klehner wrote:
Slowman wrote:
you are going to be so much faster if you can generate a reasonable facsimile of a proper extend phase, and if you can reorient the timing of your arm action, where both hands are in front of your head at the same time instead of both hands being behind your head at the same time.
That sounds like a generalization that is not applicable to all swimmers. It certainly isn't applicable to me. A longer extension is counterproductive if the swimmer is not very hydrodynamic or does not have any kick propulsion: there's no thrust going on and lots of drag. If you aren't pulling or kicking, you are slowing down. Every good swimmer I've seen with a catch-up stroke (which is what you advocate) has outstanding body position during the glide phase. I regularly swim with a guy who had the fastest amateur (and second fastest overall by :05) swim split at Lake Placid one year, and he swims nothing like that (he's also somewhat short).
You never did respond to why your legs necessarily sink (as opposed to your whole body) when you raise your head.
While you are educating me, perhaps you can explain how using ankle bands helps a swimmer whose legs sink.
Are you joking? The answer to those questions is so obvious, that I certainly hope you're joking.
But just in the off-chance you're not trolling and actually don't know the answer to those questions (hard for me to believe given your swim speed, but then again, you were one of those folks for whom fast AOS swimming came to in <1yr of effort):
- Swim a 1000m Tarzan/Weismuller style head-full out of the water, and get back to us as to how much harder you had to kick to maintain a flat body position because your legs were sinking.
- If you're a 'leg sinker', and are using kicking to keep your legs up (instead of properly using good body position), the ankle band will expose that weakness (no kicking), and then you can go about fixing it. And I'm one of those quad-heavy guys (I seriously look like T-rex genetically; legpress 1000+lbs on a leg press machine with no weight training at 145 bodyweight) so if I can do the ankle band swim even with quads like mine, anyone can do it.