Recovering the Swim Pull

I don't know why I let it slip so far and for so long. The Swim Pull I mean. That is the lat pull down with a special handle made for me by Lefore Steel that perfectly mimics the catch and pull of the freestyle swim stroke. In short, it builds sports specific strength.

I read somewhere that their is no way to build sports specific strength in anything. Nonsense. I can feel the strength I build at Plate City in the water and if feels good. When Petya started training me-- I don't remember how many years ago-- she built me up week by week with paddles. We started with 500 yards. Each week the paddles sets got longer and longer until I was doing 2,000 yards of paddle swimming per workout. I am convinced, I know, that that made me permanently stronger in the water, a strength I can feel.

When I am lifting with a lot of volume and intensity I can also notice the difference in the pool. My sprint times are faster and my endurance better on the same yardage. The bench press helps. Pullups help. The Swim Pull helps a lot.

I have been rebuilding that lift of late. I'm not sure why it went into decline. I think all my lifting goes down as Chicot nears. It goes down by design, but I am even beginning to rethink that. I used to stop lifting totally three weeks before the big swim. This year I lifted until ten days before Chicot, and I lifted Monday before the Senior Olympics. In both of those events, I performed far beyond my own expectations. 

Mark Bell of Slingshot and YouTube fame says it well and says it truly when he expostulates that, "strength is never and weakness and weakness is never a strength." So simple but so true.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been upping the reps on my first set of the Swim Pull, adding sets, and adding weights on the other sets. Now the fire is burning again. I will see how strong I can get on that move. The high rep first set has a conditioning component to it. It builds a lot of lactic acid which my muscles need to burn and my body must deal with. The eccentric contraction of the lift is something I can't get in the water. That can only help the swim muscles to be more thoroughly conditioned. And I am learning through trial and error on how to best work my rotator cuff muscles. I have discovered a move that has taken away some discomfort in my left shoulder that I had for years. 

I am also adding the Swim Pull on days when I don't do pulling. On those days, I am only doing one high-rep set. That is for conditioning purposes. Besides my time in the water, I am hitting those muscles again.

In short, for Chicot IX, I plan to break last year's record, and at the Senior Olympics, my goal is to beat all of my 2019 times. By the grace of God and a lot of hard work, I can do it. Thank you, Jesus.