Slowman wrote:
i'll be publishing on this over the weekend. the point of drills like this, and banded ankles, is not what you might think at face value. when i have you swim these 1-arm pulls, it's not to strengthen your pull, or to concentrate on your hand's course through the water. nothing like that. my aim is to expose a disconnection between your pull, your breathing, your kicking. a very good swimmer will perform one arm drills without losing any momentum in the water. adult onset swimmers stall in the water when doing these.
what i'm trying to expose is that stall. now, look, maybe i misinterpret this, but when i read very good swimmers talk about "hip driven freestyle" as opposed to "shoulder driven freestyle" what i *think* i'm reading about hip-driven is a kicking pattern strategically employed to carry your momentum forward in between your pulls. this keeps your momentum from coming to a halt in between your pulls.
this is what i'm hoping to get to with these 1-arm pulls. remember, my interest is not in the had you're pulling with. it's with the other hand. the one near the surface, straight in front of you. if you need to scull with that hand that means you've lost your forward momentum and you're looking for some way to keep going. when you can do these drills without sculling, that means you've found a way to keep your momentum in between pulls.
when you band your ankles, again, my issue here is not to try to work on arm propulsion or any propulsion. it's to expose that leg splay you do when you kick, and you do that leg splay because you jackknife or twist at the waist when you breathe, and you splay your legs to keep your balance. when you band your ankles together this exposes that stroke flaw. you'll start fishtailing. by all means, put a pull buoy between your legs to keep your legs afloat. this isn't the inquisition. the idea is not to pull your joints out of their sockets until you confess. when you band your ankles and
discover that you fishtail, you'll have learned something about how you swim. your job is simply to make a change that stops that fishtailing. so, you have 2 "jobs" in these two drills: in the 1-arm drill your job is to perform that drill with your off hand still, immobile, and near the surface. your job with banded ankles (that drill is upcoming) is to swim without fishtailing.
if you have a hard time performing either or both of these drills the way i describe, then you should rejoice! it's like getting the labwork back and finding out that you have a particular disease. much better to know the disease instead of trudging along year after year knowing there's something very wrong with you and not knowing what to do about it. now we know your swim disease, and it makes it much easier now to solve it.
I don't fishtail. my legs just sink. If this has already been covered please point me in the right direction, I swim faster with the buoy than with kicking, so I'm guessing I have some drag. I just can't figure out how to get my legs higher in the water. I feel like I'm breaking the surface with my kick, but if I don't kick, I sink.
Thanks
Nancy