FindinFreestyle wrote:
Here's another perspective. Video review is highly over rated and much less effective than people imagine. Essentially you are describing a "corrective approach": I watch you, identify a flaw, tell you about it, and you try to internalize it and fix it either directly or through targeted drilling. My general approach to coaching swimming technique improvements is more of a process-based approach than a corrective instruction approach. I have the belief that most athletes find it exceedingly difficult to internalize verbal corrections, or "active technique" instruction - and often those who do have this ability are so gifted as to need very little of it. Neither do I attempt to teach a “correct” style – there are as many variations of the basic Australian crawl as there are body types and performance goals.
That does not mean that there are not commonalities – techniques that optimize propulsion and minimize effort – there most certainly are, but rather than focusing on a single end-goal of precise form, I strive to develop the core competencies and develop the athletes’ ability to integrate multiple competencies into a stroke that works for them.
Technical improvements, therefore, must come from a systematic and integrated set of activities that builds the core competencies of a fast swimmer in a component fashion. Once these component skills are mastered, integration of these skills into the actual swimming stroke may occur spontaneously (in contrast to verbal corrections, mastered component skills are integrated quite readily, and often unconsciously, by a majority of athletes), as a result of specific targeted activities that work to integrate various component skills with one another (i.e., a multi-component set), or by activities that serve to stimulate the athlete to integrate skills directly into the swimming stroke.
The arrangement of these activities in a carefully orchestrated, but process-based manner is what I call "passive technique".
It's the FIST of swim development.
I tend to agree with you that video is a bit overrated; I mean, even when you can see what you're doing wrong you still have to make those corrections. Apparently this is very hard for many to do, particularly if you take the "fix one thing at a time" approach. Your description is diff from the way I think of stroke correction though, as I think of it as more like "watch lots of really good swimmers and try to imitate the swimmer whose form you think you could emulate". I think this sort of thing happens unconsciously in most swimming teams, which is why there is not a huge variation in their strokes. Some variation for sure as in the smaller, shorter people will tend to turn over faster vs the taller people turning over more slowly with more distance per stroke. But on the whole, the basic strokes are pretty similar. And I would say this is true even at the lower levels of swimming like summer league. After a kid has swum a few summers on a team, his/her stroke will look pretty similar to his peers.
"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."