As I’m back into training again, working my way to a few personal bests, I’ll be scheduling and reporting about my training and progress towards personal goals.

Personal Bests
The personal bests I’m training to improve are my DYN: 125m, DNF: 109m, STA in competition: 5m 33s. To achieve these goals I make use of different training exercises and techniques, which consist of:

• Dry-walks
• Dry-statics
• Statics
• Crawl without breath
• DNF/Breaststroke technique
• MAX-attempts in all 3

Exceeding PB’s
I want to exceed my personal bests within the next 4 months, this time I will not be focussing on a set distances or time. I will have my focus on doing maximum attempts again and thus improving my personal bests.

“Why this change in approach?” you might ask. Well; In the past few months I’ve been looking back at why I cease to do maximum attempts. I believe one of my restraints is my mind not allowing me to perform to my limits. When looking back on the past year; I’ve seen myself  perform in competitions and everytime I’m in a competition it looks like I’m backing out on my own beliefs and set out paths.

Jorg, Marieke and I have been trying to pinpoint the reason why I’m backing out of it. Where I have to conclude that it includes a certain fear for blacking out and performing badly in front of a crowd. Although I’m only training for personal bests, my mind is always aware of the fact that a bad performance is witnessed and going over the top is a thing I’m not willing to experience.

So how to find a balance in all of this is my main question I’ll be struggling with this next period. Because my body might be ready for a good performance, but how will I convince myself to actually do that max performance?

Reporting
I will write about my progress and for the short updates right after training or the morning after I’ll be using Twitter to communicate the results of the training. I added the twitter feature to the site in the Mini-Blog on the right in the main section, this is where the latest training news appears.

Schedule / Upcoming events
I will be scheduling and planning my training sessions through Google Calendar which is also available on this site, view this public calendar or you can subscribe to the shark-bait calendar with your own Google-account by adding it with the button on the bottom-right.

Here’s a preview from the upcoming days in training:

Stay up to date through the rss-feeds or by reading this site.

Last Thursday I already took my new Speedo Breast Stroke fins for a test run. I was actually surprised by the amount of propulsion it produced. I did a few 25 meters DNF to see how propelling with my legs was exaggerated to a level I became aware of the way it should feel.

As I’m still finding my way through the proper technique and the helpful tools to get rid of my scissor-like leg movement, Kostas joined me last night with another helpful tool; the video-camera. Looking back at the footage right after I did the 25 meter test runs, made it more obvious I needed to lower my right leg even more.

As a comparison we made a few clips where I did a run with:

1. initial technique without the speedo fins
2. corrected technique without the speedo fins
3. initial technique with the speedo fins
4. corrected technique with the speedo fins
5. corrected technique after use of speedo fins

When reviewing the footage some interesting facts grabbed my attention. In relation to how it felt whilst doing the different test runs, I can say that even though you wear the fins, I still need to be paying attention to the lifting of the right leg. When applying the force with the legs, the moment of ultimate propulsion at first seems to be short. But after re-capping the things William said in his course you can keep the propulsion going by scooping more water, by pointing the toes inwards at the end.

My scissor isn’t gone by long, but getting aware of the fact by reviewing the footage is very helpful. Another thing which makes me aware is by looking down at my legs whilst swimming… it’s not the most elegant way, but then I seem to see the errors and correct them instantly.

The next few weeks I’ll be swopping between my DNF-technique and the DYN monofin technique.