Okay, we're back with David. And today we're going to talk about hands and fingers. So hand and finger awareness, and really talking about the softness of hands, especially when you're swimming slowly. So one of the things we're going to do is we'll, we'll pull up the video here, and we're just gonna go ahead and let that start playing. And we'll get through that a few times. But, David, when you're swimming slowly, there's such a softness to your hands, there's such a feel, how does that translate to swimming really fast.

So when I've got soft hands when I'm swimming slow, my main focus in that moment is just efficiency catch, lack of splashing, lack of resistance, kind of slipping and sliding through the water. Obviously, when I'm at top speed, that's a little bit more difficult to do. But when I'm in practice, my main goal is to swim as fast and as efficiently as possible. And the soft hands kind of translates to that. back way back when I was a kid using I was actually using go swim with my private swim instructor and what we what what I struggled with was swimming efficiently. And a lot of it was specially splashy, I kind of just muscled my way through the water. And by doing that, I kind of limited my potential a because I wasn't swimming efficiently, I was hitting a lot of unnecessary resistance in my hand, shoulders head. And what a big focus for me in that moment was to try and swim more smoothly, as you said more softly. And that was at low speeds, added high speeds, by swimming kind of as efficient as possible with what you said, the soft hands, that directly translates to, to my top speed. Because, yeah, maybe a little bit more splashy, because I am at a higher speed. But that efficiency, that kind of soft hand, feel the purpose with each stroke to be as efficient, and swim with the least amount of resistance possible, kind of moves over to that top speed. As well in by swimming like this, not necessarily like this at all speeds. But with the main focus of catching as much water being as much of as efficient as possible. Just benefits me in like every facet of my stroke, whether it be fast or slow.

So when you are at top speed, do you think about your hands, or the entire arm, or at that point, all the training has been done, and basically you're reacting to, to the situation at hand. And I'm not thinking about these things. But more along the lines of just the training has been done. Let's let's now let everything come out.

For any race above 200, I'm thinking a little bit more. I don't really ever race anything above 200. And any real officiated meet, maybe in practice, like once or twice a year, but anything that is a little bit longer. Yeah, I'm going to be thinking a little bit more about efficiency, about what's going on how I can be able to sustain to that race, but 1500 dishes go. I preach this to every swimmer that I've ever taught and never worked with, like, if you're thinking about stuff, when you're racing, you're thinking about things that you might want to change for your race and you're at the meet or on the block or in the water, it's too late at that point. And it's just not worth your time putting all that mental energy in thinking, Hmm, maybe I should do this. Or maybe I should change that. Because at the end of the day, you've trained for what, four to six months for this event, like you've done everything that you possibly could working in practice. At that point, like I'm not necessarily thinking about kind of what's going on with my arms. It's just kind of a moment of like disconnecting go letting my body do what I've trained to do.

I do think you sell yourself short, when you say four to six months, I see this as a building process that you've been putting together for many, many years. And so each four to six months that you talk about is a honing and increased honing of your skill and always the thought process of moving forward and getting better. So it's years of what you've been working on. So give yourself more credit than that because it's it all it all stacks it all stacks. You know how much how much time do you dedicate to honing the field for the water? Or how did you develop it as a young swimmer? I mean, you did just talk about your, your first coach, how much time did you guys spend on just learning how to be you know, one with the water as they say,

we were going about two to three times a week just working on nothing but drills efficiency, just trying to become a better swimmer was never strength or like speed focus. It was all just about being a better swimmer. Like I just said I would do that like just all the time with and in Pennsylvania, she's fantastic helped me really get to where I'm at now and kind of get the mindset of like, yes, you can improve physically. But then there's also that aspect of being able to swim more efficiently and effectively, that's also going to contribute to that strength that you've built. But here at NC State, like we're doing it like, almost every day, like we're working on catch almost every day, it's important to Braden being able to find the catch. And since it's such an important part of my stroke racing or not, he tries to focus on that and push importance on it more than some other people may be as that is kind of a very important part of my swimming, whether it be mesh paddles, or socks on the hands, just being able to push myself to find that catch quicker, faster, more efficiently. It's just it's a process that we work on almost on a daily basis.

So when you talk about mash paddles and socks on the hands, I equate that to that's a lot of power building as well. Do you do any sculling in order to maintain this feel?

Yes, actually, we do a lot of sculling, whether it's just in between different aspects of our of our practice, like if it's just in between, say, two different drills, something like that, like I could say confidently, we do sculling in some capacity almost on a daily basis. As again, it's important to get that fuel the water, and it's important to memorize that fuel the water so that when you do get to the race, you're not thinking, Am I catching water? It's just starting muscle memory, it's already ingrained into your brain, you can just let go and do what you've trained to do.

But, you know, with you and Braden, I mean, aren't you concerned that you're not getting enough yardage in when you do the sculling, you can't you can't rack up the yards when you get the sculling going,

Hey, I'm definitely a promoter of quality over quantity. See, I'd rather do a 2000 yard practice of just fantastic drills, fantastic racing, just efficient, perfect swimming than 6000 yards of just math. I think Braden and black group kind of also follow that ideology a little bit. Sometimes we have a little bit heavier practices. But at the end of the day, our main focus is trying to swim the best that we can, every time we have every time we're in the water. And if that means swimming shorter days, or shorter times in that day, just to get that done, then that's what we're gonna

do. There was one other swimmer you may have heard of, in, in in the platform, who did talk about limiting his practices to 4000 yards or meters a day, in order to make sure that he was completely focused. His name was Jason Lee Zack moving Yeah, exactly. So your your focus on specificity and making sure that everything's done right, has some great history to it. Finally, on this point, how would you encourage younger swimmers to develop the feel for the water you have in your hands?

You don't necessarily. I mean, sometimes people are like, you need equipment to work on this type of stuff. But for me, I'm lucky it came naturally that I just was able to feel the water and just be more efficient with my stroke. But one great way to learn and kind of feel the water and get that feel for a larger surface area and start building that with without equipment is paddles, whether it be big paddles, mesh paddles is a fantastic way to do it, because it forces you to catch water, it makes you It forces you to catch water to progress throughout that lab. We use mesh panels a lot with socks. Just things that kind of impede your natural ability to take a stroke. Eliminate yourself. And still try to use those equipment and push through that to find your catch. Whether that be even just regular socks in your hands, just limit yourself and then take that equipment off. And then try to get that feel faster without the equipment on just play around with equipment and stuff like that and just try your best with them.

Excellent. All right, thank you. We'll be back with more


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13 - DC Talks - Hands and Fingers