Swim Clinic: Making Friends With Buckets

Last week of swim clinic.  In the pool at 5:30 in the morning.  50 degrees was on the verge of pleasant for early morning pre-dawn; the pool is about 80 degrees.  Once you're in and moving, there's no problem.  Well, that is until you strap on buckets and start dragging them around the pool.  

The bucket is the swimmer's equivalent of a parachute.  The lovely feeling of moving forward in the clear blue water is instantly gone and you are reduced to hamster status.  Humility is a big part of bucket hauling, I've learned.  But, I have made progress.  I've learned that when I'm pulling my dear darling bucket up and back I can imagine how good it's going to feel to go bucket-less in a little whileVery good.  And that's the point.  If you've been focusing  (my biggest challenge in swimming) on the stroke technique the coach has been yelling about up there on the deck, your arms will feel long and strong once the bucket is taken off.

So, okay, it's a white paint bucket, the kind you can buy for a couple of bucks at Home Depot.  You wear a webbing strap around your waist and a buckle or clamp to hold the strap around your waist.  Then, the bucket is attached to a long nylon rope that's attached to your waist belt, and the bucket trails off behind you in the water as you swim.  The buckets are different sizes.  Strong swimmers with lots of experience use big buckets.  Swimmers like me, new to buckets, use smaller ones.  I keep hoping for a coffee mug back there.  It's low tech and very effective.  It slows you way down, makes you feel every little movement of your arms, hands and shoulders.

To get going forward, you have to focus and think.  There are all sorts of cues coaches come up with for how the water is supposed to feel on your arms and all over you as you apply proper technique.  Swimming is all feel.  A coach will say, "High elbows!" or "Early forearm!" or (my personal favorite) "Forget about breathing!"  Counterintuitively, you have to both not think and focus very precisely on your stroke.  If you think too much, you're toast.  If you fail to focus on aspects of your stroke and get mentally lost in space, you may as well be sitting on the deck.  Actually, it would be better to sit on the deck in that case because most likely you are reinforcing old bad habits like slipping elbows, uneven kick, bad head position and on and on.

Swimming is infamously challenging in the same way a golf swing is.  One tiny loss of flow in a golf swing spells slice or hook and you're in the rough, the trees or a water hazard.  Oops.

So, the bucket has to be your friend if you are going to get more efficient and stronger in the water.  Even though swimming looks entirely physical, it is almost all mental.  When you finally have a good day and the whole thing clicks, enjoy it.  And stop thinking about it so you can feel it.  Remember, forget about breathing.  And focus.  Oh yeah, swim fast, too.