First of all congratulations you are doing quite well for starting as an adult , it's not easy learning a finesse sport once you get past the teenage years.

I would agree with your analysis for the most part but I would add (with equal importance) that you are missing some propulsion from your core. I see good arm movement but not enough wind up and release that comes from "leading with your hip" as you enter the pull. Think of pairing your right arm with your left hip. As you start the right hand catch your shoulders and to a lesser extent your hips are tilted down to the right, your left hip should rotate down just before the right hand pulls through in the power phase. Just like throwing a punch or a baseball it all starts with the hips.

Brenton Ford has a YouTube channel that is worth looking at (that's where I got the advice above). He calls it "The Serape Effect" for the Mexican garment that crosses your shoulder to your opposing hip. Turns out I had already been doing it but when I started thinking about it in the water it made sense to work on it to improve my stroke. I can also say it lessens the wear and tear on my aging rotator cuff too.

https://www.youtube.com/...eXneqNktkY1ijItuKFBQ

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

Not too bad, position-wise. Even though your stroke needs work, you're going pretty fast because your legs are up.

Things to work on -

1. You're setting your hands softly into the water, like a kitten tapping at a weird bug. Instead, throw your arms forward hard and commit to the entry (towards the far wall, of course). Not using the forward throw is a big loss of potential momentum
2. Part of the goodness of throwing your overhand arm harder is that gives you more leverage to anchor against with your pulling arm. If you throw a baseball, notice how you rotate your shoulders and throw your other arm in the opposite direction as a counterweight.
3. Basically, pull harder and use the throw of your above-water arm as the counterweight to get it done.
4. You're kinda swimming wide, looks like you could slice through the water more like a kayak by rotating and stretching out between strokes instead of plowing like a barge by laying so flat.
5. So throw the baseball, extend and glide to milk it for the momentum, then do it on the other side. Keep repeating for weeks until you get the smoothness and timing down so your cadence is just as fast or faster than what you used to do.
6. Profit.

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Totally agree with this.
Your hand entry is super soft, be aggressive, spear down into the water more and not near the surface.
You lack some real oomph to your pull, be more aggressive.
You are stopping short in the stroke somewhat, more of a marginal gain but pushing back further may have your arm coming into a better recovery position. At the moment your arm recovery is very low, which is fine for the pool but not always good in the open water.
Awesome results to date given you can go 32 mins in a 70.3 swim, I foresee some sub 30 min times in your future with a few months work...

Agree with what others have pointed out. More rotation from your core and get full extension of your arm before beginning the catch (these two go together).

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ECMGN Therapy Silicon Valley:
Depression, Neurocognitive problems, Dementias (Testing and Evaluation), Trauma and PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

Thanks everyone! Will try to be more aggressive on my recovery and extension as well. Lots of stuff to think about now and try out in the pool over the next few weeks and months. Will try to remember to come back with some updated videos in a couple of months and see how things have gone.

I would go along with the others advice, but also relax your hands. It looks like you are holding them stiff and together, let them relax when you throw them, and have your fingers apart just a tiny bit. Also you should look back on your breathing, you are lifting your head a bit forward. That will help with body position too..

What others said + relax your hand. You look like you're forcefully trying to keep all your fingers together. Tension in the hand translates to tension in the forearm and so on.... Could be the reason why your arm entry looks so segmented.

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What's your CdA?

Something clicked for me today at the pool. I finished my main set with a 4x100 (SCY) at 1:21 average (leave on 1:35). This is 3 or 4 seconds faster per hundred than I've been doing them before and at an RPE that was on par with, if not easier than, before. Watching some of those youtube videos you linked really helped and one thing that resonated with me was him calling the pull phase, the power phase. To me that meant it should be a distinctly different effort level than the catch phase. Catch = set-up, pull = power. The bullets below are some notes for myself to help me remember what it felt like I was doing..

• The catch is a finesse move, not a power move. This was my major takeaway today. Previously, I think I was trying to force the catch and apply power too early in the stroke, wasting energy and keeping me from getting fully vertical with my forearm. Don't apply the power yet, easy movement to get the fingertips down AND the forearm down. Feels a bit like shrugging and soft tossing the elbow forward at the same time.
• An easy kick downwards from the catching side foot at the same time as the shrug/elbow toss helped to maintain balance during the catch. Keeps legs up and sets off the hip roll for the opposite side recovery. This also lines up with another of the youtube videos where he talks about initiating the power phase with a roll from the opposite side hip.
• Balance the power/pull with a strong recovery from the other side, leading with the hips. Also use a larger whip kick from the recovery side leg during the pull. The kick followed from the hip roll and oomph was timed w/ recovery hand entry and heart of the power phase.

All of that together, it felt very rhythmic today, like I was skipping or galloping in the water. I think that means I've got a couple of dead spots I can work on smoothing out over time.

Back to the pool on Friday to see if I can replicate the feeling.

I love it when a plan comes together!


Something that I picked up the other day was that delaying the power phase seems like you're catching less water but what's missing is that effort was directed down not back (with all the predictable undesirable results). Saving that energy for the sweep back is a lot more efficient but it feels like less is going on at first.

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"They know f_ck-all over at Slowtwitch"
- Lionel Sanders

"Critique my Stroke (Please!)"


There is a joke there somewhere.

19 months later, it's time for a refresh. I have spent some a lot of time on the EVF and a spearing entry and recently I've been focusing on USRPT work (25s @ 100 pace and 50s @ 200 pace) and finishing the stroke back past the hip. I think it's help recently as I've had a recent PRs by several seconds in the 100 (1:12 scy), 200 (2:34 scy) and 400 (5:26 scy). Previous numbers from early 2020 were 1:14, 2:41 and 5:36.

I'm happy with the progress but I know there's still room for improvement.

I think I see my arm going wide after the catch and my hand takes a "C" shaped path and there's room for improvement on getting my forearm vertical earlier. I'm at a loss if those are even my limiters or if there's something else I should be working on. Please let me know what you see.

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