Yay, a swim improvement thread!

Immediately obvious, you're dropping your elbow quite a bit (I put in that phrase just for Darkspeedworks, just embracing my inner troll today ;-)

I will explain though. You see at the beginning of your stroke at the catch, your elbow is moving down before your hand? you really want the opposite, get your hand and down first.

try to not reach as deep. you're losing leverage. You want your elbow to form a (roughly) 120-100 degree angle at the meaty part of the pull.

Don't worry too much about the finsh of the stroke. There's not a ton of propulsion there, since the forearm is no longer perpendicular.

those are the couple of things that jump out. I like your body position overall, legs are up and I don't see a ton of drag from them. There are some things you can do with timing your kick with your arms better, I think.

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It's been proven (scientifically) time and time AND time again that knowing how to do flip turns improve efficiency.

Thanks Jason. Elbow is indeed also an attention point raised by my coach. Really like your tip of not reaching so far. Did not think of it that way before. Thanks!

In addition to what Jason said, looks to me like you are turning too much when breathing. Try to keep one goggle under the water, and look right along the water surface.

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Very helpful Adrian, thank you.

+1

The obvious improvement area is fixing the dropped elbows. Overall your stroke looks good.

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OP, I looked pretty similar a year ago. To help the elbow drop issue I did a few things

(1) Increase flexibility - I had super tight lats and shoulders. Spent a fair amount of time hanging and stretching with a strap to help my arms reach full extension through the lats/armpit upon hand entry.

(2) Hand entry - your hand enters the water pretty close to your head, which creates a downward angle so your arm dives down when you extend. Try to think about not letting that hand hit the water until it's a few inches further out in front of you.

+1 for embracing your inner troll. ;-) I hear you're known for it.

I have many pet trolls, so I am all good with that !

So a few things:

- Your body position is not too bad.

- Do not bilaterally breath. Instead, breath every full stroke cycle, but be able to do this on your left side AND also on your right side.

- Your head is a bit low, lower than it needs to be (and this adds unnecessary drag). But don't "lift" your head to fix this, but instead angle it slightly more ahead. So, instead of looking at the pool bottom under you, look a bit ahead of you on the pool bottom.

- Spread open your hands so that all of your fingers have about (on average) 5-10mm between them, depending on big your hand is: huge hands can afford a bit more space between each finger than smaller hands. This will greatly expands the size of your paddles.

- Do not swim with a watch, never race with a watch.

- You don't need to rotate your head as much as you do to breath, really only 1 eye needs to be out of the water and your mouth should be barely, barely above the water surface. You end up breathing below the surface of the water, because your moving face creates a little 'pocket' that is actually below the average water surface of the pool.

- Your pull is where the biggest issue is. Instead of getting your forearm vertical as soon as possible (which is a good set up for a solid pull), you are instead "sliding" your arm back (with the elbow kind of leading) so you do not get a full amount of 'purchase' in the water. How to fix this? Look at youtube and search "early vertical forearm" or variants of this. EVF will help you tremendously. I have no idea who this guy is, but his explanation of it is not too bad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6952cAAXHFk


I could offer more useful feedback if you can get a video of yourself from above the water (1) from the side and (as best as possible) (2) from above. Swim in a wall lane and have the video person film from the side and then from above while he/she walks alongside you swimming.

Good luck,
Greg @ dsw

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In addition to the comments regarding dropping you elbow on the catch, it also looks like you are feathering your right hand just after the catch, releasing pressure on it. As you will be working on the high elbows, and keeping your hand closer to your chest, also make sure that your hand stays perpendicular to your body from the catch to when it is withdrawn; especially when you are tired.

I think I say this to everyone, pull some more water. That was like 25 strokes for 25m. A few others have already hit on it, but after hand entry before you start pulling and your arm is Horizontal with the bottom of the pool(more or less) sweep your hand kind of out and down and really grab onto the water, and not just let it slide backwards following your elbow like everybody else has said. It’s almost like trying to grab the water and pull yourself up and over your hand....if that makes sense. Also liken it to a one handed pull up. You need to use all the muscle in your upper body to pull yourself forward... Biceps, triceps, traps, delts, lats, pecks, etc....not just kind of moving your hand through the water.

Adding Video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SONx52cyltI

Greg....am interested in your advice to not swim with a watch. Can you elaborate? I always train with a watch and our squad uses Finis tempo trainers as well for cycle times etc. I find I get decent value out of the watch as it gives me good information about what I am doing intervals in and rest periods. Yes, I know you can get all of that information from the pace clock but it is not always so easy at the pool I swim at. Was just interested in the rationale for your advice.

The watch creates drag.

Nevertheless, I always wear a watch so I can make sure I see the times.

Oooohhhh... So that's why I'm slow!!! Between that and my bubbles.... 10 or 20s/100y?

Pink is up to you....

I am glad that is the reason....
What are we talking per 100m....can't be more than a second or two??
I would try it one of these days but then would need someone else to properly time my laps!!

A watch might slow you down 0.2 seconds per 100 yards.

I’m starting to think someone hacked his account a week or so back

He used to be a nice guy selling bento boxes but lately he’s posting very aggressively and will such silly things

First, I agree with Tom....way too many bubbles!


I think focusing on one thing at a time is enough. Your one thing should be the catch. Get your fingers/forearm pointed towards the bottom as quickly as possible and for as long as possible. The key is moving more water. You need to find a visual that works for you, but I like to imagine my forearm is flat against a wall and I am pushing/pulling myself forward.

I know, I am very inflexible as well ;) This is chasing me in all three disciplines in triathlon but guess I still need to put more effort in this. Thanks for your tips!

Hi DarkSpeedWorks, thanks a lot for your extensive feedback! Really appriciated. See below some follow-up questions and comments.



Why is this? I always got taught when I just started that bilateral breading is the best. Maybe this differs for pool versus open water swimming?


Woah, this is very new to me. All my trainers all kept on pushing me to close my fingers as I always used to have them open. Is it most common to open your fingers or are you just from a different school? :)


Thanks and agreed with the above. These are my biggest flaws and guess I will be going to put a lot of effort in this coming weeks.


More feedback would be much appriciated. On (1) do you mean something different than the last part of the first video? Thought that is already from the side above the water. For (2), see my start post, I have added another video from above. Also uploaded another video from the other side of the swim under water and front the front underwater just in case.

Now that you mention, I see this as well. Thanks. Will need to think of a lot when improving my catch:)

Just to feedback re a few things:
1. Bilateral breathing: most people will recommend that you have the ability to breathe to both sides when required. But, you are likely to find when swimming at pace breathing to a preferred side every stroke cycle is likely to be better in many ways. Just make sure you can breathe to both sides etc as you never quite know when in a race you will be forced to only breathe to one side.
2. Re leaving a small gap between fingers: basically it has been shown that by leaving a small gap (but not too large), you essentially increase the overall surface area of your fingers and hands, meaning you have a bigger paddle to grab water with and propel yourself forwards. Therefore ideally you should aim to have your fingers ever so slightly spread open.

(Fyi, this watch suggestion is meant for very fast, excellent, decent, medium, and slow swimmers. But if you're an elite, world-class swimmer or make a good living (better than $100,000 USD salary per year) as a professional triathlete, then you probably don't need to worry about this.)

To start, I have nothing against watches or time keeping (well, as long as it is not super obsessive). But in my many years of swimming, there seems to be a connection between swimmers who have a poor to dreadful stroke and swimmers who insist on wearing a giant watch while swimming. And, sure, the watch adds some drag. For example, in a 2.4 mile swim, a relatively decent swimmer will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,700 swim stroke cyles (plus/minus).

So if you have big honkin' watch on one of your wrists, you will be plunging that arm and that watch into the water almost 3,000 times. Will that take extra energy? Absolutely, yes. Will that add to your swim time? Yes. By how much? Who knows. I am a decent swimmer, but I would rather not lose a single second when I am racing. If that means I don't wear a watch in the water, no worries on my part.

Then, for most people who are working on fixing their strokes, they often struggle to get a better feel for the water, not to create excess unnecessary turbulence, to improve efficiency, to get faster, and to get better left-right stroke symmetry. Strapping a brick on to one of your wrists harms all of those efforts. Having a watch on your wrist while swimming makes almost as much sense as putting a watch around one of your ankles while running, or around one of your tires while biking.

If you need to keep track of time in the pool, just look at the regular clock or pace clock at your pool, or just put the watch on the pool deck at the end of your lane. Problem solved.

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Also this. https://www.instagram.com/p/B7CbjJlhIP6/

No worries, glad to help.

Also, please do not take any of my suggestions without checking them. Don't believe what any coaches (including me) tell you, always check for yourself. There are 1000s of great videos on the web of extraordinarily fast swimmers that you can closely study and observe. If most of them are not doing what a coach suggests, then in all likelihood the coach is mistaken. However, when you do your research, there is a big and important caveat, don't study 6'7'' (2 meter) tall swimmers who are racing the 50m free. Instead, study swimmers similar in height to you that are doing distance freestyle racing, so the 800m, 1000m, 1500m, etc. And you can also study videos of ITU triathletes swimming 1500m in open water, those are excellent as well.


Yes, it is good to have the skill to breath on both sides. But "bilateral breathing" (breathing every 1.5 stroke cycles) will not give you sufficent oxygen for extended distance swimming at high speed. Nearly all fast swimmers breath every left arm cycle (or every right arm cycle) both in open water and in the pool when racing distance events. Although many of them can (and do) switch sides occasionally (or often) while swimming. (You can confirm this info for yourself if you research online, but consider the caveats that I mention in the top paragraph above.)


Maybe your coaches told you this because you had your hands fully open? If not, your coaches are mistaken. You should NOT clamp your fingers together. You should have your hand mostly closed, but you should have a few mm between all of your fingers. In your case, probably around 5mm (plus/minus). (You can confirm this info for yourself if you research online, but consider the caveats that I mention in the top paragraph above.)


The video you posted from above is very helpful. Then main thing I see there is that your arm entry is way way too close to your body centerline. You need your arms to enter the water, not along your body's centerline, but instead along the centerline of that shoulder (for the left arm, use the left shoulder as a "centerline" / for the right arm, use the right shoulder as a "centerline"). This means that each arm should enter the water at least 1 foot (30 cm) further toward the outside than you are currently doing now. (You can confirm this info for yourself if you research online, but consider the caveats that I mention in the top paragraph above.)

Keep on swimming,
Greg

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Yikes.

The best reason yet ...

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Yup. Couple of weeks ago I smacked wrists with one of the ladies in my lane, hard. She thought she broke it. I imagine it would have been a lot worse if I was wearing a watch.

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I love wearing a watch when I swim. Tracks my distance, I can record test sets when swimming & refer back to them weeks, months, & years later.

Thanks a lot again. I am aware that there are of course many different schools in swimming. Nevertheless, your reasoning is very clear and helpful. Will also discuss these points with my swim coach and lets work on it :) Cheers!

One more question I had. I often hear my body position is quite good already but nevertheless, I swim a lot easier - and often faster- with a pullboay. Looking at my video's, can anyone tell me what could possibly be the reason for this?

I think it’s because, like most AOS, your kick isn’t that good. You’re not able to point your toes, so when you kick as much as you are doing in the video, that actually increases drag. (Plus that much kicking generally isn’t great for a distance swimmer or triathlete) The trick for you is going to be learning to keep your legs up without kicking so much, which is admittedly less of an issue for wetsuit swims. But I do think it’s good to have that skill for non-wetsuit swims.

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Allright, was suspecting this already :) Another point on the list. Thanks!

Thx. I had the same feeling lately. body position isnt too bad for my pace but still the difference with /without PB is massive.

So then...: No skipping "leg day" anymore... Damn :-) Should have asked santa for flexible ankles instead of a new PB I guess,,,

In the top view, you can see the OP's hand entering in front of his head, rather than in front of his shoulders. The first arm movement is to the outside to get them in the correct position to start the catch/pull. You'll also note that the OP has a good bit of foot/leg splaying (that causes drag). I would bet that these two things are connected: correct the hand entry, and the leg splaying will diminish.

To the OP: I'd like to see a video of you with a narrow, two-beat (possibly with a crossover) kick. This kick should be just for timing, and not for propulsion. Really just like not kicking at all. I'll predict that you can't keep your feet within a foot (pun not intended) of each other and/or your legs drop.

To me, a "strong kick" for an endurance swimmer means your legs don't cause drag.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Look at the video from above, and note how far apart your feet are (from side to side) when kicking. I'm guessing that you don't do that when you have a pullbuoy (else you would lose the pull buoy), and this reduces leg drag quite a bit. You may be using your large, inefficient (for kicking) leg/butt muscles to kick in order to keep your legs horizontal, which is a lot harder than using the correct muscles in tension to maintain high legs.

Here's a screen grab of your video from above. Draw a line from your right foot to your hip to your shoulder to your hand. That line should be straight, and yours has a serious curve to it. You are snaking through the water. Move your hand entry to be in front of your shoulder (think about 10 o'clock and 2 o'clock), and this will go away, and your legs won't splay.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I agree. I made that comment before the OP added the top view video. It's a lot easier to see what's going on in that one.

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Thank you klehner! Really helpful feedback and thanks for the visual analysis as well :) I guess I will focus on improving my front a lot the coming months: first improve my EVF and directly after that hand entry in straight line with my shoulder. Lets see how much this already fixes my legs problem and continue to work from thereon.

Look at this video. Note the following things:

1) in the shots from above: look at where his arm is at full extension. You can draw a straight line from his hand, through his shoulder, through his hip, to his foot. Especially obvious when his arm is directly over the black line
2) in the underwater shots (like around 8:00 in), look at his leg position. Almost no kick, but feet are at the surface, and his knees are at or higher than the level of his hips (his hip flexibility is good, and he's using his back/butt/hamstring to keep his legs high)
3) look at everyone's head position, and find me someone who *isn't* looking forward, as opposed to at the bottom of the pool
4) look at the EVF. No, you can't do it as well as he can, but it's the aspirational goal.

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Coaches or teachers that say that there are "many different schools" in swimming are leading you in the wrong direction. Because it is a misleading statement that's little more than a cover for ignorance. Yes, there is sprint swimming technique and there is distance swimming technique and there are significant differences between the two (for example, like in running, an elite marathoner looks very different--for good reason--in the way he/she runs than does an elite 100m sprinter). And also, in the subset of distance swimming, there are also some differences between the swim technique of racers that swim 1500m in glass-smooth pools vs those that swim 10,000m in the ocean with big waves. But all of these differences are not due to "different schools" of swimming. No, they are due to the laws that govern all movement: the laws of physics.

Because there is only ONE school in fast swimming and that is the one supported by EVIDENCE. What kind of evidence? Well, if you truly observe closely how exactly many athetes swim very fast in distance events, patterns become very easy to see. Because easily 95% to 99% of distance swimmers do almost exactly the same thing technique-wise. (Yes, there is a tiny bit of variation, but that is because all people are slightly different, shorter people swim a bit differently from taller people, women swim a bit differently from men because of body morphology, some people have different limb lengths and some have different flexibility, etc.). So, don't follow "schools", just follow the evidence. 1000x more information is available to you than was available to swimmers only a few years ago. Use it to verify everything that people tell you here or at your local pool. Knowledge is power.


About your body position (visible from the top), I think others have covered it fairly well. If it helps, most people can swim a bit faster with a pull buoy, but with swimmers that have a worse body position, the pull buoy helps them a lot more. The better your body position becomes, the less the pull buoy helps you. More specifically for you, if you fix your arm entry (as I covered in my earlier post) and get your kick closer together, other things will start correcting themselves on their own. For distance swimming, you should be kicking very lightly, just for buoyancy, and your legs should be close to together, streamlined and close enough that your big toes lightly brush against each other fairly often during kicking.

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You are right and this is what I actually meant. Thanks again for all your help!