Always Room For Improvement
The Gift of a Good Coach
For my birthday my fiancé gave me 4 swim lessons from triathlete and USAT coach Scott James1. I’m sure she had been hearing me complain all the time about how I’m sure I could be a better swimmer if I improved my technique a little.2 I was excited to learn some new things and begin picking apart some of the bad habits I had so I could get faster. Fortunately, I found out that I already wasn’t that bad but also that some small adjustments could still make a big difference.
Swim Improvement
Even in the past few weeks I’ve noticed some improvement. While some of it is probably due to the fact I’ve been swimming more — I’ve been more of a water creature than a land creature recently swimming 4-5 days a week and biking 2 days a week — the more sudden fluctuations in my swimming is directly correlated with when I started receiving coaching. To illustrate this I looked at some of my recent 20 minute, “easy swims”. Since these were all the same time in the same pool most of the variables are isolated. Here’s the breakdown:
The dotted red line is the date of my first lesson. I quickly noticed an improvement by both being able to swim farther and with fewer strokes. I’m only 50% through my lessons and hope that this trend can continue.
Train Smart Not Hard
This was just another reminder that putting in a lot of hours at the pool can help to a point but that improving things like technique/mechanics can also provide some real benefit that will also take seconds off your time but can be realized a lot sooner than workout after workout.
- Scott’s website: Eugene Triathlon Coaching ↩
- I’ve only been swimming for 3 years now. I was at least smart enough to try and get a coach from the beginning so I had maybe a half dozen lessons at my local Y before I was on my own again. For the most part I’ve been a self taught swimmer from that point. Picking up tricks for drills here and there that helped build the foundation for an overall “good” form. ↩
