Day 1: Hang the head - Deb

Today was Day 1 of my Total Immersion transformation. Today I went to 24 Hour Fitness before work for 1 hour. I pulled on my new Total Immersion cap and reminded myself that whenever i pull on this cap I am swimming in a whole new world. Different goals, different priorities, different measurements of a good workout... like I said a whole new world.

This was my 'workout' today.... A bunch of 12.5 and 25's drill. From a pre-TI perspective that is how I would have thought about this workout. and I would have come away with pretty much nothing. No gained fitness, not improvement of technique. It would have been a waste of time. However, now that I have taken the workshop I now see it as the best time I could have spent.

I spent my time working on balance and relaxing my head. Specifically I worked on hanging my head.

Here is what I found. If I push my hand forward and keep that muscle tension on I tend to use my head as part of my "force" of my stroke. If i didn't work so hard to keep my hand reaching forward i could relax my head, relax my shoulder and just let the power happen.

I only did 3 lengths of whole stroke free. And I did this in an unheard of 13 strokes. (Without a long push off either.) Also while I was drilling I did not work on breathing. If I had to breath I rolled onto my back like we did in the workshop and then rolled back and continued. During the superman drills and skate I kept the propulsion kick going. However when I got to doing switches I let the kick go to nothing or just a small 2 BK except when I rolled on my back. If I was on my back I kicked a little but when I rolled back I stopped my kick because it really pointed out how much I "muscle" my way down the pull. Being at basically a stop really pointed out how my muscles were being triggered and allowed me to really focus on making it feel different.

The other distinctive thing I did was I did things to perfection. I didn't just do the drill to get the lengths in of the drill. I did the drill focusing on the 1 thing I wanted to concentrate on and doing that as perfectly as I could.

Here's a video that was taken of my pre-Ironman Canada 2007 that is probably pretty representative of my stroke as of about a month ago when I started working on the TI drills. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJSwVm3U1FY

And here is a video of what I want to look and feel like. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJpFVvho0o4