By Louis Tharp

Ok, high-maintenance swimmer, this blog’s about you. I’m not going to spend blog words talking about the novice swimmer who started on the stone skipper drill and did pretty well. You alredy know how to do the stone skipper drill very well.

 This one’s all about you. You deserve this blog it since the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders due out in 2013 (DSM-5) has eliminated five of the 10 personality disorders that are listed in the current edition, including narcissism. So since you’re soon to be un-disordered, and you wont’ be able to bill Aetna for it, we can feed your need right here.

You figured it out tonight — your hips were not connected. At least you figured it out. A lot of triathletes view their hips as the body part that in transition gets in the way as they try to take their wet suit off.

The fact that you realized your hips weren’t connected, once again proves Terry Laughlin’s four stages of swimming — and that you’re in stage two — conscious incompetence — when you can tell you’re screwing something up. But that’s better than being one step down — unconscious incompetence. That’s the guy in the next lane.

Connected hips mean you can forget about your kick, which for a triathlete, is like telling Oprah she can forget about dieting. Triathletes waste too much time obsessing about their kick. This subject, unlike most others, is responsive to reductive reasoning — to the point of ignoring it. Most triathletes would swim faster if they didn’t kick, but they have to kick because their balance is so off it’s the only way, even with a wetsuit for buoyancy, they can stay level in the water. It has nothing to do with propulsion.

It’s possible to ignore because when you say kick to a triathlete, feet are the focus when it should be hips. Feet have nothing to do with kicking in triathlon swimming. Do I have to say that another way? Ok. Kicking has nothing to do with feet in triathlon swimming.

The only reason people think feet play a role in kicking is because in those antediluvian sports like football, kicking is connected to feet. That’s football’s problem, along with concussions, college teams that consistently lose money and drive swim teams into oblivion, and fans building fires before the game to cook meat in parking lots with several thousand gallons of gasoline nearby suseptible to some painted-face moron who will do something stupid with the fatty he just sparked up.

In triathlon swimming, you kick with your abs and hips. Your feet’s job is to flex at the ankle and point backwards — think opposite of what they do when you ride a bike.

So, after this build-up, it’s nearly impossible to explain kicking with hips in a blog. That’s why coaches like me charge $500 an hour for lessons — 10-hour minimum. (You think I make my living being a writer?)

In the two beat kick, which you should be doing, your right foot powers downward in the water as your right hand is at its maximum pull. Your left foot is stationary. But what causes your right foot to drop down (kick to you civilians)? Your hips. Visualize your hips split vertically, using that familiar vertical line we all have. As your right hand leaves its anchor position in front, the left side of your hip should be high in the water and as your right hand travels into the maximum pull position, your left hip drives down or rotates, driving power through to your right foot. I told you it was nearly impossible to describe in a blog. Guess you’ll have to get out your checkbook.

To visualize this, thing about a dolphin kick which starts at the finger tips as it does in butterfly, It’s a butterfly drill. But if you can handle concept transfer it works well to help connect hips to freestyle stroke. It’s called stone skipper, and I’m not sure how many coaches use it anymore because it’s difficult to do. 

Are you as bored reading this as I am writing it? It’s like trying to describe knee surgery. If you’re not up to your wrists in ligaments, it’s no fun. 

Anyway you figured it out tonight, high maintenance  swimmer. And now you can officially do a pull set — without a pull buoy of course. Because a pull set means you don’t move your feet in that kicking motion so familiar to football players. It means you keep your hips connected to your stroke and transfer power to the water without moving your feet or your legs very much.

But wait, if you can transfer propulsive power to the water without moving your legs or feet, that’s free speed, that’s preserving calves and quads for the bike and run, that’s not worrying about legs going outside the body line and causing destructive drag (unlike the constructive drag that occurs throughout the south on weekends in bars with black walls — which allows you to get those feet that aren’t used for kicking into a pair of red four-inch spikes for the group number.)

So what’s the result of incorporating your hips into your stroke — besides saving your legs for better activities? While you’re getting used to it, it’ll raise your heart rate, increase your endurance and maybe your aerobic capacity, and make you a better swimmer. You proved all this two nights ago when I didn’t write about it in the blog I devoted to the novice swimmer. Congratulations.

So what’s stone skipper? I’ll take a video and post it. It’s one of those knee surgery things that isn’t easily explained in a blog. But it’s fun to do after you get over the frustration hump. Kind of. Mostly it’s frustrating. But that’s why I like it. Hey, at $500 an hour, prepaid for 10 hours, you know you’re coming back for more speed. And you know I say that with love.

 

About: Louis Tharp is a competitive age-group swimmer and a TI triathlon swim coach who is currently taking a few semesters off from West Point coaching in order to work one-on-one with Nicholas Sterghos, an ’09 West Point graduate and pro triathlete.

Learn more about Nicholas Sterghos.

Louis Tharp‘s book, "Overachiever’s Diary, How The Army Triathlon Team Became World Contenders" is available from Total Immersion.

Read a sample chapter and reviews from the top triathlon and swimming media at Overachiever’s Diary.

Buy Overachiever’s Diary by Louis Tharp on TI. Read a review of Overachiever’s Diary at active.com

His home pool is Club Fit, Briarcliff in Westchester County, New York.

Want to know what Louis Tharp does when he’s not coaching?