By Dr. G. John Mullen
The New York Post recently reported that Americans had $44 billion dollars of unused holiday gift cards since 2008. With the holidays behind us, many have holiday gift cards or money to purchase everything they really wanted during the holidays. If you are sitting around with a hole burning in your pocket, and looking to spend your money or gift cards before you forget about them, here is a swim nerd holiday gift guide:
MOOV is one of many smart watches trying to break into the swimming world. MOOV provides instantaneous feedback during running and plans to do so in swimming. Full disclosure, I consult with MOOV, so I first hand understand the potential of this product. Imagine a device which you wear on your wrist and lets you know when your hand speed is slowing, force production is decreasing, or hand path is altering, then coaches you for improvement! This can improve biomechanics, reduce injuries, increase motivation, and other improve swimming! Unfortunately, MOOV doesn’t do this yet, but hopefully it or other smart watches will be capable of these features, helping swimmers improve biomechanics and receive more frequent feedback for improvement, exciting times ahead!
Created by former National Team Coach Sean Hutchison, IKKOS is a training tool for improving neural connectivity. In a recent interview, Sean discussed the potential of his product and how it speeds up motor learning, through watching elite swimmers perform precise biomechanics. This form of passive intake, helps subconsciously train a swimmer, helping them master biomechanics outside of the pool.
Clearly, underwater video recording can improve a swimmer and their biomechanics. In all honesty, if you aren’t using underwater cameras in your training you are lagging behind, as the underwater phase is so important in the sport. Also, video feedback provides some people more information than traditional audio feedback.
If you are not using underwater video taping and a camera, you need to get on board!
So many swimmers try to fix form and biomechanics through only verbal feedback, but underwater video cameras are finally becoming cheap enough to use on a regular basis. If you aren’t using underwater, get started this New Year!
Often times, learning from elite coaches is a place to begin improving your own swimming or coaching career. The Championship Swimming DVDs provide elite coaching at an affordable price. If you haven’t seen any of these videos, check them out!
Sleep and recovery have huge potential for swimming improvement. Currently, recovery and sleep are not individualized, although everyone is unique and individual recovery patterns are needed. There are products like BioForce HRV and other smart watch technologies which track sleep and heart rate variability, a potential marker for monitoring recovery. Imagine knowing when you are becoming overtrained and need a day off or a recovery day. Heart rate variability provides an affordable option for individualizing recovery and maximizing performance.
Now, this product is a tad more expensive than the rest, but if you are a Masters swimmer or someone training without a lot of time, consider an Endless Pool. Also, if you are an elite club, consider getting an endless pool for deception training and speed manipulation.
Many coaches will think listening to music while swimming is counterproductive, but Nakamura (2010) found that pleasurable music can improve while non-pleasurable music may hinder performance. Terry (2012) found that neutral music offered fewer subjective benefits than pleasurable music among elite triathletes, although performance markers were similar.
In a timed isometric weight hold, Crust (2004) found that music played immediately before the task did not affect performance while music played during the task did improve performance. More recently, Eliakim (2012) looked at the effect of music on cooldowns and found that listening to music during an unstructured cooldown from intense exercise resulted in higher volitional activity, a reduction in rating of exertion, and faster lactate clearance. Subjects were given the choice how much to cooldown and took a greater number of steps with music than without. Lactate clearance was measured between three and fifteen minutes after exercise in three-minute intervals.
Whether increased cooldown volume and faster lactate clearance are desirable goals will vary by situation, but know the evidence suggests that music can help manipulate these variables. One way to reconcile these results is that the Crust study measured endurance, while the Eliakim study measured anaerobic performance, indicating that warmup music may help get athletes fired up to sprint but the effect of warmup music might erode as event duration increases.
Shameless plug, if you are looking for some real swim nerd products, checkout these resources on dryland, shoulder injury prevention or research reviews!