"They all do that, sir".

Been there, done that, hated it, gave up in a sulk and never wanted to try to "master" it.

If God had meant us to swim like that he would have given us feet made of lead. It's unnatural.

If you were a real athlete you'd be able to do it no problem.

;-)

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Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Ha! I feel your pain. Apparently, it can be done. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vpXgRyc6r1U

You need to stay long in front, a catch-up style stroke helps. A quick turnover and fewer breaths also help.

There is this feature of the human body that we don't like to talk about...everyone has it and it gets activated ONCE in your life. It is called DEATH. Everyone gets to activate it once and then the game is over. There is this other feature of the human body and it gets activated the first time you use the band without buoy. It's that L you experienced with the feet hitting the bottom of the pool in 3 strokes. Now go try this. Lie on the deck of the pool but with your legs hanging off the edge of the deck and in an L position in the water. Now put your hands over your head in a "streamline push off the wall position"....but your legs are still hanging off the edge in an L. Now pick up your lower legs and point your toes to the other end of the pool without touching the water. Now your actively engaging your core to hold up your legs. You won't need that much force to do it in the water, you just need a bit.

Thank you for sharing your defective band experience. I have a velcro band and it also appears to be defective as my band swim went exactly like yours.

What pisses me off is getting my ass kicked in masters, yet when we put the bands on they look like they are slowly drowning and not much changes for me. I just keep swimming lengths.

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"...the street finds its own uses for things"

my legs are already lead weights... if I don't kick I'm sinking.

I think it helps sloppier swimmers a lot more than ones that aren't as sloppy. For sure, it cleaned up a lot of my random extra motions, since with the band, an errant motion is usually met with an errant countermotion and next thing you know your legs are at the bottom.

But yes, I've quite frequently gotten my tail kicked by much uglier swimmers who can't even survive a single lap of the band swimming. Just because you're streamlined and low drag doesn't mean you'll swim at FOP speed if you don't have the oomph in your pull to match.

I do typical 10 x 200 sets at 1:25/100 pace with 10 sec rest between them, but seriously, if I take it very easy, I'm easily 1:50-2:00/100 pace on those easy sets - drag reduction still requires that power to keep moving.

I still think it's def worth learning though, just to know for sure that you aren't wasting kick energy keeping legs up and balanced instead of using it for propulsion. I also think it's perhaps the most surefire way of ensuring your front quadrant stroke is balanced and not requiring a saving kick to stay flat. Even if you can't do the ankle band on its own, doing the pull buoy with a tight ankle band is pretty darn good for exposing those front quadrant pull errors that are masked by a compensating kick - it's one of the first things I get my friends who are beginner-intermediate triathlon swimmers who are stuck techniquewise to do, and pretty much all of them flail it.

mine was also defective in the beginning but it seems to have largely fixed itself over the past few years. It does seem to intermittently revert back to defective status every once in a while though.

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If you push off from the wall and streamline I bet your legs don't sink.
In fact, I bet you are just like most in that your feet will rise higher than your head if your head is in fact in the water where it belongs.
This tells you two things, your legs sinking is nothing to do with them being too heavy and secondly that you have no idea how to stroke without breaking a streamlined and balanced floating position.

Basically everything that is important in swimming, you are doing wrong.

Now you can either figure out what it is, or do as any good slowtwitcher does and either come up with an excuse that involves some strange body morphology and create a newfangled theory about how important it is to hold your tongue to the left when you breathe as you have noticed that all the fast swimmers do this to some degree but because of your particular tongue shape you will never manage it.

It can be done.

Been right there with you.

Your goal is to find a feel and rhythm that will allow to roll & pull to the other end as opposed to the thrash and fight that you felt.

not a brag, just sharing my experience for some hope for you..... I worked on other things like kicking streamlined on my back with no fins, almost all swimming in the form of the catchup drill, and some other basic stuff, for probably 5-6 months. Threw on some bands (actually, a 1" velcro strap from Home Depot for pennies) around late March and April and was SHOCKED that I could roll and pull, pretty much the catchup drill, all the way down the 25m length, without stressing. No thrash, all rhythm. One of the biggest personal breakthroughs I've ever felt in this little world of multisport :)

And, yet, I'm still an average swimmer, at best.

So, don't give up. Find some other ways to really focus on position work and put in lots of dedicated time to that. Be patient. Basics are NOT grooved in 5 - 10 swim sessions. It may take several months but it's the groundwork, the foundation, that will allow you to make your swims a little easier and maybe more enjoyable.

and then faster.

good luck

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"Outwork your talent." Kevin McHale

Son of bitch. Walked right into that one.

Thanks for the tips. I'll give it a try. This seems like a good way to feel that activation and it's similar to an on-land exercise another ST member gave me.

Give it to me straight. No chaser.

I'm committed to getting faster in the water and given that I swim ridiculously faster with a buoy (but not so much with a wetsuit because I don't swim straight so I sight too much) and I can't swim with a band, I think I've got a problem with my lower body.

Thanks. Yep, patience and effort. I am aware that swimming twice a week is not the best medicine, but it's the world I live in right now.

Until then, my workaround has been to race where the swim is as short as possible. When I raced International, I'd come out of the water 10-12 minutes down. I could run back 4-5 of that but that's not a winning combination. If only there was a race that was just bike/run. :-)

WTF is up with the video guy pulling up his head to periscope the terrain two strokes from his turn? Did he think that the wall was going somewhere? Don't do that part of the video; your legs will sink even further.

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DFL > DNF > DNS

They should issue a recall as mine is also defective.

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Once, I was fast. But I got over it.

If I push off and hold a streamline within about 15' I'm still in streamline but I'm totally vertical and my head position is just fine. It's not core strength either as I can hold a "flag" for about five seconds, a "dragon flag" for about 30 seconds, and a plank for days. I just have long, heavy legs.

No matter how heavy your legs are you are able to pull them back behind where finishing the stride running with your lower back, glutes and hamstrings....just need to use that same chain "a bit". It does not take much, just a minute amount of activation from that posterior chain and you will be gold. You should also use that posterior chain to set up your kick so that you can kick down and hard with your hip flexors and quads on the "downstroke" while swimming kick or free. I find if I kick backstroke with my arms streamlined over my head, I can really feel the posterior chain working hard. Also if you under water dolphin kick you will have to use the posterior chain and that will be helpful for your regular free and "band pull" free. It might be good to push off the wall hard with the band, do 5-10 dolphin kicks to wake up that posterior chain and then launch in your band pull

These swim band manufacturers really need to up their game. I have the Finis yellow band, and sure enough that damn thing is defective, too.

Similar? It's the same damned thing. But, by all means, go with something other than just using the muscles that are designed for this task.

You *really* haven't even tried it yet? Why not?

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I swim to get to my bike...swimming sucks.

By similar I did mean same. I guess I was distinguishing between land a pool. Didn't mean to offend.

I have done it. Didn't find it was hard, but could feel the glutes and back kick in. I definitely do not have anything close to that same activation when swimming.

They are your muscles: activate them when swimming. What am I missing here? If you use those muscles while swimming, your legs will not sink. Period. No bands, no kicking, no streamlining, no perfect head position. None of those matter if you use those muscles. Just like every age group swimmer ever born does.

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"Go yell at an M&M"