Triathlon training from Kenji Doya
Turns out that Kenji does triathlons! After a long day of touring Tongli in the heat and humidity--which was referred to as the Venice of China though whether that refers to the canals or tourists was unclear--a few of us ended up in hotel pool. We all enjoyed being out of the heat and did laps to burn off some of the large amounts of food they've been feeding us. However, most of us ended up stopping to watch Kenji's smooth efficient crawl and Upi's butterfly. When Kenji noticed, he decided to give us a lesson in using an efficient stroke and body position. As I have some fantasy about doing a tri someday I joined in. Turns out that I have a good body position but my arms strokes are not very optimal and it was hard for me to try to adapt quickly to the suggested entry pattern. The idea was to delay the stroke on the forward arm in the water until the arm that just completed the stroke is almost back and to completely rotate your body. He said, 'almost lean on your arm when you stroke'.
Workout:
Many meters swim, lessons
2 comments:
Back in the day when I tried to pick up front crawl technique (for the same reason - a tri), two things were really surprising: 1) how much a beginner's speed can increase through technique adjustments, and 2) how much torso rotation and shoulder/elbow movement is involved.
There's way more to the stroke than appears when looking at it above the water...
It's the torso rotation that is giving me the most trouble. I realized that my stroke was almost completely flat and trying to rotate really through off my breathing and arm movement. Time for more practice.
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