Discover your life aquatic

The Sea Hiker Bahamas Swim Camp kicked off with strong winds and huge waves battering the Atlantic side of the island for an exciting spectacle for those who ventured down for a closer look. 

The Island was still showing the signs of Hurricane Irene's passage over it in late August. Irene had pummelled Long Island, destroying several buildings, uprooting coconut trees and washing the sand from many beaches, especially the main beach at Stella Maris Beach Resort, our home for the week. 

On the day of our arrival, huge waves pounded the rocky coast and erupted in giant white foam and spray.  The waves were considerable but we were informed this was only a light gale, nothing like a hurricane. Unfortunately, it made any plans to swim and snorkel on the Atlantic side out of the question until mid-week. 

On Sunday night, after everyone had arrived, we met in the Stella Maris Beach Resort restaurant for our first rum punch party (and conch fritters) followed by a full buffet dinner hosted by Sea Hiker. It was a great chance to meet the rest of the group and enjoy everyone's excitment for the upcoming week of adventure. 

We had a disparate group of people. Cynara and Aislynn, sisters from Burnaby who are committed to triathlon and snorkelling adventures; Joe, from Vancouver and participant in both our summer open water course and pool swim pods; Bev and Renee, longtime Sea Hiker clients and avid athletes; John from Pittsburgh, who is preparing for a swim adventure in Egypt; and S Fuller, a lifelong swimmer, who won a spot in our swim camp for her fundraising efforts at the 2011 Vancouver Swimathon for Kidsport.

The Stella Maris Beach Resort provides a variety of accommodation choices: small 2-3 bedroom cottages, 2-room suites with a veranda overlooking the ocean, and single hotel-style rooms with great views of the hillside overlooking the Atlantic. 

Down by the water, there is a nice pool, a beachside bar, and a few hammocks for lounging by the ocean.

We chose Long Island because Peter had been there twice before for freediving competitions and training and thoroughly enjoyed the potential for swimming and diving on both sides of the island.  It is also off the beaten track and perfect for a low key getaway. There are only about 3,000 residents on the island, not counting the tourists that waft in along with sailors, pilots and residents from the Mainland who have built small houses all over the island.

We were also really excited to coach participants in such a lovely place. We hope you enjoy the story of our adventure there! 

Here are the upcoming blog posts:

Swim Camp:

Day 1 - Deal's Beach: Swimming on Island Time

Day 2 - Deal's Beach: Visitors from Another World

Day 3 - The Blue Hole Experience

Day 4 - Deal's Beach and Cape Santa Maria: Walking on the Moon

Day 5 - Deal's Beach and Swim Camp Finale: How Do You Swim 15% Faster?

Sea Hiking Weekend:

Day 1 - Dean's Blue Hole, the Green Hole and the PotHole

Day 2 - "Isolated Pretty Beach" and Dean's Blue Hole

Next post: Day 1 at Deal's Beach: Swimming on Island Time

A really simple way to swim faster without increasing your effort is to swim be long and tall in the water.

But what does that mean and how can you achieve this?  First, you'll want to know what to avoid!  Swimming with a gollum-like posture slows you down, plain and simple, and leaves you craving precious shiny objects at the bottom of the pool.

See Exhibit A:

When coaches refer to swimming tall or with a long body line, it generally refers to two things:

• Posture: good posture through the head, hips and spine
• Joints: finishing each stroke with arms straight and making sure the legs stay compact and under the hips

A lot to think about, but if you start from the center of your body and work your way out, you'll see results right away.

Step 1: Check your head.

If you've taken a Sea Hiker course or private lessons, you'll have likely experienced first hand the time we spend on checking head position relative to the spine. Lifting the head too high sinks the hips and pushing it too low makes you submarine underwater. Do either of these during your breath and you sink even more, plus you get the extra bonus of a sore neck. 

Solution: Experiment with tensing and relaxing your neck. If you neck is relaxed, your whole upper body, neck, shoulders and arms will have less tension. Also, try tucking in your chin slightly so that you have a longer upper spine (back of the neck), being careful not to force anything. Keep in mind that for some swimmers, looking straight down will not be the best "neutral" head position. Experiment.

Step 2: Flatten your lower back.

If you've done any yoga, pilates, dance, physiotherapy or ergonomics at work, you've probably encountered how to do a subtle pelvic tilt towards the front (pulling your tailbone down and up underneath you) to flatten the lower back a little more. Your lower spine should have some curvature in the lumbar region, but generally, we arch our lower backs too much.

Why is this a problem? If you arch your back, your hips will be lower in the water and this will increase drag, even if you head position and posture is good overall.

Solution: Try gentle amounts of pelvic tilt and lower back extension to see what effect this has on your legs. You should feel your legs dragging less behind you.

Step 3: Extend through the hip joint.

Kicking can be a complicated and unintuitive skill. Often, especially if you're a beginner with kicking, you will bend at the hip in order to find power and productivity from your kicking motion. Unfortunately, this means your legs will drop much lower behind you and slow you down.

Solution: Extend through your hip by contracting your glutes and lower back muscles gently. Throw on some fins to feel this, especially if you keep your kick to a minimal level or try not kicking at all.

Feel this on dry land: lie on your stomach and tense your glutes, lower back and legs slightly to lift your knees an inch off the ground. Now try for the same feeling in the water while swimming.

Step 4: Extend fully through the elbow at both ends of the stroke.

Our instinctive swimming mechanics, which generally are inefficent and just add tension to our swimming, tend to favour a choppy bent arm stroke mechanic. This compromises your streamline postion on each stroke, adds strain to the shoulders and generally limits your abilty to catch and hold water on each stroke.

Solution: Aim to fully extend your lead arm gently as your stroke begins and then complete the underwater stroke with your elbow still underwater and your hand brushing the inside of your thigh. At the end of each stroke, your hands should be as far apart as possible without straining. Keep the shoulders relaxed when trying this.

This will slow down your stroke rhythm and ensure that you get the best propulsion and streamline combination.

Step 5: Keep the ankles floppy.

If you are a runner or cyclist, you face a significant challenge in building more awareness about how your legs and feet need to move for the freestyle kick, whether you're doing a full flutter kick or a six beat kick. The swimming kick is not intuitive at all!

The kick starts from pressing down with the hip and thigh bone and then whips through a relaxed knee and ankle with a momentary contraction of the quads.

Whew. Sounds tricky.

To simplify things, your biggest opportunity lies in keeping your ankles as loose and your feets as floppy as possible. When you swim with fins, everything feels easier. This is because the fins are rubber and bend for you. You are trying to get the same feeling with your bare feet.

Solution: Swim with fins and without and try to zero in on the floopy ankle feeling with both. Try kicking in all positions (side, back, front and vertically, if your pool is deep enough). A floppy ankle is more likely to finish each kick with the foot in a generally more pointed streamline position, than if your ankle is tense.

Trying different kicking rhythms, fast to slow and different amplitudes, will also really help you figure out what works best.

It is challenging to relax the ankle and knee to some extent while kicking with some intent from the upper leg and hip.  But the pay off is huge, as you'll be able to get propulsion, stability and leverage for your freestyle stroke without a huge amplitude, high drag, energy consuming kick.

Final Words

Overall, if you are swimming with a choppy stroke and not spending time on drills and slow swimming, you're going to find it different to develop body awareness of your posture and joint extension.

Swimming long and tall in the water can make a HUGE difference in your speed. Imagine swimming with fins all the time - that could be you without fins. Seriously.

Slow things down, experiment with range of motion and posture and you'll start to see results, sometimes right away.

Next time, we'll look at some photo examples and exercises you can do to improve your posture in the water.

Roberta has been a close friend for many years, along with her husband Matt, especially as we all share a passion for being in the water. We first met as freedivers and have trained, competed and dived together over the years. After we competed in the Oceanman race in early August, she let it slip that she was doing the Rattlesnake race in Peachland. 

Roberta's account has some great info in it, especially about pacing over a long race, dealing with obstacles during the swim, and some practical things she learned for next time. 

You may also be interested in Roberta's own blog post about the race with some other photos and more tales of open water swimming and freediving with report on the Jericho Oceanman, Kits Challenge open water race and many others. 

Rattlesnake Island 7km Swim – Peachland, B.C. – August 11, 2011.

Watching from a boat as Peter Scott swam the Bay Challenge in 2008, I found myself wondering what part of himself he had to reach for to complete the swim.  I have always been intrigued by endurance sports and by that point in a long athletic pursuit when you have to dig deep to keep going.  Pete’s fortitude in swimming 4 hours and 22 minutes inspired me.  I started swimming shortly afterward and swam my first 1.5km race last summer; this year I swam the 2km Canada Day Challenge and the 3km Kits Bay Challenge before heading to Peachland for the Rattlesnake Island Swim.  

When I heard about the Rattlesnake Island race, I thought it would be a nice way to see how I would do on a longer swim.  I welcomed an opportunity to push myself in the relatively calm conditions of Okanagan Lake and gain some insight as to what I was capable of.  With Pete’s tuition and encouragement I have learned a lot in the past two years about technique, pacing and relaxation; but what I didn’t know was if I had the stamina to swim for 7 straight kilometers.  

A requirement of the race is that every swimmer be accompanied by a boat guide and my husband Matt agreed to kayak alongside me. The week before the race I ended up working some long hours but on Friday I got out of work early enough to throw my wetsuit, goggles and a bunch of clothes in a bag and get on the road by 6:30PM.  We arrived in Peachland at around 11:00PM, checked into our B&B and fell into bed, knowing we had to be down at the beach by 6:00AM to check in for the swim.  Unfortunately, due to race jitters, I didn't sleep at all.  

I was still in a sleep deprived daze while I signed in and suited up and was surprised when Matt kissed me good luck, got into his kayak, and paddled out to beyond the start zone.  I got into the water and waited with my fellow racers while the boats dropped the 3km swimmers off on the other side of Rattlesnake Island.  Ten minutes later the countdown began and we were off.

The Swim

My strategy for this swim was to just take it easy and see how 7km would feel.  I had never swum anywhere near that distance and didn't know how my body would fare.  I swam pretty much at the end of the pack all the way to the Island, following Matt's kayak.  He positioned himself to my right, so I wouldn't have to look into the sun, and just slightly in front of me, always pointing his kayak in the direction I should be swimming.  If I got too close or too far from the kayak I knew I was swimming off course.  This was a big help for me because my right shoulder and arm are much stronger than my left and when I tire, my left side drops early and pulls inefficiently.  I didn't rest or stop until I got to the Island and then only to ask Matt what the time was: 1:15 at 3.5km.  I was relaxed and still feeling strong, despite some pain in my lower back.  

Swimming around Rattlesnake Island was an incredible feeling.  After an hour of staring into the black depths of Okanagan Lake, getting to look at something was a nice change.  The water on the other side of the island was calm and still.  I passed a swimmer and his kayak and then was out on the open lake again before I knew it.

This is where I made my big mistake.  Though I started the swim thinking "slow and steady" and just determined to finish, I decided to increase my pace and make up some time.  I managed this for about a kilometer, at which point I discovered that I was exhausted.  The pain in my lower back had intensified significantly and I had to stop to pull in my knees and stretch it out.  I was also feeling pain in my weak left shoulder and my left arm was a little numb.  I bumped into Matt's kayak a couple of times which told me that my stroke was definitely affected by my weakening left shoulder.  In addition, my calves were cramping, especially my right one, and I was overheating.  

I swam a poor stroke for a while, frustrated and angry with myself for not saving my energy for the last kilometer while Matt tried to talk me in.  Flooding my suit every hundred strokes or so brought my body temperature down a little, but not nearly enough.  I struggled, mostly with my mind.  I was so angry with myself for making this mistake. About 1km from the beach Matt started cheering me on, yelling and pointing at the buoys that were now visible to me in the water.  I told myself to trust the technique, forget about the pain and just stop thinking.  As soon as I tucked my head in and worked on my rotations I could feel my swim smooth out and I knew I had it.  

At the entrance to the swim zone, which kayakers could not pass into, I stopped to thank Matt for accompanying me on this trip and then swam in.  Meanwhile he raced his kayak to the beach so he could run up and meet me at the finish line.  Standing up was hard, but I got my feet pretty quickly and ran to the finish line for a finish of 2:33:03.  How incredible to step past that line!

What to do next time

I learned a lot of lessons from this swim.  I didn't realize how weak my left shoulder was in comparison to my right.  At the end of the swim, my right shoulder and arm felt strong, like they could continue pulling, but my left definitely could not.  And the back pain was so debilitating by the time I finished that I don't know I could have continued for much longer.  Longer training swims would probably have prepared me a little better for this.  Also, proper hydration may have helped; I didn’t stop to drink anything while swimming.

The final problem was that I had to stop swimming to talk with Matt about where I was in the race, which broke my rhythm and slowed me down.  At the pancake breakfast the Peachland Recreation Commission organized after the race I met a veteran distance swimmer who told me that she and her husband had worked out a system for this.  He had foam cards on which he'd written times (:30, 1:00, 1:30 etc) and distance (1km, 2km, 3km etc) which he would hold up for her to see.  We'll definitely use this system next time.

Dianna has always waxed poetic about swimming in open water, rivers, lakes and oceans, and came to Sea Hiker for instruction last year. Here is her report on her return to the same triathlon she did last year, enjoy: 

The Lee’s Trail Triathlon is an early season sprint distance event, the end of May, and this year my goal was to improve my swim time.

Two years ago I’d been the second slowest person in my heat, passing only one woman who lazily backstroked down the lane. Although I’ve done a lot of swimming, including almost 3K from Alcatraz, I'm usually the last one onto the beach or out of the pool. 

In the summer of 2010 I decided it was time to go faster and was lucky enough to find Peter Scott at Sea Hiker. I followed him into the open waters of Jericho Beach, and during the winter and spring signed up for swim pods at the Aquatic Centre and YMCA. He used video, a powerful teaching tool, which showed that my arm snaked back to the surface as I rolled to streamline and my head popped up like a turtle when I breathed. I must have asked Peter dozens of time, "Do I really look like that?" By the time triathlon season rolled around I felt faster, more efficient, and more relaxed in the water. It was time to test myself.

The Lee’s Trail swim is at Second Beach…pool. That's right. A pool swim. I was assigned a position based on my previous finishing time which put me, guess where?, eighth of eight swimmers.

Whistle!! The first swimmer pushed off the wall and ten seconds later number two. FInally, I shoved off and to my amazement saw silver bubbles almost immediately. After less than a dozen strokes I passed a swimmer! Wow. That was a new experience. 

I heard Peter's voice in my head. "Chin tucked!" "Patient catch!" "Turn early to breathe!" Too much input, too confusing. One focus point at a time, I reminded myself and felt my stroke become more efficient and breathing easier. Caught swimmer two. Then another one. By the first turn I'd passed three people!  

During the following laps I threaded my way past slower swimmers while avoiding oncoming traffic. When I climbed out of the pool I had passed all but one competitor and darned near caught him. And, yes, my time was faster. Much faster. 

Lessons learned. 

• Frequent, short, and concentrated workouts equals improvement. Fifteen or twenty minutes of practice several times a week is more productive than one 90 minute session once a week. 

• One focus point at a time. Think about breath timing OR kicking. Stroke speed OR hand position. Trying to fix too many things at once means everything falls apart.

• Visualize perfection. For me this means my head droops like a wilted flower blossom on a stem. My arm enters the water like an arrow shot from a bow. And my legs are Indiana Jones’ whip snapping through the water.