mattconroy33 wrote:
I'm an adult onset swimmer who has been at it for about 5 years. My first year or two I got some lessons, improved my fitness significantly and then rather plateaued. Since then I've been using lots of different videos and suggestions from folks to improve but hadn't seen a whole lot of growth overall. To be clear, I could certainly finish 1,000 yard swim a bit faster than I could 4 years ago but that was mostly down to just being fitter overall. This past season I had 2 downright terrible open water swims to start of triathlons, one being my first 70.3. That swim was so bad that I rolled onto my back for a while, got out with quad spasms and considered just calling the race done at that point. I didn't and the rest of the race went well but these two swims made me decide that I needed to change. After taking a bit of time out of the pool to get my head right around it I started back up with my usual 3 swims per week for about 2 months with a focus on a few areas that I thought I needed to work on. These included improving my body rotation, my catch and working on being 'taut'--ie keeping my body long and straight rather than wet noodling it. I did a bunch of drills each workout -- much more than previously to focus on these areas.
Since then I've jumped into a masters swim group. The masters workouts have been great, have made me work on other strokes which seems to be helping my freestyle as well. This past week, in working on 'endurance freestyle' the coach focused on a couple of ideas. 1.(for myself and one other) improving our shoulder angle in the reach part of the stroke to extend further upon entry into the water 2. Building a 2 beat kick 3. Working on a 'gallop stroke'. For one reason or another the reach seemed to click pretty well for me and I was told that my stroke immediately looked much better! Moving into part 2 and 3 this seemed to continue, which is great. The questions that I have are:
1. How do I make sure that I am consistently 'reaching' to the right degree
2. How on earth do I keep this 2 beat kick without fins? It feels like my legs will sink without the movement.
3. Should I use the 'gallop' stroke, which feels good (and fast) all the time or should I build in time to practice that as well as the long, slow, stretchy version?
4. I've been avoiding doing math and tracking times this week with the idea that I may need to cement these skills before I worry about time and improvement. Is this the right approach and if so, how long do I avoid the clock and just focus on technique?
Lots of questions. Feel free to answer any that interest you!
thanks
Congrats on the progress!
1. You’re going to have to learn to know what it feels like. Have your coach let you know when you’re doing it right, then internalize what that feels like. Then try to create a phrase for you to remember that’s associated with that feeling (maybe it’s ‘stretch’). Also don’t stress about whether it’s perfect. If it’s good enough and you’re making progress, you’re doing what you need to do.
2. Your legs sinking or not isn’t driven by the kick. If you’re legs are sinking, you need to get better. Learn to use your lungs to support you and create tension in your back keep the legs up.
https://www.youtube.com/...x61BKXeA&index=4
3. If the gallop stroke is working for you, stick with it. You can still practice the longer stroke during warm-up/warm-down. It’s good to have some flexibility in how you swim and the timing you use.
4. Do both, just don’t let the clock drive what you do. Knowing how fast you are swimming is a great way to know if you’re skills are effective are not. If you can swim faster for the same effort, that’s progress. It becomes more a ‘focus on what you’re doing, then see what the outcome was’ approach rather than an ‘I need to go X time or else’ approach.
Hope that helps.
Andrew
http://www.masteringflow.info
http://www.youtube.com/@masteringflow
http://www.andrewsheaffcoaching.com/...freestyle-fast-today