On this thread below, guys gave me some really good advice on getting down the timing for my fly stroke


http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...th%20stroke#p6425083

I have been doing some fly sets where I sprint 25 breathing once 3 strokes and keeping my head down, followed by the next 25 m ultra slow breathing every stroke or every second stroke, but really extending the glide phase and balancing on my chest and hardly doing any kick other than just flicking my ankles before breathing but otherwise keeping my feet pointed and plantar flexed. I've been doing this for 200m-500m depending on the day. The focus of the above was an ultra low amplitude fly....more trending towards free than breast undulation (you know the people at your pool who do fly going up and down in a huge way to the point that from underwater it almost looks like breast). I any case on the recovery leg, when you get the timing and pressing of the chest just right, the entire leg just comes to the surface riding the wave reducing drag.

Then the last week, I started doing the above but with 2 beat freestyle, but rather than think about the body roll, I just let the torso and hips do what they do in low amplitude fly but do it 180 degrees timing off from each other, breathing every 3 or 5 strokes. Basically each half was doing a one leg and one arm fly (left side doing fly recovery + reach, right side doing fly pull). After a while i really noticed a lot of difficulty doing this on my left side pull as this is the side where I had a disc rupture. It's not that I can't do it, properly, I was just protecting the spot so much that there is cheater stall and pull to get me through the point that "used to hurt" (it no longer does) and this was throwing everything off on one side when I sent to breath...basically I was breathing at the wrong point of the torso->hip->kick whip that you can't cheat yourself through in fly, but you can in free.

On a plus side, I am getting way more force out of my kick (duh, it's actually in sync with my body). It's more like the underwater part of a Janet Evans 2 beat stroke....probably really good for open water racing!

I think I am about to break through kicking some old 25 year old habits in free by getting my timing a bit more in sync between all body parts and breathing thanks to some of the timing and sync from fly. I will report back on this thread from time to time. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to video in the city of Ottawa pools, so I am stuck with a text description of what is going on. If I can get to a none city pool where I can use video, I will.