Just a couple things I noticed right off the bat

-Elbows are decently high, but pull is very wide and outside of your body line. Try to keep within your shoulder line
-Body position is not terrible. Head down and pointed toes while kicking will help
-You are taking 21 strokes per 25 yards, which is a lot and means you're not pulling much water with each stroke (or you have excess drag). I take about 11-12 for reference

On that last point, you probably need to focus on the push phase and really accelerating the last bit of your stroke. Shorter, higher-intensity repeats can help reinforce this feeling. Track your strokes and experiment with different techniques that get that stroke count under 20 while not sacrificing cadence.

Hope that helps-

---

Strava

For only swimming for 3yrs, you have a good stroke! Try focusing on entering your hands wider, which will shorten the front end of your stroke more and should feel more 'punchy'. Other than that, just keep swimming. It takes a long time to get really good at swimming so remember it's only been 3yrs. :-)

one of the big things I see is that you aren't really using your core, it looks like you're pulling with just your arms, but lack the stable foundation of the core to really anchor that pull and transfer it to forward motion. for that, some things that can help are one-arm swimming and really working on timing the kick to help the pull, as well as a more conscious effort to keep the elbow up. (also helped by one-arm drills)

Other things I see (beyond what sch340 mentioned) are that you are cupping your hands to compensate for leading the pull with your elbows. keep your palms flat and inline with your forearms, and work on getting that whole surface more perpendicular to the direction of travel.

---

Swimming Workout of the Day:

Favourite Swim Sets:

2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly

Thanks everyone, this is all awesome feedback and I’ll be working on all the above.

JasoninHalifax, kick timing / core engagement is something I’ve struggled with big time since I started. I only recently eliminated (or at least minimized) a massive scissor kick that was due at least in part (I think), to a completely mistimed kick, but obviously still have ways to go. Every now and then I’ll feel it “click” for a handful of strokes or laps but then lose the rhythm and can’t figure out how to get it back. At any rate, thanks for the suggestions for working on this -- will definitely be using them.

Thanks again for the responses.

A few things:

Do you have videos from above the water? Try to post some similar videos with a camera perspective from the side, and one from sort of above your body (you can swim in a wall lane and have the camera person walk along the deck and hold the camera sort of above you).

Are you familiar with EVF (early vertical forearm)?

From what I can see with the existing videos, your right arm is too close to your body centerline. Then, you are not using EVF, so you are losing power on every pull. Also your legs are a bit wide during your kick. You head also appears to be quite low, but before I would make a change, I would like to see some videos from above water too. If you can post those, I can probably give you lots more feedback on other parts of your stroke as well.

Greg @ dsw

---

Advanced Aero TopTube Storage for Road, Gravel, & Tri...ZeroSlip & Direct-mount, made in the USA.
DarkSpeedWorks.com.....Reviews.....Insta.....Facebook
--

Ok, all the feedback thus far is pretty spot on, but for me, the number one thing for you to work on "first" is the catch. You are whipping your arms through the water way too fast, which means you are not pulling much water. Besides the other smaller things, you need to begin with slowing down the glide out front, and thinking about that initial catch phase of the stroke. And once you do that right, the rest can fall into place to the finish of the stroke.

Hard to see your right arm, but the left one is pulling like a straight arm sprinter, except you bend to elbow in a manner that lets your hand slip off the water. Just keep in mind that there are many things wrong, but you cannot fix them all at once, usually just one at a time is all we can hold in our heads. But fixing the catch in of itself, will probably fix a couple things down then line without too much thought, so start there first...

Goggle straps go under the swim cap. But seriously, it may be my imagination, but your legs seem to be sinking a bit and causing excess drag.

Thanks much. I am familiar with concept of EVF and try to make it happen, but am obviously not successful, or at least only minimally so. The “lowness” of my head is my attempt to get to get my legs up, but maybe that’s screwing up things on the catch side? At any rate, I’ll try to get some above water clips taken as you describe and post them here.

Thanks much Monty. I probably do tend to try to fix a bunch of things at once, and suspect as a result I’m only partially (if at all) fixing any of things things, and potentially creating some other issues in the process.

If I recall at the time these were taken I was focusing a lot on keeping my head down and legs up, and was probably neglecting the front end stuff. So I’ll definitely slow down the glide and focus on front part of the catch.

Would you suggest doing any drills for this, or just work on it as a focus while swimming?

My legs do sink like rocks, and I’m constantly trying to keep them up. They do seem to stay up more at higher speeds so maybe I just need to swim faster ;)

Didn’t realize that about the google straps — I’ll probably wait to change that until I’ve fixed some of this other stuff (and started doing consistent flip turns) lest be taken as a AOS posing as a real swimmer!

Not bad for a relative newbie!

One thing I noticed is your hand position at the end of the reach and the beginning of the pull is quite high. It's more noticeable on the right hand, where your fingers often turn upward just before the pull. You're basically pushing water there, which is slowing you down a small amount.

I'd suggest dropping your hand position about 10 degrees (pointing towards the bottom of the pool ahead) so your arms are slightly below your body when you start the pull. You'll get a much more efficient pull that way.

Keep up the good work!

---

"It's Ironman - it's supposed to be hard!"

Author of "Letters to a Driving Nation: Exploring the Conflict between Drivers and Cyclists." http://www.brucebutler.ca

Thanks much — I’ll do this!

I think you’ve got a good stroke. Keep swimming (hard) and the small, incremental improvements will keep accumulating. You will experience a period in which all off the additive effects of staying at it will really come together.

My advice to you (besides continuing to swim with a good masters team) is to consider the following: your current stroke pattern, including the very subtle leg sinking, is influenced by specific flexibility in the hips, knees, and ankles. Long-time swimmers have “looser” ankles especially, due to years of swimming and use of the legs in that particular pattern. Even though the kick IS NOT PRIMARILY PROPULSIVE (maybe contributing 10-30% of PROPULSION), the kick and hip rotation DOES contribute to stability and efficiency.

“Loose” ankles in swimmers can allow for the subtle whip-like motion of the foot at the end of the kick. That starts of course at the hips and continues through the knees. You have a pretty typical specific flexibility of a runner or cyclist, not someone who has been swimming forever. NOT ALL IS LOST: you just need to stick with swimming and the flexibility and ROM will come.

The advice I’d give with this is that you need to do more kicking sets and use fins. Keep the pull buoy in your car and don’t even bring it to the pool. Kicking and using fins will help increase the flexibility in your ankles especially and some in your hips. Do LOTS of fun work, especially with full-stroke freestyle.

The potential problem is this: your running stride and efficiency is strongly influenced by the elasticity of your ankle ligaments. This allows return of energy in your push-off. You might experience some loss of this elasticity, but it won’t affect your running too much unless you start swimming 18,000m or more per week and stop running almost entirely. Swimming and running therefore require quite the opposite function of the ankles and hips.

I think that if you do spend lots of time on your kick and using fins, you will experience a revelatory moment in your swimming as the body roll and lick efficiency all come together. Get to that point, then keep swimming to maintain the gains. The gains you make swimming will offset any losses (I doubt there will be any) in your running.

BTW, notice I didn’t say anything about any specific drills or pull patterns. I really believe in “whole stroke” swimming, and making only subtle changes as needed while you swim (ie, hand or elbow position, pull pattern, hand exit, etc).

Thanks much for the feedback. I’ve got a number of years of running/cycling that have definitely not helped my flexibility. I can’t even remember the last time I put fins on, and a couple of times a week (on non masters days) I’ve been pulling, so I guess sounds like basically the opposite of what I should be doing. So I’ll plan to swap out the pull buoy for fins as you suggest. Thanks again.

Not bad at all for only swimming 3 years.

How are you exhaling? It looks to me like you are exhaling steadily through your nose as soon as you breath and your face re-enters the water?? I would relax and do a violent exhale right before you breath. That develops the rhythm of a bellows effect that allows you to suck in more air quickly at the breath. Big quick exhale = big quick inhale = more oxygen for your muscles and more oxygen for flotation. Look at underwater videos of olympic swimmers.

Good luck.

Albert

It’s a bit of a paradox that I say do lots of fin work and kicking work, even though the kick is not overly propulsive. You’ll increase your hip and ankle flexibility, or at least create a neural pathway for a better kick ROM and efficiency. That will translate into a smoother stroke.

I’ve been swimming my whole life. It’s the only thing i don’t suck at. If you watch me swim, you’ll probably see very little splashing indicating a kick. I do kick, it’s just a small kick that stabilizes me. Think of a tail rotor on a helicopter.

Interesting thanks I hadn’t heard that before. Yes my typical practice has been to try to exhale somewhat continuously when my face is underwater, but will try to check out some videos of the pre- breath violent exhale technique.

Thanks, does make sense and I definitely plan to work on it.