I’m sharing my experience with Finding Freestyle’s 12 week program. Little background - I paid full price for the program and did receive email support from Dave during it.
I’m an adult onset swimmer, (mid-40’s) and never really swam much growing up so zero past swim experience to draw upon.
Before starting the FF program I spent about 6 weeks trying to learn to swim and took a few lessons with a local coach. This wasn’t sustainable due to scheduling conflicts, and I didn’t feel like I personally “meshed” well with the coach (while others may benefit greatly from working with a local coach on the side of the pool).
Here’s some notes I made along the way through the process:
Phase 1 - Body alignment and rotation
Week 1 - Things just got real, up until this point my swims were probably never more than 500m in a single session and most times with the coach I’d typically do 200-250m in a half hour of drills/swim, with long rests. First week included the float and paddle drill which was very helpful for me to engage my core for pulling which I wasn’t doing before, and also some SoL drills which helped me improve my balance (and learn that I have quite a bit of work to do on my kick). After going through the first week I can say I definitely identified issues with my breathing (picking up head instead of rotating to breath) which really made the SoL drill much easier.
Week 2 - Based upon feedback from Dave, I added some kick specific work to my sessions to start improving the kick and making it sustainable. Sent a couple of videos of the drills and Dave’s feedback was to make sure I breath to both sides during the different drills and to keep pressing forward as things were as expected. Did mention I should try altering head position, and during the week while doing kicking drills I did some “testing” with arms in front vs at my sides and also adjusting my head up/down and was able to see the difference it made in how high my legs were riding.
Week 3 - Was a tough week and found the prescribed yardage was a bit excessive for where I was. Was able to modify things to bring the swims down more to the 1000-1500 yards area which is within my reach. Biggest issue is trying to learn to relax in the water, and some of that stems from not exhaling which makes it difficult/impossible to inhale when you rotate to breathe.
Kick awareness
Week 4 - This is the point where the cerebral aspect of it started taking its toll and had some tough times getting through the work and can say was dealing with some frustration which definitely doesn’t help comfort level in the water.
Week 5 - Started to work on kick timing drills, which made for some interesting pool times. One legged kicking (either constant or single timed kick) really identified some balance issues and really helped improve body position awareness.
Week 6 - First 300m test - completed just over 8 minutes (8:03-8:04 based upon clock). Few things noticed, one was a bit stressed and not as relaxed as I should be. Had no reference as I wasn’t able to swim 300m and even in this one I found myself gasping for air and stopping for a quick breather a couple of times during the time trial.
During subsequent workouts I noticed my “high elbow recovery” was actually hurting me, I don’t have the most flexible shoulders (had shoulder issue in high school), and by dropping my elbow some on the recovery, it was much smoother and allowed me to maintain a higher stroke rate with minimal additional effort. It was at this time I noticed other swimmers at the pool and see some who were “where I was” (looked similar to previous videos of my swimming) and others who are “where I wanted to be” (smooth and fluent). It was interesting to see the progress was being made, although its difficult to judge my pace of progress due to no reference point.
Kick/pull timing
Week 7 - This introduced the one arm drill, which at first was just awkward and uncoordinated. Rotation into the stroke was critical to help maintain propulsion instead of having the propulsive energy be dissipated in undesired body movements.
Week 8 & 9 - more drilling and working on improving swim fitness some and continuing with the drills.
Integration
Week 10 - Still struggling to do longer swims (150m+) without stopping. Using a snorkel can turn out 250m in right at 5minutes. Breathing isn’t natural enough - find times when I’m not exhaling underwater, which both keeps CO2 in system and prevents uptake of oxygen at next breath leading to anxiety/discomfort.
Week 11 - Mentally spent, finding last few sessions at the pool are challenging to get up motivation. I’m sure this is both due to the process being challenging and also some frustration on my part with progress not being as high as my expectations and also the fact that I went from not swimming at all to an intense 12 week program that challenged me physically and mentally
Final 300m time trial results were: 7:40 - again still not stellar, but improvements were made and was able to swim more of the 300 although still not able to fully do 300m straight. I think this is experience/comfort related, as well as not efficiently breathing which can cause more discomfort/anxiety and creates a bit of a vicious cycle.
Final takeaways -
I will be taking a “recovery week” with 2-3 easy swims and then diving back into week 1 to repeat the program as suggested.
I can say Dave was very responsive and always offering some input of things to try or even things to maybe tweak (such as adding kick sets due to my malformed kick) which was helpful.
Looking back from where I started to where I am now, I will say that I’m extremely happy with the progress made.
These results are my N=1 “study”, so your results might differ - personally I found this program to be a great fit and benefit for me - I’d encourage others to check it out, ask questions and make the decision they think is best for them.
I’m an adult onset swimmer, (mid-40’s) and never really swam much growing up so zero past swim experience to draw upon.
Before starting the FF program I spent about 6 weeks trying to learn to swim and took a few lessons with a local coach. This wasn’t sustainable due to scheduling conflicts, and I didn’t feel like I personally “meshed” well with the coach (while others may benefit greatly from working with a local coach on the side of the pool).
Here’s some notes I made along the way through the process:
Phase 1 - Body alignment and rotation
Week 1 - Things just got real, up until this point my swims were probably never more than 500m in a single session and most times with the coach I’d typically do 200-250m in a half hour of drills/swim, with long rests. First week included the float and paddle drill which was very helpful for me to engage my core for pulling which I wasn’t doing before, and also some SoL drills which helped me improve my balance (and learn that I have quite a bit of work to do on my kick). After going through the first week I can say I definitely identified issues with my breathing (picking up head instead of rotating to breath) which really made the SoL drill much easier.
Week 2 - Based upon feedback from Dave, I added some kick specific work to my sessions to start improving the kick and making it sustainable. Sent a couple of videos of the drills and Dave’s feedback was to make sure I breath to both sides during the different drills and to keep pressing forward as things were as expected. Did mention I should try altering head position, and during the week while doing kicking drills I did some “testing” with arms in front vs at my sides and also adjusting my head up/down and was able to see the difference it made in how high my legs were riding.
Week 3 - Was a tough week and found the prescribed yardage was a bit excessive for where I was. Was able to modify things to bring the swims down more to the 1000-1500 yards area which is within my reach. Biggest issue is trying to learn to relax in the water, and some of that stems from not exhaling which makes it difficult/impossible to inhale when you rotate to breathe.
Kick awareness
Week 4 - This is the point where the cerebral aspect of it started taking its toll and had some tough times getting through the work and can say was dealing with some frustration which definitely doesn’t help comfort level in the water.
Week 5 - Started to work on kick timing drills, which made for some interesting pool times. One legged kicking (either constant or single timed kick) really identified some balance issues and really helped improve body position awareness.
Week 6 - First 300m test - completed just over 8 minutes (8:03-8:04 based upon clock). Few things noticed, one was a bit stressed and not as relaxed as I should be. Had no reference as I wasn’t able to swim 300m and even in this one I found myself gasping for air and stopping for a quick breather a couple of times during the time trial.
During subsequent workouts I noticed my “high elbow recovery” was actually hurting me, I don’t have the most flexible shoulders (had shoulder issue in high school), and by dropping my elbow some on the recovery, it was much smoother and allowed me to maintain a higher stroke rate with minimal additional effort. It was at this time I noticed other swimmers at the pool and see some who were “where I was” (looked similar to previous videos of my swimming) and others who are “where I wanted to be” (smooth and fluent). It was interesting to see the progress was being made, although its difficult to judge my pace of progress due to no reference point.
Kick/pull timing
Week 7 - This introduced the one arm drill, which at first was just awkward and uncoordinated. Rotation into the stroke was critical to help maintain propulsion instead of having the propulsive energy be dissipated in undesired body movements.
Week 8 & 9 - more drilling and working on improving swim fitness some and continuing with the drills.
Integration
Week 10 - Still struggling to do longer swims (150m+) without stopping. Using a snorkel can turn out 250m in right at 5minutes. Breathing isn’t natural enough - find times when I’m not exhaling underwater, which both keeps CO2 in system and prevents uptake of oxygen at next breath leading to anxiety/discomfort.
Week 11 - Mentally spent, finding last few sessions at the pool are challenging to get up motivation. I’m sure this is both due to the process being challenging and also some frustration on my part with progress not being as high as my expectations and also the fact that I went from not swimming at all to an intense 12 week program that challenged me physically and mentally
Final 300m time trial results were: 7:40 - again still not stellar, but improvements were made and was able to swim more of the 300 although still not able to fully do 300m straight. I think this is experience/comfort related, as well as not efficiently breathing which can cause more discomfort/anxiety and creates a bit of a vicious cycle.
Final takeaways -
I will be taking a “recovery week” with 2-3 easy swims and then diving back into week 1 to repeat the program as suggested.
I can say Dave was very responsive and always offering some input of things to try or even things to maybe tweak (such as adding kick sets due to my malformed kick) which was helpful.
Looking back from where I started to where I am now, I will say that I’m extremely happy with the progress made.
These results are my N=1 “study”, so your results might differ - personally I found this program to be a great fit and benefit for me - I’d encourage others to check it out, ask questions and make the decision they think is best for them.