Swimming with fist gloves

Source: Revised from an article that first appeared in Schwimmvergnügen in 1999, in East Coast Cycos newsletter, in Tri-Rudy newsletter, June 15, 2011]

Early in your swimming career Mother Nature played a cruel trick on you. She imbued you with the false notion that your hands are the things that you “grip” the water with and thus propel yourself with. You have labored through most of your aquatic mileage under this heavy yoke. You have built most of your technique and training around pulling harder and faster with those puny little hands.

Now, Coach plays his own trick. He tosses a pair of what appear to be rubber mittens down by your lane and says “Put ’em on, shut up and swim.” You obediently jam your hands into them only to find that you have to make a fist to get them all the way on. Is that a smirk on Coach’s face? As you drop down to push off from the wall you’re sure you hear Coach starting to laugh. Your once-streamlined glide feels very “blunt.” You take your first few strokes but, whoa, what’s this? No traction! You seem to go nowhere! You’re sure that Coach is, by now, rolling around on the deck laughing at your pathetic efforts to go somewhere!

Refusing to satisfy his sadistic appetites you push on. Quickly, you figure out that doing more of that which comes naturally – pulling harder and faster – just flat doesn’t do any good with fist gloves. You must think “outside the box” of your current technique, exploring other options and possibilities - ones that Mother Nature would prefer to keep secret.

Fist gloves, as it turns out, entice you to seek an arm position where the forearm, rather than your hand, becomes the “paddle” that holds the water. You find that getting your forearm more vertical to the pool bottom, further out in front of the body just seems more “right.” You find that the longer you keep the forearm vertical the more propulsive your stroke is.

A treacherous mistress, “Mom” Nature also gave your hands bazillions of nerve endings so you’d focus on them constantly while swimming. But, just like their cousin, the condom, fist gloves dramatically and frustratingly decrease the sensory impulses the wearer’s brain receives from the “protected” appendage. At first, this sensory deprivation seems a depressing occurrence. But as you use the fist gloves more you become much more aware of what your forearm is experiencing in terms of pressure and flow. As your forearm sensitivity increases you can better position it and more accurately move it to where it is most effective in holding onto the water.

Fist gloves often show swimmers that they were relying on their hands for more than just pulling. Again we see “Ma” at work. Instinct tells you that when your face is in the water you must push down on the water with your hands and lift your head. You do this without thinking and are likely unaware of it (or at least the extent of it). If you habitually press down on the water in front to lift your head, the fist gloves render this motion wholly ineffective, forcing you to find another way. If you can resist the impulse to just press down harder the only remaining option is to not lift the head.

Of course, the goal of wearing any piece of equipment in training is, ostensibly, to swim better when nekked. So, what really matters is what happens once confining latex is peeled unceremoniously from flesh and cast aside. Almost universally, swimmers report the first few nekked lengths they swim after wearing fist gloves are at significantly lower stroke counts than normal. They also seem to get their lowest swim golf scores. The longer and more often the fist gloves are worn, the longer this hyper-efficiency period seems to last. The awareness, sensitivity and technique that fist gloves foster linger as unfettered hands act as an extension of the newly discovered and sensitized forearms. In short, you swim farther with every stroke, which, of course, is the primary ingredient of faster swimming (not to mention of simply looking more like an accomplished swimmer).

But soon Mother Nature says Habit must prevail and it seems you are doomed to slowly revert to the old motions that are habitual for you. “But wait,” you say with a trick of your own in mind, “what if I put those things on again and wear them long enough for the new technique to become my habit?” (It’s to think about.)

Yoga and swimming

[Source: East Coast Cycos newsletter, in Tri-Rudy newsletter, June 15, 2011]

If you have ever watched a good swimmer, one of the first things you might notice is their ease and grace. Their movements are smooth, balanced, and fluid; it looks as if they are exerting very little effort, while those around them struggle to keep pace.

The reason for this is not that they are naturally gifted and do not have to try; they are working as hard or harder than everyone else in the race is. The reason their swimming appears to be so easy stems from coordination of muscle, breathing, and body, letting them focus their energy in the right places instead of expending it unnecessarily. Yoga can help you learn to develop this coordination, too!

My experiences with Yoga

My first experience with Yoga was during my junior year of high school. My coach and I decided to eliminate morning practices and insert yoga in their place. We thought it would be an extension of stretching, a big help towards increasing my swimming efficiency (it was also very funny to watch my coach lose his balance and pitch over onto the floor).

Both of us really enjoyed the experience, but ultimately decided that we were moving on to try other things. I think this decision had to do with the instructor and the class atmosphere. The class was designed for an older crowd who wanted a good stretch to start their day. While I also wanted that stretch, I decided it was something I could do on my own, at home.

My next experience with Yoga occurred while I in college at CAL. Part of our swim team’s cross-training included Yoga. This time, my instructor, Devon, did not teach only yoga; he knew about spinning dance, weightlifting, and just about every other fitness activity known to man. In addition, he knew what we wanted in a Yoga class. He explained the poses, coached us through them, and helped us apply what we were doing to our activities in the pool.

What I have learned from Yoga

Yoga can be hard - but it also can be relaxing - It does not have to be all stretching and meditation, which many people think of when they hear the word Yoga. I have found that means that muscles all over your body are straining to hold the various positions. However, it does not have to be quite as hard as it seems. Yoga teaches you to relax all of the muscles that are not specifically needed to hold the pose. This helps you to conserve energy by not using all of those unnecessary muscles and put it towards the muscles that need it.

Breathing is an important part of Yoga - and swimming - Everyone knows that breathing is important. Without it we would die! Devon taught us to breathe using the lower part of our lungs, especially when we are holding a difficult pose. Focusing on breathing gave me something to think about other than the pain that I might be experiencing. It also helps me get more oxygen, which in turn helps my struggling muscles. The same thing happens in the water. By picking a breathing pattern, and sticking with it, I can use all of my lungs, and focus on something other than the strain of the race or practice. I have found that with this comes a calmness that helps hold my stroke together longer - and results in improved times.

Arms can be strong - but your belly is stronger - Maintaining tension through the core muscles of your body can help take some of the stress off the little muscles that you are using. The same applies to swimming. One of the reasons that some people get more distance for every stroke is because they are not using just their biceps, triceps, and hands to move themselves through the water. They have connected the various muscles in their arms to their core body muscles and are using these much stronger muscles to do a lot of the work. Lat and oblique muscles are bigger and stronger than deltoids, biceps, and triceps - and can maintain your pace during a race for a lot longer than arms alone.

Yoga develops your sense of balance - both on land and in water - Balance can help you get through just about anything. In Yoga, balance is important for holding various positions. Similarly, your balance in the water can help you be more streamlined. By pushing your chest (or your back for backstroke) down, you can get your hips to ride much higher in the water. This reduces how much of your body is dragging through the water. You can pull with less effort to go the same speed. However, you have to hold your core muscles tight, otherwise you are just burying your head, causing more drag.

Flexibility is good for swimming - and Yoga makes it better - Finally, yoga helps with flexibility. Yoga involves a lot of stretching. The extra flexibility developed through practicing yoga applies directly to swimming. The more flexible your shoulders, arms, legs, hips, and feet are, the easier you will be able to kick, recover your arms, and execute a proper hand entry. Your body parts will move more smoothly and require less effort in the process.

I believe Yoga has made me a much better swimmer. I hope you can add it to your workout regimen and develop a smooth, effortless stroke, too. At least it will look effortless to those that do not know the secrets of Yoga!

Should you warm up?

[Source: Rick Hellard, Tri-Rudy newsletter, June 8, 2011]

Have you ever wondered why people warm-up before a race? Why waste the energy? Why not save it for the race?

Quite simply, the warm-up gets the body ready for the hard work ahead of it. Most bodies need to be gently coaxed out of their protective shell in order to push hard—blood flow to the various muscles needs to be increased so the muscle warms up and becomes a bit more flexible, which allows for easier movement and reduced chance of injury.

I’ve been running for a loonngg time, and morning runs are my favourite, but also my nemesis—without 20-30min of walking around and a cup of coffee, I start my runs like a 70 year old who’s never run before, and I am now 45, so that’s not right. When I start my morning runs, I’m stiff and sore and slow for 20min and then, gradually, the blood starts to get through to deeper and deeper muscle tissue, and I loosen up. And speed up.

One of those muscles is, of course, the heart. Have you ever noticed you breath really heavily at the start of your run and after a little while, things settle down? You’ve just warmed up.

I suggest every run you do start off at a gentle pace, then builds to the pace you want to maintain. Using your breathing as a guide works very well for this. If you are breathing hard early on in your run, you started too hard. Later in the run, it’s a different story. I’m talking about the first 10-15min.

The importance of a warm-up when racing has never been scientifically proven to be beneficial, but the mountain of anecdotal evidence is rather impressive, so I believe in it a great deal. Further, I’ve always believed that to be good at whatever it is you want to be good at, you do what the other people who are good at it do, and when it comes to warming up, all the fast kids do them, therefore, so do I.

Again, the idea of the warm-up is to get your body ready for a hard or race effort. Ideally, you want to get your body ready so it’s good to go on the start line, not a kilometer or two after the gun goes off.


With that in mind, I suggest the following as a good routine to follow for a 5 or 10k race. It should take 30min or so.

• Run for 10-15min building your intensity from ultra easy to just under threshold (race pace) for the final 2 minutes or so.
• Stretch/hydrate a bit more
• Washroom
• Change clothes into your racing attire
• Move out to the start line and, finally,
• Do 4-5 easy accelerations of between 80-100m. Start by running easily and gently get yourself up to race pace within the acceleration, hold for 5-10 sec. Run easily back to where you started from and repeat 4-5 times. These are not designed to get you tired, so take more rest if necessary, but be sure to keep moving.
• You should be ready to go.

At the beginning of this article, I asked two questions: Why waste the energy? Why not save it for the race?

Well, if you actually want to race the event, your energy supply to cover the distance should be the least of your worries. If it is, you have not trained enough and will be surviving the event, not racing it.

One final note is that the importance of a warm-up is directly proportional to a few things:

1. How hard you intend to push yourself—if you’re out for a social run with an entry fee, it’s not that important. If you’re out for a fast time, it is very important to be ready to go when the gun goes off.
2. How long the race is—the longer the race, the shorter the warm-up. Because the intensity of the effort is not as high, you can build into it in the early stages of the race. In a short race, you don’t have time to find your rhythm. You gotta have it from the start.
3. The weather—considering the above, if it’s really hot, a warm-up is less necessary (but still necessary). If it’s really cold, it’s very necessary.