of the drills in an unstructured way so far, with the intention of following that plan in conjunction with the JOS. Again, I think it was Rian Bogle who also commented on the wko plan aspect of swim smooth....I'll be interested to see if he get's in on this thread.
So with my limited use so far as a perspective, I'd give swim smooth a thumbs-up(cost was pretty nominal for the DVD set) just for a resource of being able to visually learn the drills....which I think everyone agrees is the key if you're not coming in close to an hour or under in the IM swim.
Juan,
Here's my $.02 (it may or may be worth even that much): I didn't swim in a pool with lanes until 26 and am very far from a coach. But I am fortunate to have a top coach in my family. When I first started triathlon, I was interested in what WKOs I needed to do to get faster - 50s, 200s, 500s?. After he saw me flail around in the water, he told me to spend all my time instead working on body position. He recommended Total Immersion. So . . . I drilled like crazy and learned to rotate, straighten the knees, feet up, toes pointed, kick on time, breathe properly, enter with the fingers instead of the thumb, reach, recovery narrowly, etc. - all those things "swimmers" take for granted. After many years of work, I got my IM swim down to an hour and a little below. Swimming with my coach/relative last year, he gave me permission to abandon TI and work on something new, now that my body position was "decent for a mid-level high school swimmer." The new goal was to take my established body position and reduce the dead spots in my stroke by eliminating the TI glide, increase stroke rate, improve my catch and pull dramatically, and swim straighter with more rigidity in the core (not wiggling through the water like a snake like most triathletes). Enter Swim Smooth and Sheila Taormina. If you've read Sheila's great book, you'll notice there's virtually nothing on body position. Instead, it's all about swimming straight with "tone" (i.e., some core tension) with a great catch/pull, at a higher stroke turnover. The Swim Smooth approach is similar with a focus on turnover, some drills, and working right at/near TP with low rest instead of anaerobic sets with lots of rest.
So, now I swim a lot at TP pace, frequently using a wetronome to maintain a higher, consistent stroke rate. I also like swimming with my feet banded, typically with a buoy and snorkel. When I get lazy, my bound legs start flapping side to side like a flag in the wind. When you kick, this flapping sensation is hidden. With feet bound, it's readily exposed. In order to stop the flapping and get my torso and legs in alignment, I have to engage my core and swim with that "tone" that Sheila talks about. The result is a straighter, faster stroke. It's currently my favorite toy/tool.
Does it work? Who knows. It's a different tool, and changing things up is good in my book. My stroke rate has gone from a slow, glide-heavy 48/min to low 60s/min, which now puts me in the "good" range on the Swim Smooth chart. Most importantly, the higher stroke rate is actually easier on my shoulders, as I no longer have the time/opportunity to take a big beefy pull. I'm a good 5-6 seconds faster per 100 than last year. If that translates to 3-4 minutes in an IM and a few more minutes of buffer on the uber-bikers like you, I'll take it. But in the grand scheme of things, I'd still rather add 20 points to my FTP and/or 2 to my vDOT.
Mike
Hey Juan,
I do not come from a swimming background and started swimming about 3 years ago. I finished 2014 as about a 35/36 minute ½ IM swimmer and for a full IM anywhere from 1:16 for a wetsuit swim to 1:27 in Kona. Any way you slice it, I’m not a great swimmer, but my #1 priority this outseason is to address that weakness.
Starting at the end of October I began working with a swim coach who I see every couple weeks. He has basically been tearing down my stroke and giving me new elements to work on and incorporate only as I am able to assimilate his previous instruction.
I also picked up the swimsmooth workout plan and have been using it for 5-6 weeks. The workouts are broken down into technique swims that are drill and toy heavy, tempo swims that are done just under your LT with minimal rest, and long swims – straight swim sets done roughly 5 seconds above LT pace.
I use swimsmooth as a framework and then modify the workouts slightly so I can work on what I’m learning from my swim coach. In some cases I’m just switching out the swimsmooth drills for the drills my coach prefers I work on, or in other cases I may do the prescribed set of 200’s but keeping in mind a specific focal point and if that means I’m going slower than what’s prescribed, I’m OK with that. On average I’m swimming 4-5 days per week and coming in around 12k yards.
What's nice about swimsmooth is their application of the CSS test. It’s essentially a swimming FTP test used to derive your LT pace and is similar to the 1K TT prescribed by EN. It seems to be an easy repeatable way to benchmark performance gains every so often. Swimsmooth has you doing that test every 4-6 weeks and I just did my first retest and gained a 3s/100yd improvement from my initial test. Now the real question becomes was the improvement from swimsmooth, my coach’s instruction, more time in the water, or all of the above? I guess it really doesn’t matter as long as I’m seeing improvement. The bottomline is I like the swimsmooth workouts and that helps get me to the pool and that’s where the improvement happens.