wetronome

Yeah, a water metronone (I use the Finis) and this:

http://www.swimsmooth.com/slowsr.html

Good luck...I'm having my own swimming issues right now :-(

Sorry but a metronome sounds like a typical triathlete answer, i.e. a gadget is the answer.

Hard to say without a video but try this:
Out front, enter your hand/forearm earlier and steeper which will make it easier to grab an earlier catch.

Thank you....that's why I said drills, thoughts or mantras. The metronome may very well work, but swim coaches were correcting overgliding long before the metronome and I'm not a gadget geek. Too bad I had one of the coaches who latched on to gliding!

I'm not a great swimmer but I definitely get lazy and glide sometimes. The mental key for me is "always be pulling" kindof a spin-off in my head of Glengarry Glen Ross.

Faster turnover, always be pulling and voila no more gliding.

Good luck.

Yea I have tried simply increasing my stroke rate, but I start slipping and my stroke falls apart with a lame catch. I need to slow this mo fo down and get myself to a point where I'm propelling myself 100% of the time and then crank up the volume. Or at least that's the way it makes sense to me....wish I had a real swim coach dangit!

Well then...Look up the Dave Scott videos, or Evanscoaching videos on youtube. They have some "quick catch" drills. I am still trying to correct that freakin glide crap from years ago while using total immersion techniques.

As soon as you hand enter the water think finger tips down.

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And the wetronome is a device that a swim coach thought up becasue he/she was tired of standing on deck with a stroke rate watch only able to focus on one swimmer at a time.


Not this.

Head-up freestyle. This pretty much forces you to pop the hand in the water and get grabbin. It also, in my opinion, helps to develop a high elbow, prevents over-rotation, and possibly cures acne and chronic halitosis.

If you are real bad-ass, you will do it with a dolphin kick. This will make you post up on the "cry like a little biatch" thread, but also does wonders for eliminating the dead spots, forcing proper timing, and preventing over-rotation.

regards,
r.b.

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Bringing you Tweets @ http://twitter.com/findfreestyle and Not just a bunch of drills - A Process.

That is why a wetronome is the perfect tool for you. You have no coach on deck and we the internet don't really have all the facts about your stroke. Stoke rate is not just about "increase/decrease", it's about the rate that you and your personal stroke are best at. Using a wetronome to do a proper stroke rate test set will give you a guide to exactly what stoke rate is best. Once you have that, you can set up the workouts around being able to hold that stroke rate for longer sets or less rest or faster speed etc.

This is all assuming that "overgliging" is your one and only issue (most likely its not) but based on what we have from this thread, the wetronome used properly is going to be your best option IMO as a swim coach.

Boy, this sounds familiar. A bit of TI in your past? Catch-up drills? If you spent a lot of time building the "glide" (stall) into your stroke, it will take a long time undoing it. Somewhere I read about a "kayaking" drill where you think of your arms like a kayak paddle. I will be eagerly awaiting the swim coaches responses.

Edited to add: You might also try the band around your ankles. If you don't keep pulling your legs tend to sink.

I think some of the comments are slightly off-base.

Stroke timing and stroke rate are different things that are tangentially related.

You mention "over"gliding. Gliding has almost nothing to do with when you make your catch, it has everything to do with your recovery.

When you say gliding I immediately think of a person who finishes a stroke and then glides with one arm in front and one arm behind, neither arm moving. So you have a hesitation, between the end of your stroke and the beginning of your recovery.

Or the beginning of your recovery is VERY slow.

THIS is what needs to be fixed if you are gliding. Your catch isn't the part that needs fixing. You can exhibit a glide no matter when you make your catch. You can swim catch up style with a glide, you can swim catch up without a glide, your hand comes out and immediately start s a brisk recovery - yet you can still swim catch up style.

You can swim windmill style with a glide as well. your arms can be in complete opposition and your hand pauses between the end of your pull and recovery. The stroke timing, or catch timing and gliding are not the same thing.

The fix, a beeper will help. The one from finis works fine and is available at just about every swim shop online.

But the main fix is with you, you need to swim and concentrate that after your finish your pull you immediately begin your recovery. No pause there at all.

For me, like every other small technique fix like this. I like to have people start with 25s, then once they can concentrate on one thing for 25, move to 50s, then 100s, 200s and 400s concentrating on that one thing.

But that is the thing, work on removing the delay between the end of your stroke and the beginning of your recovery.

One of my drills is an exaggerated push as the hand passes the torso and the hip. This forces the hand to come out of the water faster so that my other arm will move a bit quicker to keep the stroke rhythm going.

That's it! The more I think about it this is my guilty area....lingering around the back end and not getting that are back up front and put to work! Thanks.

I've done quite a bit of reading on this as of late...Seems the consensus is that once the lead hand enters the water it should never stop moving...Point fingers toward bottom of pull, grab/catch water, pull, etc. So, you have to get the timing down so the recovering hand gets into proper position as all of this is going on.

Plus, seems the new consensus is that the pulling hand doesn't really need to pull much further back than the beltline as there is not much propulsion advantage past that. Making too long of a pull could be leaving your forwar hand hanging, waiting for the recovering hand to catch up.

I stand by my recommendation to view the Dave Scott and Evans Coaching videos on Youtube.

As a side not, after years and years of never getting past 1:35/100, I'm having a priviate session with a well known local coach this weekend. It's kinda like playing guitar...Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. I'm not upping any yardage till I get my errors on their way to be corrected. There's too low of a return on investment otherwise.

And, you will probably find that if you correct any flaws, you will go faster on the same yardage because you have increased the efficacy of the stroke. Someone mentioned the kayak, it would be as if you were going 1:35 only using 2/3 of the paddle blade. If you use all the blade, you'll go faster for the same effort.

John

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That's what I'm hoping for anyway. Thanks.

Assuming your hand enters the water far enough in front of you to be effective. Entering just in front of your shoulder and starting your pull immediately is not good.

Good luck with your private lesson.

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A good drill to "speed up" the arms is to put on your fins and do some 25yd sprints. The fins will really increase your speed and will force a self-correction of the dead spots in your stroke. Swim some normal 50's after a set of 10 25's with fins. You should notice a difference in your stroke. Repeat this process over a few weeks, and it should start to become more natural to you.

Amazing post!

But please, - don't bring reason into the tri-athlete's fetish to use technology to avoid actually doing hard work.

And please, don't ever mention spending time in the weight room. That will really rile things up.

Best answers have probably already come, but one of the keys for improving my stroke rate was improving my kick. Not necessarily my kick rate, but my kick/stroke timing. Once I had that settled, I found it easier to increase my stroke rate as my kick sped up.