by Coach Suzanne | Sep 2, 2024 | Triathlon
Understanding Metabolic Efficiency: A Game Changer for Endurance Athletes
Metabolic efficiency is a key concept for endurance athletes looking to optimize their performance and energy management. It refers to how efficiently your body uses its internal stores of carbohydrates and fat at different exercise intensities and even at rest. Normally, our bodies burn a mix of these fuels to power daily activities and exercise. However, as exercise intensity increases, the body naturally shifts to burning a higher percentage of carbohydrates and less fat. This shift is why athletes can “bonk” or hit a wall during long training sessions or races when their glycogen (carbohydrate) stores become depleted after a couple of hours of intense exercise.
But what if you could train your body to burn more fat at higher intensities, preserving glycogen and delaying that dreaded energy crash? Through strategic nutrition and exercise adaptations, it’s possible to enhance your body’s ability to burn fat, making you more metabolically efficient. This shift not only helps prevent the bonk but can also reduce the risk of gastrointestinal (GI) distress during exercise, improve body composition, and enhance overall health.
The Problem with the Standard American Diet
The standard American diet is heavily centered on carbohydrates, leading to metabolic inefficiency. Many people are accustomed to consuming large amounts of foods rich in refined sugars and carbs, such as breakfast cereals, bread, pasta, snack bars, and sweetened beverages. Even seemingly healthy options like flavored yogurt, salad dressings, and energy bars often contain hidden sugars. This constant intake of carbohydrates trains the body to rely primarily on carbs for fuel, reducing its ability to burn fat efficiently. This dependency on carbohydrates can lead to several issues, including increased need for supplemental carbs during exercise, higher risk of GI distress, and challenges with maintaining a healthy body weight and composition.
How to Improve Your Metabolic Efficiency
Becoming more metabolically efficient starts with making smarter dietary choices. Begin by reducing your intake of added and refined sugars. For example:
- Swap flavored yogurt for plain yogurt topped with fresh berries.
- Replace granola bars with a handful of raw nuts for your afternoon snack.
- Ditch sugary drinks in favor of water, perhaps with a spritz of lime or lemon for flavor.
- Opt for plain oatmeal (rolled or steel-cut) topped with cinnamon, butter, and nuts instead of flavored varieties.
Additionally, pay attention to food labels, especially on savory products like soups, sauces, and dressings, which often contain hidden sugars. If you’re struggling to find a salad dressing without added sugar, mix up a homemade option using olive oil combined with vinegar or lemon juice.
What’s Next?
In the next article in our Metabolic Efficiency series, we’ll explore how excessive sugar and carbohydrates in the diet can lead to weight gain and various health issues, and what you can do to mitigate these risks.
References for Further Reading
- Bob Seebohar: Metabolic Efficiency Training – Learn from the pioneer of metabolic efficiency training on how to optimize your diet and exercise routine for better fat utilization.
- UCAN: Metabolic Efficiency Training 101
This article from UCAN provides an excellent introduction to metabolic efficiency training, explaining how athletes can train their bodies to use fat as a primary fuel source, thus conserving glycogen and improving endurance performance. It covers the basics of metabolic efficiency, how to adapt your diet and exercise routine, and the benefits of becoming metabolically efficient.
by Coach Suzanne | Aug 31, 2024 | Swimming, Triathlon
The Challenge of Swimming Straight for Triathletes
For many triathletes, swimming straight in open water can be one of the most frustrating aspects of the sport. Despite strong fitness and training, even a slight deviation from a straight line can lead to significant time losses and extra fatigue during a race. While pool swimmers can rely on lane lines to guide them, triathletes must navigate without such aids, making stroke efficiency and alignment even more crucial. One of the main culprits of swimming off-course is the “crossover effect.”
Understanding and Correcting the Crossover Effect
The crossover effect happens when your hand crosses the centerline of your body during the stroke. This is a natural tendency due to the way our shoulder joints are oriented and how we use our arms in daily life—reaching forward in activities like typing, driving, or even shaking hands. When this habitual movement pattern carries over into swimming, it causes your strokes to push water diagonally instead of straight back, leading you to veer off-course.
This misalignment wastes energy and slows you down, but the worst part is that it often goes unnoticed until you see it on video or feel it during a swim. The result? Your hard-earned speed is lost as you zigzag instead of cutting a clean path through the water.
To correct the crossover effect, practice aligning your arms during the recovery and entry phases of your stroke. Imagine your hand extending not directly in front of your chest but slightly to the side, aligned with your shoulder, and parallel to an imaginary lane line. This adjustment might feel strange at first, but it helps keep your momentum moving forward rather than sideways.
Techniques for Staying Straight in Open Water
In open water, where visual cues are limited, it’s essential to maintain straight swimming to conserve energy and stay on course. Beyond correcting the crossover effect, here are some additional tips:
- Use Bilateral Breathing: This allows you to balance your stroke and avoid favoring one side, which can cause you to drift.
- Practice Sighting Regularly: Incorporate sighting into your training so it becomes second nature. Lifting your head briefly to check your direction can prevent you from veering off-course.
- Core Stability: Strengthening your core helps you maintain a streamlined position in the water, reducing the likelihood of wobbling or drifting during your swim.
By addressing these factors in your training, you’ll be better equipped to swim straight in your next triathlon, saving valuable time and energy.
You may enjoy…
Triathlete Magazine: Mastering Open Water Swimming – A comprehensive guide on improving your open water swim, including tips on sighting, stroke technique, and swimming straight.
by Coach Suzanne | Aug 30, 2024 | Swimming, Triathlon
The Importance of Lowering Your Stroke Count
Why would you want to lower your stroke count? Simply put, if your stroke count is too high, it can indicate inefficiencies in your swimming technique. But how do you know if your stroke count is too high?
When swimming at an easy pace, without adding much power, you should be able to glide through the water with relative ease. This ease suggests that you’re well-balanced and streamlined. Everyone has a limit where swimming any slower turns into a drill-like exercise, or where you start to feel like you’re sinking. The stroke count you achieve just above that limit is a good indicator of your efficiency.
Balancing Technique and Power
Stroke count, or strokes per length (SPL), is a reflection of two competing forces: water resistance and stroking force. To lower your stroke count, you can either reduce drag or increase power. In other words, you can improve your streamlining or boost your propulsion.
Here are some key concepts to help you balance the skills needed for speed in swimming:
- Streamlining vs. Power
- Flexibility vs. Mobility
- Slipperiness vs. Strength
Your ideal stroke count will vary based on your height and other factors. For instance, a 5’2? swimmer might aim for a lower-end target of 18 strokes per length, while a 6’2? swimmer might target 15 strokes. If you can’t hit these targets at any speed, it might indicate issues with streamlining or balance, essentially problems with drag.
As your tempo increases, the time between strokes decreases, your travel distance per stroke decreases, and your stroke count goes up. Identifying your upper limit—where you still feel smooth and in control—is crucial. For example, a swimmer might feel comfortable at 21-22 SPL in a short course yard (SCY) pool when swimming at a fast, yet controlled pace.
Control and Improvement
Being able to choose your stroke count at will suggests great control over your form. If your stroke count varies widely at the same sustainable pace (more than 2 SPL), this may indicate poor technique or a technique that isn’t well-ingrained. For example, swimming a 25-yard distance at 30 seconds with an 18 SPL is very different from doing it at 16 or 20 SPL.
The stroke rate ramp test can help determine your current comfort level, but it doesn’t diagnose whether your SPL and tempo ranges are ideal—it only shows what feels good right now. Remember, even if it feels good, there’s always room for improvement unless your technique is perfect.
To illustrate, a 5’3? swimmer might be equally comfortable swimming at 14 SPL or 22 SPL. However, the difference is in speed: at 14 SPL, they might swim 1:50 per 100 yards easily and relaxed, while at 22 SPL, they might swim 1:30 per 100 yards but get tired quickly. For a sustainable 1000-yard swim, they might maintain around 1:40 per 100 yards with an 18/19 SPL, consistently staying within that narrow range.
Finally, if your tempo remains the same, lowering your SPL—by either improving streamlining or adding efficient propulsion—will make you go faster. This is why lowering your SPL should be a key component of your swim practice and improvement exercises.
Drill Set to Lower Stroke Count
You can do this as written for a complete swim session, or decrease the drill repeats or distances to incorporate it as a warmup set for a longer swim.
Sculpt Your Stroke
Total Distance: (1100)
- Warm-Up: 200m easy swim
- Drill 1 (200): 4 x 50 m/yd Swim with Gentle Closed Hand (relaxed fist) for 25, then open hand for 25 (Focus on feeling the water pressure on your forearms during closed fist drill as well as open hand). rest 10 seconds between 50s
- Drill 2 (200): 4 x 50 y/m Swim with One Arm, other arm at side for 25, then swim both arms back. Focus on pausing during the extension to give your body a chance to stabilize before you start your stroke. Breath away from the extended arm. (Alternate each length; focus on balance and reducing drag). rest 15 seconds between 50s
- Drill 3 (300): 4 x 75 y/m as follows: 25 Closed Hand, 25 open hands, 25 swim with slow, deliberate strokes (Count your strokes per length and aim to reduce SPL for each 25). rest 20 seconds between 50s
Cool Down: 200m easy swim
Main Swim Set: Efficient Endurance
Total Distance: 2200 meters
Warm-Up: (400 meters)
- 200m easy swim (focus on streamlining and counting strokes per length)
- 100m kick with a board (maintain balance and reduce drag)
- 100m pull with a buoy (focus on maintaining a long, efficient stroke)
Main Set: (1600 meters)
- 4 x 100m at Moderate Pace (200 meters total)
- Focus on maintaining a consistent stroke count (aim for the SPL you practiced during the drill set).
- Rest: 20 seconds between each 100m.
- 2 x 200m Descending Pace (400 meters total)
- Start at a moderate pace and gradually increase your speed in the second 100m while maintaining or slightly reducing your stroke count.
- Rest: 30 seconds between each 200m.
- 4 x 50m Focused Technique Work (200 meters total)
- Alternate each 50m between a strong, powerful stroke (aim for speed) and a long, smooth stroke (aim to reduce SPL).
- Rest: 15 seconds between each 50m.
- 2 x 300m Aerobic Effort (600 meters total)
- Swim at a steady pace, focusing on maintaining a sustainable stroke count and minimizing drag.
- Rest: 45 seconds between each 300m.
- 1 x 100m Fast Effort (100 meters total)
- Push your speed while keeping your stroke count as low as possible. This is a test of both fitness and technique.
- Rest: 1 minute.
Cool Down: (200 meters)
- 200m easy swim, focusing on relaxing and maintaining a long, efficient stroke.
Key Focus Points During the Main Set:
- Consistency: Maintain a consistent stroke count throughout the main set, aiming to stay within the SPL range you determined during the drill set.
- Efficiency: Emphasize smooth, streamlined swimming, especially during the longer intervals, to conserve energy while maintaining speed.
- Control: Use the descending pace and focused technique work to reinforce the ability to adjust your stroke rate and count based on the pace.
This main set is designed to build endurance while reinforcing the technical improvements from the drill set. It challenges you to maintain efficiency and control as the distance and intensity increase, ensuring that your stroke mechanics remain strong under fatigue.
Bonus Tip: Track Your SWOLF Score
As you progress through these workouts, you may want to track your SWOLF score. SWOLF, short for “Swim Golf,” is a metric that combines your stroke count and time to give you a measure of efficiency. A lower SWOLF score can often indicate more efficient swimming. By paying attention to your SWOLF during the main set, you can gain valuable insights into how well you’re balancing stroke efficiency with speed. For more on how to use SWOLF to improve your swimming, check out this this article.
References
- Chollet, Didier, et al. “The effects of an incremental protocol on arm coordination in front crawl.” Journal of Sports Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, 2000, pp. 321-330.
- This study examines the relationship between arm coordination, drag, and propulsion in swimming, providing insights into how stroke mechanics affect overall efficiency.
- Costill, David L., et al. “Upper body power as a determinant of swimming performance.” Journal of Swimming Research, vol. 8, 1992, pp. 27-32.
- This paper explores the role of upper body strength and power in swimming, highlighting the balance between force production and streamlining for optimal performance.
by Coach Suzanne | Jun 23, 2022 | Swimming, Training Plans, Triathlon
You don’t have to swim faster to beat your best time in a triathlon
You just have to swim better than you are right now.
Many triathletes go to the pool with a soggy workout printed off the internet and a bag of pool toys like paddles, fins and a snorkel But what most end up being frustrated by is not knowing if their work with the drills and toys translates to better swimming.
When you begin to realize that just doing a drill doesn’t mean you’ve learned a better swim skill, you’ll start to pay attention to the quality of your training plan.
it’s better to have a specific body based focus that you can pay attention to while swimming.
Let’s take just one example. most triathletes carry a lot of tension in their neck which impacts their streamlining, efficiency and breathing. Here’s one way to approach improving this micro skill and improve awareness.
“25 kick, 25 swim”
Does this look familiar? “25 kick, 25 swim”. This is an extremely common example of a freestyle drill set for triathletes. It would seem that the main intent is to practice kicking, right? But without further direction or a coach on deck, it’s unclear and doesn’t give you the focus you need to improve your freestyle swimming for triathlon.
Instead of “25 kick, 25 swim”, let’s add a specific thought to direct your muscles while doing the drill.
“Relax your neck” while kicking with one arm extended for 25 yards. Stroke once to breath or roll to the sky for a breath. Then swim 25 yards while maintaining your relaxed neck. Does your neck feel relaxed with and without arm strokes?
Aside from using a few more words, what’s the subtle difference between these two drill sets? The second set addresses a specific issue that impacts your swimming in both drilling and full stroke freestyle. You see most people will tense their neck and instinctively pick their head up a bit to look ahead. This creates tension in the neck and creates misalignment. Both issues require more effort to swim, and create an even bigger problem when trying to breath.
Great swim practices move your attention instead moving body parts
By removing the arms and just kicking (with or without fins) you can move your attention to your neck and experiment with different levels of relaxation and tone. When followed immediately with swimming it’s easy to compare the results of the new focus and attention to the neck.
Since new movements feel awkward and foreign, a drill set that addresses a specific thought (“relax the neck”) rather than an exercise (“Kicking”) is a supercharged way to increase your learning speed and adopt better swim skills faster.
Next time you go to the pool and are faced with a drill set, try substituting a body awareness focal point, or simply layering it on top of the drill. Some examples
- One armed swimming becomes “Stroke with your Left (Right) arm, while keepign the neck relaxed and the spine aligned during the entire arm cycle.”
- Cat & Mouse drill becomes “Keep your neck relaxed while exploring how much overlap is in your stroke while playing cat & mouse. At what point in your overlap can you keep your neck most relaxed?
12 Weeks of Better Swim Practices
If you’re ready to apply these principles to your own training, my dedicated triathlon swimming plan for Olympic or Half Distance races contains 12 weeks (32 unique workouts) of practical swimming workouts just like these. Just head on over here to purchase a dedicated triathlon swimming plan to prepare you for an Olympic or Half Distance Triathlon.
(You can apply this plan over top of any other training plan you’re currently using and just swap out the swims)
by Coach Suzanne | Apr 26, 2022 | Triathlon
SWOLF is a contraction of the words Swim Golf or Swimming Golf. This article will help you understand what it is, how it is measured and how you can experiment with different ways to “play” swim golf in order to improve your swimming. When you understand the different ways to use SWOLF, you can create a variety of interesting and engaging swim workouts that will help you become faster.
What is swim golf (or swimming golf)?
Swim golf is a fun way you can add some gamification to your swimming workouts in order to see if you are making improvements. Just like in regular golf, a lower score in swim golf is usually better.
How is SWOLF measured?
Your swim golf score is the total of the number of strokes you took, plus the time in seconds. It doesn’t matter if you are swimming in yards or meters, and it doesn’t matter what length the interval is, as long as you are being consistent with your own measurements.
For example: If you swim 50 yards in 45 seconds, your swim golf or SWOLF is 50 + 45 , or 95.
If you swim a 100 meter interval with a total of 40 strokes and swam it in 65 seconds, your SWOLF would be 105.
How do swim watches measure SWOLF?
Many swim watches such as the Garmin Forerunner models, Garmin Swim 2, Moov Now, the Apple watch, Swimovate Poolmate, and many more will automatically calculate a SWOLF score for you.
These swim watches calculate the swim golf score by counting your strokes and time per length of the pool. So whether you swim in a 25 yard pool, 25 meter pool or 50 meter pool, the calculation is based on 1 length of that pool.
For example: with a 200meter swim interval in a 50 meter pool, the software will show 4 SWOLF scores for that interval, one for each length.
On the other hand, a 500 yard swim in a 25 yard pool will show a graph of 20 SWOLF scores for the entire interval.
Here is an example of multiple swim golf scores shown in a graph after downloading the data to the watch’s software. The red filled portion with the heavier red outline is the SWOLF score for each length.
This graph represents a swim set of ten 100 yard repeats with a very short rest between them
.
How do you “Play” Swim Golf?
In order to “play” swim golf, you would want to lower your SWOLF score over time. These could be short term goals within the same workout, or longer term goals over time.
If your score is the sum of your strokes and your time, then there are two ways to decrease your score. You can either lower your strokes (ie take fewer strokes to complete your interval), or swim in a faster time. The tricky part is that in order to actually get a lower sun, you need to prevent the other score from increasing.
For example, these two swims would result in the same score for a 50 yard swim: A) 43 seconds in 52 strokes or B) 45 seconds in 50 strokes. Both of them result in a score if 95 for a 50 yard interval.
Two ways to lower your SWOLF score
Take fewer strokes in the same amount of time
For example if you swam 25 yards in 22 seconds with 18 strokes, your score is 40.
In subsequent 25s, you would try to swim in 22 seconds while still taking fewer than 18 strokes, for a score less than 40
Repeat 1: 22 seconds + 18 strokes = 40
Repeat 2: 22 seconds + 17 strokes = 39
Repeat 3: 22 seconds + 16 strokes = 38
Swim faster while taking the same number of strokes
For example if you swam 25 yards in 22 seconds with 18 strokes, your score is 40.
In subsequent 25s, you would try to swim faster than 22 seconds while still taking 18 strokes for a score less than 40.
Repeat 1: 22 seconds + 18 strokes = 40
Repeat 2: 21 seconds + 18 strokes = 39
Repeat 3: 20 seconds + 18 strokes = 38
What’s a Good SWOLF Score?
Since stroke count is half of your swim golf score, and stroke count can change based on a persons height or wing span, it’s hard to compare your score against anyone else’s score. Everyone has different physical features that can influence their strokes per length. The best way to use SWOLF is as a personal measure of change or improvement.
How can I Incorporate SWOLF into my swim workouts?
You can create sets like the examples above to add some focus to your swims that are centered around using SWOLF to improve your swimming.
For beginning and early intermediate swimmers, usually the best bang for the buck is to try to lower stroke count first in order to lower your score. This is because most of these swimmers have several technique areas that when improved, can reduce drag and lower the number of strokes needed to get across the pool.
Intermediate swimmers may enjoy trying to hold their SPL the same, while trying to swim faster. This means that they are traveling the same distance with each arm stroke ,but because their time is faster, they are taking each stroke at a slightly faster tempo.
Alternatively, intermediate swimmers can experiment with different ways to prevent SWOLF from climbing, but trading a stroke for a second. That means that by allowing an extra stroke during the length, you can often gain a second…so it’s an even tradeoff. When there are multiple ways to achieve the same SWOLF score, it’s worth spending time evaluating the effort required at different stroke counts. Your goal would be to use the score combination that results in the least effort as a target for practice and improvement.
More advanced swimmers will enjoy trying to lower both scores…swim faster AND take fewer strokes This requires precision technique as well as properly applied power in your stroke.
Can I track SWOLF without a swim watch?
Of course you can! What do you think coaches and swimmers did before swim watches were available? Many swimmers ask if you should count one arm only or both arms. I teach my swimmers to count each arm entry as a stroke. This is because you will get a more precise number instead of estimating 1/2 cycles.
But you’ll have to remember that your swim watch usually counts cycles…one arm through the whole stroke cycle. So when YOU count two strokes (right arm entry, left arm entry), your swim watch is counting 1 cycle (right arm entry to next right arm entry).
Counting strokes is a great skill to learn to make improvements to your swim, so it’s time well spent.
by Coach Suzanne | Apr 3, 2022 | Triathlon
What do you love about swimming?
For me, I’ve just always loved being in the water and playing games with my friends. Starting from when I was 7 or 8 years old, I walked to our neighborhood pool, met my friends, and we played cards during adult swim, and sharks & minnows when there were enough of us there, and I swam on the swim team until I was 15 years old. The swimming pool was the fabric of my summer existence.
During & after high school, other priorities came up, other sports, other interests, academics and eventually a job. My first job out of college was with Voyageur Outward Bound School where we took groups of teenagers on backcountry wilderness canoe trips. We taught them life skills and expedition skills. But my favorite days were teaching the kids whitewater kayaking skills. It seemed that again, water became the fabric of my existence. It’s a miracle I never developed trench foot during a 3 week expedition in which it rained every day but one.
Dusting Off the Clubs
By the time I was 26 I longed for work that was more meaningful and impactful and in a roundabout way I decided to try to get into medical school. The day I took my MCATs (Medical College Admission Test), I thought to myself, “If I’m going to become a doctor, I need to learn how to golf.” So I dug around in the garage, found some dusty old clubs that my parents had owned and enjoyed when they were 20 years younger, and took myself and a few balls up to the ballfield that I had played in as a kid…the same ballfield that was on the way to the pool from my youth.
Let’s just say that it didn’t go well. I decided I would be a non-golfing doctor.
Diving Back in…
Fast forward five years, I had matched into residency, and somehow made the bizarre decision that training for a triathlon, rather than pure running for exercise, would give me more free time. What was I thinking?? I started riding my bicycle to the rec center and took up swimming again after about 10 years away from the water sports I’d loved during my childhood and those first years after college.
It was…just as I had remembered it. Smooth. Silent. Silky. Weightless. Magical. Mystical. Mysterious. Consistent. It was an activity where I could both disappear from the demands of Emergency Medicine training, and immerse myself into something familiar and comforting. “You have a nice stroke,” was something I heard often.
Let’s fast forward again. Since then…Back Surgery. Total Immersion. Pain free Swimming. Triathlon Coach. Youtube Host, interviewing legends like Mark Allen, Terry Laughlin, Gwen Jorgensen, Leanda Cave. Did I mention Mark Allen? Kirsten Sass. Volker Winkler. (Look them all up)
My pursuit of triathlon became it’s own career path, and throughout it all the water was my place that was both familiar and challenging. Endless improvement and ingrained patterns from my youth. New friendships and YouTube “fame” had people introducing themselves to me at the World Championships…”You’re Suzanne Atkinson, I love your podcasts and interviews.”
Holding Things Together
The water was the glue. It always brought things back together. Even things that had fallen apart, like my body from a bucket tear disc injury, back surgery, car accident, physical therapy, ankle arthritis (those soccer moves!), and most recently being a temporary caregiver for my partner who had a cardiac arrest (he’s fine now, 1 in 10,000 survivor of 3 cardiac arrests…now we train together), and navigating my mothers progression with dementia, aricept overdoses, and the relentless march of time. I submerged myself in the water and the water made me whole again.
At 50, I suddenly feel fit and fresh. I’m not in the same physical shape or the same weight I was at 47, or even 48…but 50 feels different. It feels fresh. It feels ready. It feels forward. I’m optimistic. The water is still there as it has been the past 45 years of my life.
What do I love about swimming? Everything.
What do YOU love about swimming? Post in the comments…
