Interview: Rod Havriluk

1. Please introduce yourself to the readers (how you started in the profession, education, credentials, experience, etc.). 
At the beginning of my career, I had the opportunity to coach swimmers at all levels – from summer teams to NCAA Division I. As I became more involved in swimming, I realized that there was a wealth of applicable scientific information and entered a masters program in movement science. From there, I went on to a doctoral program in human performance and had the honor of studying under Doc Counsilman and John Cooper (the father of modern biomechanics). For the past 25 years, I’ve been consulting with swim teams and developing software and hardware for technique instruction and analysis. My position has also afforded me time to maintain an ongoing research program in skill learning, injury prevention, and optimizing technique. 

2. How can coaches improve their application of science in sport? 
For science to have the greatest impact on swimming, the culture must change and abandon reliance on “conventional wisdom” derived from observation of elite swimmers. In the 1960s, describing and modeling the technique of champions was instrumental in determining the applicable scientific principles. Fifty years later, modeling champions only serves to slow progress. While faster swimmers have more effective technique than slower swimmers, even the fastest swimmers have technique limitations. It’s time for coaches to use technology to pinpoint and adjust these limitations to optimize technique.

3. What are the most common biomechanical flaws for each stroke between elite (National level) and ultra-elite (Olympic level) athletes in each style of swimming? 
The most common, major technique limitation for each stroke is:

• fly – submerging the head during the arm entry
• back – finishing the push phase with the hand away from the body
• breast – failure to kick the feet together as they move back during the propulsive phase
• free – premature and excessive upward motion of the elbow during the push phase.

For each of these limitations, correction can produce a substantial performance improvement. It’s probably more important to point out the similarity of the technique elements of Olympic, National, and State level competitors. Our research shows that swimmers typically improve technique until they become teenagers. The technique changes for teenagers (of all levels) are generally very modest. 

4. Do you have any future progressions or predictions on biomechanics?
Predictions or hope? The application of biomechanics to swimming has been slow. While I hope that the application of scientific principles and research will suddenly increase, history doesn’t support any sudden change. However, the past year has been encouraging. Feedback from coaches about the direction of the ISOSC has inspired me to believe that the culture may be ready to change.

5. What research equipment do you think is mandatory for a swim team? 
In my opinion, above surface video is adequate for the youngest and least experienced swimmers. Underwater video is essential for pre-teens. Force analysis (in addition to video) is absolutely critical for teenagers and advanced pre-teens.

6. Do you feel drills translate to fast swimming? 
Drills are extremely useful for the bilateral strokes (fly and breast). Drills that isolate either the arms or the legs can improve focus on selected technique elements and speed up the learning process. The focus can then be transferred to the whole stroke, particularly on nonbreathing strokes. The unilateral strokes are different. Most drills for free and back distort the body position. Swimmers can progress faster in free and back by focusing on specific cues within the normal stroke cycle.

7. What biomechanical flaws increase stress in the shoulder and low back during free, fly, and back?
In free and fly, a shallow arm entry with the arm completing the entry above the shoulder increases shoulder stress. Unfortunately, such an entry is not only stressful, but typical. In free, it is rare for a swimmer to complete the arm entry with the hand below the elbow and the elbow below the shoulder. In fly, it is even rarer.

8. What biomechanical flaws increase stress in the knees during breast?
An effective breaststroke kick will stress the knees because it is extremely different from normal human activities and not a motion that the knee is primarily designed to perform. Consequently, coaches must be wary of overuse and also sensitive to individual differences. Swimmers may initially experience pain as a kick becomes more effective.

Swimming Science, http://www.swimmingscience.net/2012/08/friday-interview-rod-havriluk.html

Freestyle - Ankle Pull Buoy

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The Talent Code, by Daniel Coyle

What’s The Talent Code about? It’s about a new way of getting really good at sports, art, music, and anything else.

How to teach age groupers to work hard in a positive atmosphere?

In a recent discussion with a 9 year old boy I asked about his extremely subpar performance on a fast 25 Freestyle in the middle of practice.  His response:  “I didn’t want to waste all my energy”.  In my head I thought, “Waste? It isn’t wasting.  What is the problem anyway?  Do you have to plow the fields after practice?”.

As the saying goes, there is no fun like swimming fast.  Some think of that feeling, when you know that you have pushed it to your limit, given it all that you have, as the best feeling in the sport.  How can we teach our younger athletes to not only enjoy that feeling but to access it and enjoy accessing it more often?  Hopefully on a daily basis!

The first way is to praise positive actions and habits instead of talent and high performance.  Actions that are hard work.  Talent and times are important, but praising the athlete’s inner drive will result in it coming out more often.  If you have a swimmer who is talented and everyone says “you are so amazing” they will say to themselves “I am amazing and I was born this way.  I am just so amazing….” and go about their day.  If you have a swimmer who is obviously working hard or improving on their work ethic you can say “you are working so hard.  That will really pay off – you will see!”  Or “you are working harder than you were last practice – that’s awesome to see.  If you can keep this up until the next meet you will see it pay off!”

If you have an inexperienced younger group of athletes start small with a single challenge set.  A set where it will be easier to measure their success, determination and fortitude (which I realize can be very subjective).  I love kicking sets for this because you can encourage them verbally the entire way.  If they are swimming you can still encourage them prior to the send off or by waving your arms as you walk around the side of the pool, but with kicking they can always see and hear you.  There is not much technique happening with a 200 or 500 or 1000 Freestyle kick.  It is pretty much you, your kickboard and your “guts”.

By isolating a set you can recognize improved performance.  A kicking example:  For 8&Unders I like the 200 Freestyle kick.  For 9-10’s I like the 500 Freestyle kick.  For 11-12’s I like the 1000 Freestyle kick.  I keep results from year to year and I also have fake “time standards” made up.  The 8&Under time standards are colors (blue/red/yellow/green…) and are set at 15 or 30 second intervals.  Both 9-10 and 11-12’s have fake standards that are B, BB, A, AA, AAA, AAAA, and Top 10.  These are set at 30 second intervals.  The last time we did this I told the group that they needed these things to have a successful 1,000 kick (not a fast one, a successful one):  Toughness, Endurance, Power, Determination, and Guts.  Not one of the things is a good Freestyle kick.  These are things that a kicking test can measure in my opinion. 

For real motivation use intervals less and repeat average more.  Swimmers like to succeed in things.  Of course there is something awesome about making a set like 10x100’s on 1:10 for an age group swimmer.  I think there is a big place for things like that in age group swimming, but not everyone in the group can make that.  Sure they need to strive to get themselves into position to do that – but in the mean time, if you do that each session they will fail and fail and fail and fail at it.  A better strategy would be to do something that everyone in the group can do.  This is a slippery slope however.  If you do 10x100’s on 1:30 you do not want your top swimmers holding 1:20 (when they could be doing the 1:10 set I was talking about).  We need to teach and motivate each swimmer to hold what THEY need to hold.  Each swimmer can be successful this way.  Some swimmers need to hold 1:05.  Others need to hold 1:20.  Everyone can do this and succeed together.  Everyone can push themselves to another level.  This type of set and training will be much easier if you teach them this as a 9&Under.  Once swimmers settle into their ways…it can be difficult to get them to switch directions!

Make your training measurable.  Keeping good records on what swimmers can do will help you motivate them.  One great thing to do is to write on a dry erase board everyone’s set goal.  This could be something that the coach makes up.  It could be your 500 pace.  It could be the second 100 of your 200 Freestyle.  It could be results from the exact set done previously.  You held :45’s last time.  See if you can hold 44’s today by making your pullouts sharper..  Whatever it is put it in writing so that the athlete can see it.  This takes time and effort on the coaches part but the athletes will respond.  When they accomplish the set, they will have worked hard and they will feel good about their accomplishment.  If a swimmer is having a difficult time getting to their goal times it should be easy for the coach to recognize and then you can jump in there and try to help them out.  “Streamline tighter off your first wall.”  “Concentrate on exploding off the walls on this one.”  “Bring back the last 50 with a little better rhythm.” 

“Tell them that they can do it.  You have to raise the bar, get their imaginations going.  You do not have to be manipulative to do it, just tell them to flip a little faster, push off a little harder, be a little tighter.”  -T2 Aquatics Head Coach Paul Yetter

http://gettingevenfaster.blogspot.se/2012/08/how-to-teach-age-groupers-to-work-hard.html

Practice, Practice, Practice, Perform: Practice Adjustments to Increase Athlete/Coach Com...

Practice, Practice, Practice, Perform: Practice Adjustments to Increase Athlete/Coach Com...: At T2 Aquatics we base much of our higher-level race-pace training on not only the athlete's speed, but the stroke rate the athlete pe...

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Coach Yetter on Preseason Running (Free Resource)

Coach Yetter on Preseason Running (Free Resource)

Phoenix Swim Club, World Record Lane Line Switch

Taper Pitfalls

Throughout the country, many taper meets are beginning. Taper is an interesting time as many swimmers hope to drop excess time from their in-season, broken down performances. 

USA Swimming just released a piece (Successful Taper Strategies) where they suggested volume, intensity, and frequency reductions.

In short, taper is an interesting and not commonly researched topic, which makes it hard to find journal-based evidence on the subject. However, it is suggested men will approximately improve 2% in the final three weeks of training (Mujika 2002). This variation is likely due to the difference in lean body (muscle) mass. 

The idea of taper is not unique to swimming, but the approach is novel. Unlike other sports, the view on tapering has yet to change. In track large tapers were the commonplace, but now shorter more frequent taper periods are used. 

Swimmers commonly have 1 – 2 taper meets per season with tapering lasting from 5 – 30 days. In the swimming community, we all believe we have the best method for taper, unfortunately there are many pitfalls. 

Läs hela artikeln här, http://www.swimmingscience.net/2012/07/taper-pitfalls.html?spref=tw

Strongman for Swimmers?

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Strongman for Swimmers?

On swimming’s opening night at the Olympic Games, NBC ran a nice feature on Ryan Lochte showcasing his dryland training with tire flips, chains, and other competitive strongman moves.  While avid swim fans have long been familiar with Lochte’s training methods, this footage made quite a splash with casual swim fans and the general viewing public.  In this post we’ll explore what, if anything, we can glean from Lochte’s strongman for swimmers training routine.  Though we’re always looking to learn from the best performers, just because a great swimmer does something doesn’t mean everyone should copy the exact details.  



The tire flip has long been a staple of the strongman menu, but in recent years as reached bigger audiences, particularly as more people want to be “functional.”  As leading strength coach Nick Tumminello writes:  

“There's no doubt about it: Tire flips are one of the coolest-looking exercises you can possibly do. It's also one of the most dangerous moves and a perfect example of a contest-specific exercise created for advanced-strength athletes that just got too popular….

When it's used as a training exercise, the goal is to work the posterior-chain muscles, like the lower back and the hamstrings. That's something you can accomplish very well with deadlifts….

The only real benefit to doing tire flips is the fact they're often done outside, where other people can see you doing these stunningly badass exercises. But "because it's badass" isn't necessarily a good reason to do it.”

Though I’m not ready to permanently banish tire flipping from the exercise menu, it is important to consider risk-reward with this or any activity.  Someone like Lochte who’s near the limit of human performance may require novel stimuli to induce adaptations.  You can only add so much swimming load before reaching zero or negative returns (though sometimes better recovery or refining the delivery of current stimulation is more valuable than finding novel stimuli) [side note, many collegiate teams have removed tire flips from their dry-land programs due to injuries].  

Further, a full time professional athlete who has been training for almost twenty years is better suited to incorporate extreme training than a scholastic or masters athlete with more limitations.  Lochte is also one of the most naturally talented land-athletes in swimming, having played varsity basketball in high school.  Even Lochte himself admitted part of the motivation for his strongman for swimming training is not just physiological but also psychological to intimidate the competition.  While it’s great to see dryland shift away from Theraband rotator cuff exercises and endless crunching circuits, we mustn’t swing the pendulum too far the opposite direction either.   

Interestingly, although the tire flip is seen as a primitive junkyard activity, it has actually been studied in the literature.  Noted spinal researcher Dr. Stuart McGill has taken keen interest in strongman activities as leading competitors seemingly “break all the rules” on what the spine should be able to withstand.  By learning what the strongest people naturally do, we can glean insight for best-practices.  Based on this research, more top strength programs have resurrected these old-time moves and include heavy carrying activities (farmer’s walk, suitcase carry) into their training.  (The COR Swimmers’ Shoulder System includes loaded carries in its programs)

One study by McGill (2009) analyzed several strongman events such as the farmer's walk, super yoke, Atlas stone lift, suitcase carry, keg walk, tire flip, and log lift.  

“Strongman events clearly challenge the strength of the body linkage, together with the stabilizing system, in a different way than traditional approaches. The carrying events challenged different abilities than the lifting events, suggesting that loaded carrying would enhance traditional lifting-based strength programs.”  

Tire flips rated high in latissimus dorsi activation compared to other events.   

Keough (2010) broke the tire flip into four stages, and noted the second pull (which is the second overall stage) was the major determinant for tire flip performance.  The second pull occurs after the initial lift off the ground but before sending the tire vertical.  As a multi-step explosive movement, the tire flip borrows elements from Olympic lifts. However, unlike Olympic lift coaching, which often begins with broomsticks and unweighted bars, rarely do we see anyone refining tire flip technique with drills (maybe it happens, but I haven’t seen it, especially in strongman for swimmers programs).  

The biggest problem with strongman for swimmers activities is that people typically ignore technique with improper progressions. There are very few inherently “bad” exercises, but certain moves lend themselves to lax execution, particularly in a competitive environment.  Strongman competitors often stabilize with back braces and knee braces.  Even McGill notes that back injuries are common in strongmen competitors, yet he endorses heavy loaded carries for rehabilitation and prevention (with proper loads, of course).  No responsible strength coach would let an athlete deadlift or squat in training with crappy form, so how does bad technique suddenly become acceptable merely because you trade a barbell for a tire?   


Remember, strongmen competitors are training for strongman, not some other sport. When they’re in competition, getting the job done at that moment is more important than perfect exercise form.  In fact, unsafe form may actually create more power in the tire flip if the low back is used as an additional lever [I don’t have any research to confirm that, but it is one theory].  For an athlete to even consider adding strongman for swimmers as supplementary training, they need adequate strength beforehand and must demonstrate sound form in the basic lifts.  

Further, it is possible that fatigue-inducing dryland may corrupt ideal motor patterns.  As Dr. Rushall writes, “Much training is performed in fatigue and thus, more than restricted efficient movement patterns are learned to dominance. If specific limited training had only occurred, that is, the body only knew a narrow band of efficient movements, then the recruitment (irradiation) would be minimal and movement patterns would center on efficient movement. Swimmers should not swim when exhausted. Nothing good can result. Too much fatigue inhibits the attainment of practice goals, reduces learning potential, and sensitizes the brain to new but inappropriate experiences and neural representations.” (Rushall 2011).

If a swimmer practices excessively while fatigued, the brain may default to inefficient motor patterns under stress.   Building technique and conditioning in the water to thwart fatigue is one essential; bringing fatigue into the water from non-swimming activities in has questionable value.  These theories may partially explain why Lochte did not swim to previous form last week at the ends of races.  That’s not to criticize his multiple medal performance, but there’s no doubt he left London with unmet potential given the high standards set by past achievements.   

Conclusion
It’s great that swimmers are gravitating toward full-body movements in dryland, but we still must consider the big picture.  Certain exercises like the farmer’s walk are challenging yet involve simple technique.  Tire flips are also challenging but demand greater technique.  Simply because an exercise challenges certain qualities doesn’t mean it’s the best exercise to develop those qualities.  Tire flips are fun, challenging, and often a great team building activity, but closely consider if it is the best exercise to induce the desired adaptations.

References

1. McGill SM, McDermott A, Fenwick CM. Comparison of different strongman events: trunk muscle activation and lumbar spine motion, load, and stiffness. J Strength Cond Res. 2009 Jul;23(4):1148-61.
2. Keogh JW, Payne AL, Anderson BB, Atkins PJ. A brief description of the biomechanics and physiology of a strongman event: the tire flip. J Strength Cond Res. 2010 May;24(5):1223-8.
3. Rushall, B. SWIMMING ENERGY TRAINING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: THE JUSTIFICATION FOR RADICAL CHANGES, Swimming Science Bulletin Number 39 (2011).