This past Saturday I had the opportunity to share a pool with more swimmers than I have been around in over 2 1/2 years and it was epic! The clinic was entitled “A Better Freestyle.”
We were led by excellent coaches Tatiana Lemos de Lima and Brad Hering. Tatiana and Brad broke down the fundamentals of our stroke, our turns, our starts and our breathing.
They were accompanied by an amazing ensemble of lane coaches who helped every swimmer reach their full potential. TWIM coaches Allison Eliason, Steve Fogg, Brad Jones, Holly Lickwala, and Kathy Pelham were joined by other talented coaches around the area like open water coach Amy Heape and local coaches Clare Kucinski-Murphy and Felicity Speirs.
Supporting these casts of characters were TWIM swimmer favorites Dan Underbrink (President of TWIM Booster Club), Carl Haynie (deciding to swim right side up for a change!), and the amazing Tom Walker.
It was a really nice cross-section of hard-core masters swimmers, open water swimmers and wanna-be both (aka Yours Truly), wanting to learn about that stroke we all spend the most time doing…
I came to this from a perspective of someone who has swam mostly long distance my whole life and who is generally an efficient swimmer. But as I get older I know there’s things I need to do to get more efficient to preserve my health and my shoulders and learn what it’s like to just get better and be better in the water.
These elements of a better freestyle had a foundation in the information provided by your coaches based on an understanding of the physics of water. I was reminded, more than once by Coach Brad that water is “800 times” more dense than air…no wonder those belly flops hurt like heck.
Let’s start by really appreciating what is one of the nicest aquatic facilities in the area, the Snohomish Aquatic Center. If you have never been, it’s well worth traveling to this suburban natatorium with 10 lanes of 25 yards and a deep enough pool for even the worst of us launching from the blocks.
After checking in and picking up our yellow caps and refreshments offered by the TWIM crew, we settled in for a discussion on the fundamentals of swimming. Tatiana started off with an overview of what we could expect, and Brad outlined the importance of breathing technique. I learned how efficiently you swim has a lot to do with how efficiently you breathe.
They talked about this idea of how much time you have before you shut the door on your breath, and there was some great whiteboard illustrations of what we have to think about when we breathe.
The workshop broke down the elements of streamlining, body position, stroke efficiency, stance and balance. Each element was broken down further with drills before putting it all together by swimming more naturally.
Near the end we did some great work on Starts off the block using Track-Starts. Did you know that we accelerate as much as 13 mph off the block and then slow way down to about 5 mph while in the water?
So, a good start is super important; just a slightly more tight streamline off each wall over the course of a 500 yd race shaves off many seconds.
I’ll take these improvements any day of the week.
There were really so many other things that they squeezed into this 3 hour workshop, too many to mention here, but I am telling you if there’s another freestyle clinic from these coaches, I am there!
