This is nice. Here few relatively recent videos (I think before the 2nd Covid break). I know the angle is not the best, but any feedback is welcome. One is relaxed pace, another a bit more effort, pool is 25m (SCM) pool. Completely selflearned (ok, actually not, I went to swimming school when I was 5 years old, graduated with ability to swim one pool length)

This should be the relaxed one:




This the one with some effort:

Got some video of myself. Underwater, above water. Kicking, Side kicking, and swimming with fins. Hoping to get some side and above video soon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNNDBmyS7fM
Things I think I'm doing wrong(Please add if you see others.):
-Head is too beneath the surface.
-My catch is too wide, although it appears my reach is right in line with my shoulder. I see this could explain my shoulder soreness at times.
-My right arm goes in too steep
-My left arm goes down, up and out. Over reaching? Pointing with my thumb and not my middle finger?
-Is my kick too wide?
All of this is pretty eye opening for me because when I am in the water it feels like I'm doing everything correctly. I have no idea how to get my head higher up in the water. Any help is appreciated.

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I've finally managed to video my swim, albeit with no outside help and only a stationary camera. It is always a shocking revelation how mistaken my perceived form is and how much what I actually do differs from what I think I am doing.

Looking for any advice, tips or critical feedback, particularly on the leg splay / elbow drop / core crunch when I breathe and the weird things my right hand does during catch and pull. Thank you very much in advance.

i've seen way worse strokes than this. i got nuttin'. it looks good to me. i don't see a lot of leg splay, or elbow drop. i don't exactly see grant hackett quality high elbow anchor, but how many people achieve that? what kind of speed do you have? what pool - SCY, LCY, SCM - and what is a typical set? what's your repeat interval and what do you come in on?

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Looks pretty darn good to me too. You’ve got a little hitch in your right arm stroke that starts about midway through the stroke and causes you to fishtail the finish. I’m not sure what’s causing that but it’s probably robbing you of a little speed.

Cheers Dan!

Very hard to tell, things are evolving quickly since I raised my volume. I’m doing a lot of 100s on 2:00 at the moment, for 10x100 I can stay below 1:40, 20x100 I’ll end up averaging maybe 1:40 or 1:41, all LCM.

A typical set could look like this (50m pool)

300 mixed stroke warm up
200 easy
4*50 kick w/ snorkel
200 easy
6*100 pull w/ pull bouy and snorkel
*distance or speed set like 10-20x100 or 4x600*
Cool down, alternative breathing patterns

I’ve been around 30 minutes in a 70.3 swim (wetsuit, calm ocean) for a few seasons. Now I’ve raised my volume and am focusing much more in swimming and want to get as close to 55 as possible in Roth and Copenhagen next year.

i don't see anything glaringly wrong. i would think if you deployed that stroke swimming with a kick arse master's team x 4 days a week x 6 months you'd see massive improvement.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

Overall looks pretty good, but it does look like your hips ride low, and your kick in too deep. It kind of looks like your foot flexion is pointing down instead of back. I think if you think about splashing your kick a bit, tighten it up a little, that will bring your entire back end up to the surface a bit more. That seems to be your biggest drag. And maybe an inch or so wider entry on the left arm, and hold the catch for just a smidgen more.

This is a place for our resident expert Snapping T to chime in, he can see stuff like that a lot more clearly, and the fixes for them.

Alright, I will bite on this. I've been lurking on the forum for a long time now and I would love some tips on improving my stroke. I've been stuck at a comfortable 1:40ish pace for a long time.
Context:
Been swimming for about 5 years
Currently super low volume and building back in
Typically 3-4xweek 8-10k weekly total
Best 70.3 swim - 32:23
Best 140.6 swim - 1:07:00

Any help or tips for improving my swim stroke would be greatly appreciated! Here is my swim from a few different angles, with some at regular speed and some slow motion.

I'm new to this thread, but I was a swim coach for six years (high school boys) and happy to play!

I agree with you that your breathing is what I'd want to look at here. I think a minor adjustment could help both with the core crunch that you identified and your slightly lower legs that Monty noted (that is, you're not quite horizontal in the water -- your legs are lower than your upper body so the energy from your kick goes partly to moving 'up' not just forward).

The relevant video sections to see your head position are seconds 1-3 and 14-22 in the clip you shared (watched at 1/4 speed). When you're not in the last stroke approaching the walll, you're tending to breathe with your head at a slight angle. As you turn your head to breathe, you want to turn your whole head evenly so that half of your face is out of the water (think: one eye in, one eye out). Instead, you're raising your mouth out of the water and slightly lowering the top of your head into the water to get your mouth out. You can see this most clearly around seconds 17-18. Since your chin is slightly lowered, you're ending up sinking your legs a bit to compensate (as Monty noticed) so it's having a mild impact on your whole form.

Once you approach the wall and need to lift your head to see the wall, your breathing form gets nicer. Your form 2 seconds in when you're taking your last breath as you approach the wall is really nice (and you can get a hint of the breath you took right before the video started where your head was further down).

So what to do about this? Here are some approaches:

• As you swim, think about breathing directly to the side as if your whole upper body is on a rod that goes down from the top of your head down through your spine. You can't drop your chin because you're attached to this rod.
• Drill: Practice swimming while looking more forward than entirely down. Think about trying to keep the water line at the line of your cap on your forehead. This will help you keep your chin up. The key is to keep your neck RELAXED while doing this. If you tense your shoulders, you'll drop your legs. If you don't, they'll stay up and happy.
• Think about breathing in front of your shoulder rather than under it.
• Drill: Breathe only to your left side. While practicing both sides is good in general, it's also a nice way to practice the above without fighting the ingrained habits you already have on your right side.

I look forward to reading what others see. Happy swimming!

Hey, fellow newbie. I'm with you in being much longer on here reading than posting. Swimming, though -- let's talk!

The two things I'd suggest you focus on (and they're related) are your hips and your kick, especially your right leg. I'm really liking your upper-body underwater pull form.

For a good example of what's up with your right leg, check out its position at second 15 in the clip you shared. Here, you can see that your right knee and right ankle are both pretty noticeably bend. While a gentle bend is normal (think: my leg is a slightly wobbly pencil when I kick, mostly straight with some give; see also: your left leg in the video), your right leg has decided that it's really rather you kick from your knee than your hip so it should just bend your knee a lot to accomplish that. It does this a little bit all the time but a lot on strokes when you breathe to the right.

What this seems to be doing to your form is making your hips do a lot more work to keep in position -- they're staying pretty tense -- and making you move side-to-side some in the water rather than just forward (when you bend your knee, you're also crunching your upper body towards that side to balance it out). So it's a fairly minor issue that's causing some other things in your stroke.

What to do about it?

• Watch your video back and check out the kick form of your left leg. This is where you want to end up with your right leg.
  
• Think about keeping your lower body relaxed as you breathe. Especially relax your butt. (I know this sounds weird, but it's also something that helps the 80% of swimmers who are swimming with too-tight hips.)
  
• Drill: Practice breathing to the right with different kick speeds (e.g., kicking 6 beats every stroke vs. 2). My guess is that your right knee won't have time to bend/wander off track quite as much with a faster kick. Note: This is for the occasional drill to get it on track; your kick speed as is works for distance stuff.
• Drill: Just get some kicking time in with a kickboard. Focus especially on the right leg staying connected to the right hip (the aforementioned wobbly pencil) so that you're kicking from your hips (powerful) rather than your knees (way less powerful). The key here is that your hips need to stay relaxed. That is, they shouldn't feel like they're 'working' extra hard to stay attached to your legs. They'll stay attached so can just relax and kick. This will help your leg get happier with its form without having to also navigate breathing at the same time.

Good luck and I hope that helps!

Thanks for sharing the video! Fun times for us coaches out there.

Two things I'd want to look at (both eminently fixable) are your breathing and your hands' entry into the water.

On breathing, your head is moving around a bit more underwater before/after breaths than you want it to. The ideal is of course step 1: turn head to the side out of water, step 2: turn head to the side back into water. Your head wants to be more involved so has decided to break step 2 into multiple steps: turn head into water slightly past neutral with chin lowered then return head to neutral then lift chin slightly to get it in position for the next stroke. You can see this well around seconds 34-39 in the clip you shared.

The goal here is to have your head go back into the water right where you want it every stroke rather than overshooting in rotation and chin tuck. Some approaches:

• Drill: Imagine your head can only turn one direction: to the right. It can't turn left of neutral and your chin can't go up or down. Try swimming like this and see what feels different. Make adjustments as needed. (Example: Your chin really wants to lift up before every stroke? Great: That's the new angle that your chin is allowed underwater.)
• Think about keeping your neck and head relaxed as your body rotates. You can turn this into a drill by practicing exaggerated body rotation while your head stays in place. This will help you not turn your head past neutral as it reenters the water because it reminds your form that your head is being aided by your body's rotation to breathe but isn't part of it.
• Be mindful for a couple hundred of what your head is doing. Try focusing on a couple of different parts (what's my forehead doing? what's my chin doing?) so you can identify where you're immediately reversing something you just did and adjust away from that.

On your hands' entry into the water, you're entering a bit wide then bringing your hands to the entry position you want when they're already underwater. See, for example, seconds 52 to 56 in what you attached. Aim to have your hands enter more in 'directly ahead of your shoulders' range or even directly ahead of your ear by a foot or so (right ear for right hand, left for left). Basically, think about them entering the water at 11:30 and 12:30 at a clock rather than entering at 10:30 and 1:30 and needing to move underwater to where they want to be.

A good drill for this is the fingertip drag drill, where you drag your thumb up the side of your body on the recovery of each stroke. This helps people practice bending their elbows on the recovery, but it also helps put your arm on the direct line where you want it to enter (i.e., it'll pass your shoulder then enter a ways in front of it) so it gets the feel of the new entry point. Just watching where your hands enter as you swim can also go a long way on this one.

Overall, I like your stroke. I look forward to what others think and wish you the best in practice!

Much appreciated. Now assuming the aren't any kick rase masters team around my area and I am already outswimming everyone in my local tri club, how do I go about structuring my workouts? I've spent a lot of time on the technique and it seems it is time that now is the time to focus more on actual swimming. Currently my workouts are aimless. I am focused on my stroke, but am basically just stringing together random intervals at mixed paces so I feel challenged. Can you or anyone else recommend a coach who could provide a plan so I can get to work?

Awesome, thank you. I think you're hit the nail on the head no pun intended. I'll give it a try and post an update in a few months.

Thanks for the detailed feedback,ideally appreciate it.

Many thanks to the coaches and people (not that coaches aren't people) offering feedback. I haven't seen myself swim in years, but any feedback would be welcome.

There are a few segments where I am doing a hybrid 2-beat kick (one kick per stroke, and 3 kicks when I breathe to the side), others is a 6 beat. The time difference for me between the two is negligible for anything longer than a 200.

One of the things I noticed was my left arm tends to push the water down, rather than going vertical right away and pushing back.
Left arm pulls tight recovering above water, right arm swings wide. Not sure how that affects underwater dynamics.

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