E-fish-ency

The Lap no. 31 - D-Day - 5 months

“He never had the makings of a varsity athlete.”
- Uncle Junior, The Sopranos

Water is a good place for those of us who feel clumsy on land. There’s nothing to catch or throw (except the occasional tow line). The coordination water sports require is a harmony between the human body and the element, usually by way of gross motor skills. Swimming, surfing, freediving, and paddle sports all favor technique over raw power. The sea is always more powerful. Even a swimming pool will turn brute strength against you.  

Technique is the only way. 

The fin-dementals 🐟

My college swim coach (club, not NCAA) loved a good dad joke. He used to say, “we need to drill the ‘fin-dementals’ so we can be ‘e-fish-ent’ in the water.” This meant endless laps practicing our glide and rotation. In these tedious practices, designed to produce a weakness-revealing awkwardness, I learned that the secret to speed in the water is actually about slowing down. 

Without smoothness and good form, your own strength is your worst enemy in the pool. When you thrash and muscle your way down the lane, you create drag that you then have to work harder to overcome.

You travel farther and use less energy with each stroke if you focus on good rotation and pause to glide between strokes. With e-fish-ent technique, it feels like you’re flying.

(All of the above applies to sea kayaking as well).

Deliberate practice and “turning pro.”

I was never going to be an elite swimmer, but I trained like one. Meaning I was willing to spend cold, waterlogged hours focusing on my elbow position during the catch phase of my stroke in the name of marginal performance gains rather than just doing laps for exercise.

This is what the psychologist K. Anders Ericsson calls “deliberate practice” (a theory popularized in Grit by Angela Duckworth and Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). It’s the idea that quality and intensity of practice are what matters. 

More reps isn’t better. It’s just more. Mastery comes from drilling and breaking down a skill into its elements. This dedication to technique and a ritualized practice (the noun, not the verb, as in a meditation practice) is one of the key differences between amateurs and professionals illustrated in Steven Pressfield’s Turning Pro. 

The pro amasses hundreds of hours of experience. The amateur repeats the same hour hundreds of times. 

The only way around Ireland…

There’s only one stroke that will get me around Ireland: the forward stroke. It’s the one you use 99% of the time in sea kayaking and, therefore, the most important to master.

This week, with glassy calm conditions out on the Bay, I’m incorporating a simple stroke drill into my training. I picked this one up from David Horkan’s performance forward paddling course over at Online Sea Kayaking and adjusted the format to make a full training session of it. It’s identical to a “3-stroke glide” swimming drill. 

1. 5 minutes: Pause at the end of every stroke and let the boat glide (see the picture below). 

2. 10 minutes: normal paddling with perfect form. 

   (Repeat steps 1 & 2. Pause every three strokes on the second round and every five strokes on the third).

3. 30 minutes: normal paddling to reinforce good form and bring it all together. 

The pause not only emphasizes good rotation, cadence, and glide, but it also gives you a chance to work on balance since the boat is less stable when you’re holding the recovery phase.

Working on my e-fish-ency.

Watching my GoPro footage is frustrating. Gaining experience means becoming more aware of every little mistake. In my last session, I focused on keeping my bottom arm nice and straight through the catch and pull. I made real improvements there. But when I watched the replay, all I could see was how I kept dropping my top hand. So, that’s what I’ll be working on tomorrow… 

Like the freestyle stroke in swimming, mastering the forward stroke starts with the humble acknowledgment that this is the work of a lifetime.

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Thanks for reading,

-Charlie

Thank you to Mike Jones for coaching and guidance.

Kokatat is the official gear sponsor of The Lap.

The lap will be fueled by Resilient Nutrition’s Long Range Fuel and bars.

Expedition coffee by 3fe.

CH Marine will be providing a VHF radio and other safety equipment.

Tent and cooking gas provided by Paddle & Pitch. Trolley by KCS.