Don't know if you are looking for free videos, but Championship Videos has a bunch of series of downloads and DVDs that I've used with my daughter. You can slo-mo and the resolution is better than streaming, I find at least.

http://www.championshipproductions.com/...-Downloads-2546.html

They also have water polo dvds, if you ever get tired of masters and want to swim a lot very fast and tread water. I find if I play twice a week I really only need to do one or two swims a week to stay in race shape.....

Thanks for the link. I was hoping for free but those look interesting.

As for water polo, I tried it a few years ago in a drop in league: most fun I've ever had! Thought I was going to drown five minutes in to my first night there, but after getting used to the pace I really had fun with it. Now I fear no triathlon swim start.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Good on ya for working on it...at some point give a low-key masters meet a shot, you'll find it's a good time & not everyone swims like Lochte...just a fun way to spend a morning.

I don't have any good videos, but I know there are plenty out there. Patience & persistence.

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AW

I'm going to attempt to work on my butterfly this off-season...and yes, AWARE, maybe even flip turns! I'm a bit worried the lifeguards will attempt to "save" me when they see my drunkin' monkey efforts. :)

I think one of the best tools to help with butterfly is zoomers. The little extra push you can get with your kick because of the fins allows you to feel what your upper body should be doing in the water and to swim more fly with tiring too quickly. Just my $.02.

I've spent a good chunk of time teaching the other strokes to AO swimmers.

It is good to find what I call a comprehensive source that helps a person kind of understand the Gestalt aspect of a stroke.

For fly, by far the best progression I have ever found is actually the one in "Swimming Made Easy" by the Total Immersion folks. Get a used copy of the book and look for the video to go with it. I have found no other tool that can get an adult to learn how to get across the pool swimming fly for 50 or 100 yards like that one. Even their later work on the same subject pales in comparison in my opinion. Their explanation and teaching progression help you get the rhythm, the idea that you don't pull until your torso is pointed up and how the kick falls in there.

For breast, Breaststroke for every body video that TI has is good at helping you *understand* what the stroke is about.

I have yet to find a comprehensive source for backstroke. Of course, there are excellent bits and pieces I have found but nothing that kinda lays it all together in a coherent piece.

Here is the backstroke progression I use often in my coaching (pink polka dots are NOT optional). The first three are used to help people understand where the rotation comes from, that it's the 6 beat kick that sets the body rotation. Your body follows your foot rhythm, not your arm rhythm. Most people need to start it with fins to get the actual 6-beat waltzing rhythm on that second drill.

The Total Immersion resources above are like other Total Immersion stuff in that they are good at helping you learn how to perform the stroke for say 100, 200, 500 yards. As you progress further you will come to have a different understanding of the stroke but those are a great place to start.

Oh lordy...this could be fun.

Seriously, it'll make loads of difference to your swimming if you "get" the flipturn. It'll just feel better all the way around, promise.

I also agree with what Kevin said about the TI videos on the other strokes...and the zoomer input on the dolphin kick. Once the rhythm of a dolphin kick actually sets in...the rest of butterfly can be fairly easy to understand...but until then, it's guaranteed entertainment. The rhythm is the difference between "butterfly" and "butterstruggle"....

Backstroke to me should be the easiest one to learn for folks...but when there's a lack of proprioception, there's no awareness of legs sinking & thus no awareness of which muscles to tighten to bring them back up...easy analogies like squeezing a marble between your "cheeks" and making sure that your kick is creating some splash are good places to start.

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AW

The breastbone kick is weird and its own beast but leaving aside that, 2 quick tips are

1) while there are differences in where the hands are in relation to the body, the basics of how power is generated the same in all 4 strokes - high elbows and a solid catch

2) head position is even more important in the other 3 strokes than it is in freestyle

2(a) when the head is where in the strokes where the head moves (fly and breast), is critical to the whole stroke, especially fly.

2(b) 75% of backstroke problems are due to bad head position.

Ok, Here's the first of a 5 part series of 'swimisodes' on butterfly: http://www.theraceclub.com/...erfly-body-position/

Here's breaststroke: http://www.theraceclub.com/...o-swim-breaststroke/

Here's Freestyle flip turn: http://www.theraceclub.com/...p-turn-the-approach/

We're coming out with brand new Swimisodes starting November 5th. The Race Club will release one each week for the rest of 2014 and one every other week for all of 2015. All of our swimisodes are free. We hope the quality is unprecedented and that you enjoy watching them! We're so excited to bring you guys more vids after more than a year of production on these new swimisodes!

Btw, we think all triathletes can use a little help with their legs in the water: http://www.theraceclub.com/...tip-legs-propulsion/

I gave my first masters meet a shot last year, it was awesome! Did a 400 and 100 free, then an IM relay which was a ton of fun. I was training pretty hard for whistler at the time, but I had so much fun I thought "next fall I'll give those other strokes a try and do more meets" and here we are!

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Long Chile was a silly place.

That is great, thank you I'll check out the TI butterfly routine for sure!

That backstroke progression will help too. I am most useless at backstroke.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

That's awesome, thank you!

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Well, youtube has lots of back, breast, and fly videos as well as freestyle. On backstroke, I think the Japanese backstroker Ryosuke Irie has the most beautiful backstroke, the proverbial "poetry in motion". I too am a big believer in watching really good swimmers in the pool. In person is best but here's a youtube video of Irie's 200 back:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cslxxJU-A5U

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

That looks incredible. Almost 'Sun Yang' like in how effortless it looks. The elbow leading the recovery like that looks truly bizarre.

Thanks for posting that!

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Also, in following that link I found this race:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnFJ0Kr_0R8

It's in Japanese, which just ads to the intensity of the race. Listen to the commentator go nuts at the end! What a race!

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Long Chile was a silly place.

Nah, not bizarre but rather that is just totally classic backstroke technique. Also, I'm not sure I would say that his elbow is "leading the recovery" since actually the hand comes out of the water first, so I'd be more prone to say that the hand is leading, but this is just semantics I think:) Now in your classic high elbow freestyle recovery, I would def say that the elbow is leading. with the hand just following and hanging down over the water, as in the old "fingertips drill".

In any case, ya, Ryosuke is by far the most elegant backstroker i've ever seen. Credit goes though to the poster hiro11, who AFAIK was the first to post about his great stroke, about a year or so ago.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Indeed, that was quite a race!!! It's wild that both of the top 2 finishers were still out of breath 3-4 min after finishing their 1:58 race, this despite being world class swimmers:) I've seen some other Japanese videos that were similar, i.e. the announcers just going crazy on the last 50 meters. Those guys really and truly love the sport.

There are so many, many great swimming videos out there that a man could watch them 8 hrs a day!!! Here's another one of my favs, this time freestyle: the men's 200 (scy) free final at the 2012 NCAA D1 champs. Don't know if it is the camera angle or the very powerful way he swims, but you can just tell the lead guy is going just all out, balls to effing wall. I love seeing that sort of super intense swimming. Whenever I'm going all out at the end of a freestyle set, I always think of this video. Enjoy:)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb65tkCaDSo

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

Swimswam.com has been posting links to the World Cup lately, you can watch lots of swimming, all strokes and distances, and work on your Italian at the same .

I posted a link but it the video had been taken down :(

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly