Trying to think of what might cause fishtailing a couple things come to mind. Imagine a line down the center of your body that extends in front of you as you swim. On your hand entry or extension are your hands crossing the line to the other side. This may cause it. You should extend out but without crossing this center line. Another question is how much are you rolling on your recovery. If you aren't rolling enough you may be bending your spine slightly, instead of twisting. If you stand and reach as high as you can without twisting you will lean a little to the other side. Now this this time reach and instead of bending twist your reaching shoulder to 45* from your hips. This should straighten your spine. It still twists but is not bent as much. I could see you fishtailing if you're swimming too flat.

Without seeing it though, very hard to say.

there was a thread a couple weeks ago about twisting or rolling during the stroke that might help. I don't post much but did there so you could search my posts.

Tim

Disclaimer: I am not a coach, and I have never seen you swim.

From watching people at the pool, my experience is that the majority of people who fishtail have an arm recovery that involves letting their hand sweep well out to the side on recovery. I think it is more common on the non-breathing side. I suppose it is another reason to learn bilateral breathing as the one sided breathers often have very asymmetrical strokes.

If this is the case, a good cure is the finger/knuckle dragging drill. Swim 50 yd easy, on recovery drag the finger tips/ back of the fingers across the surface of the water. This requires you to keep your elbows up, and your hand close to the side of your body.

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Behold the turtle! He makes progess only when he sticks his neck out. (James Bryant Conant)
GET OFF THE F*%KING WALL!!!!!!! (Doug Stern)
Brevity is the soul of wit. (William Shakespeare)

Tri-Yoda,

Go back to one of my posts on "the biggest little error in swimming." It will give you some insight into the problem.

DougStern

a wild guess, but if you are just starting bilateral breathing, you might be looking behind you when you breath, especially on the new side, which could cause a fisthtail.

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Jago
"Slow... but mellow"

Try the old "swimming with the kickboard between the knees" drill. Sort of limits rotation but definitely limits fishtailing. I saw a few 10-year-olds did it for a few hundred yards a couple weeks ago at swim practice. Made it look easy.

Is it DougStern approved? I don't know.

Good morning Tri_yoda,

Good to hear you are making some headway with your shift over to Bilateral Breathing and that it seems to be working for you. We've just had a huge and (hopefully) interesting discussion about bilateral breathing on the UK Triathlon Chat Forum "TRI TALK". Here's the direct link to the start of the thread for your interest - http://www.tritalk.co.uk/...mp;highlight=#198290 and I also have an archive of the thread and others available at http://www.swimsmooth.com/articles.htm#ART for your swimming improvement, hope this is of benefit to you.

With respect to the fish-tailing, there are already some great pieces of advice on this thread and whilst I haven't yet read Doug's post, I'm trying to locate that as we speak. On the thread mentioned above there are a host of drills which you will find about how to correct this quite common phenomenon. In a nutshell though Tri_yoda I would suggest that an area of your stroke that you may need to address could be that body roll around the axis of your spine (I usually ask my swimmers to imagine themselves speared on a kebab-stick as crude as that sounds!!). Sometimes when we think we roll, we might not be initiating this rotation from the hips / core quite as well as what we should. Imagine a 2-truck vehicle travelling down the freeway and developing a bit of a "speed-wobble" between the front and rear carriage through the coupling in the middle. Imagine this coupling as your abdominals or "core". If this coupling is weak or not 'connected' correctly (through thinking about it), you might find that even though you are trying to roll effectively through the water, you are in effect 'snaking' through the hips instead. Core work on the land will help you with this, but from past experience even some very able athletes who have a good appreciation of core control on the land do not transfer this effectively into swimming in the pool. As such functional core drills as mentioned on the UK Thread (e.g. the Corpse Kick drill) will help you to connect through your abs a little more effectively. Likewise, as mentioned by "rufus" any cross-over at the front of the stroke or looking back behind you when you breathe etc will throw you off too. A really good drill that you might like to try both for your bilateral development and for your core rotation is the "Unco Drill" as described at http://www.tritalk.co.uk/...mp;highlight=#192867 - this is a great coordination exercise despite the irony of its name.

Finally, another good visualization exercise for you is the Smarties Tube Drill. I'm originally from the UK and know their confectionary / sweets (very) well, but have spent the last 4 years swim and tri coaching in Australia. I'm now in Canada (Toronto) and as such my knowledge and understanding of the US sweeties market is not the best so please bare with me here!! Anyway, in the UK they have these sugar-coated chocolate sweets called Smarties which come in a long thin tube and are very tasted. Whilst they aren't going to make you swim straighter (!), trying to visualize your body wedged inside one of these tubes may. You could also imagine a super-long 'empty' toilet tissue roll in case you're thinking what is this guy on about?! Now imagine you've climbed inside that tube so that only your head, neck, shoulders and arms are protruding from the top. Your whole trunk, core and legs are within the tube. When you push off into your next length of freestyle, I want you to conciously think about rolling your hips to initiate that body roll effectively. As you're stuck inside the tube, there should be no opportunity for the hips to wiggle or snake from side-to-side, thus preventing any fish-tailing occuring. This should also encourage to really think about lengthening out through your abdominals as though you are a stick of liquourice being stretched from either end. Before you ask, no I'm not addicted to sweets and chocolate, just sometimes they can be a useful training "aid" for visualization.

Well Tri_yoda, hope this helps a little bit. I strongly recommend reading through that thread about bilateral breathing if you get a chance and if you have any questions please feel free to email me. Likewise though, please keep us all posted on Slow Twitch with how you progress with limiting that fish tail.

Kind regards

Paul

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Check out our amazing animated swimmer Mr Smooth - visualise an 'ideal' freestyle stroke: www.swimsmooth.com

Thanks for the tip Doug. I actually have a prinout of that post. I think my problem lies in the lower part of my body of my body.

As others have mentioned the "crossover" I think I corrected that on the entry based on being videotaped (until then I did not realize I did it). I am also definitely getting my elbow high out of the water on the recovery (hnad enters, then arm, elbow last). I think the problem must lie in my body roll or else I may be breaking past the center plane as I pull through on my stroke, even though I think my entry is okay.



Just need to keep plugging away.

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"When I first had the opportunity to compete in triathlon, it was the chicks and their skimpy race clothing that drew me in. Everyone was so welcoming and the lifestyle so obviously narcissistic. I fed off of that vain energy. To me it is what the sport is all about."

Tri,

Remember, your lower half of your body balances out theupper half. If you are fistailing it is a arm or head problem. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you get video taped again lay it back in stop action. As soon as you see your hips go check out your head and are position.

DougStern

Damn...Triyoda is working on his swim. There goes my "not so secret advantage". Matt, this is good, keep it up.

The band drills that the guys talked about in my other thread seem to also help. Also noticed that if I hold my head straight and don't lift it up to breath (just turn it on the side like my body is on the sheesh-kebab skewer like the other poster mentioned), then the fishtailing decreases.

I guess Slowman really got us all going about how lame we swim compared to bike-run...

Dev "fellow fishtailing" poser