Got some underwater (and above) footage shot of my swim the other day. I’m an average swimmer who puts in about 10,000m a week with an olympic swim of mid 23 mins.
I’m having trouble with learning a 2-beat kick.
What are my glaring flaws?
Any advice from the aquatic among you?
You are basically swimming catch up freestyle. This leaves a big “lag” when neither arm is propelling you. You slow during this lag and then are required to accelerate yourself again, this is very inefficient (tiring and slow). You could try something like reverse catch up but just being conscious of it and trying to always maintain pressure with one hand should help.
Your catch is not as high as it could be, especially with your right arm (you are leading with your elbows a bit). Really focus on a getting your wrist and forearm down while your elbow is still up. Sometimes swimming waterpolo style can help. If you don’t have a high catch you won’t be able to move forward or keep your head out of the water without swinging it from side to side.
Your left arm is swinging out when you start your catch. Basically your fingers should face the bottom of the pool, yours swing out towards the wall of the pool. This is weak. Think about drawing a line with your fingers along the bottom of the pool. This should straighten things out.
Those are the major things to my mind. You could also try to be more consistent with your kick but you’ll get most of your improvement by fixing your catch.
I agree with moulli… if you look at your arms, you leave them out so long that the hands start to rise back towards the surface. What you should be thinking about when the hand enters the water is applying pressure to get that hand in the catch position right away… also you might want to try lowering your head abit/tightening your ass/stomach, that will help bring your hips up more… good cue is “stand up straight” when you do that out of the water you immediatly throw back your sholders, tighten core/ass… thats what it should be like in the water - (but it does take incredible core strength to hold that through a race).
Kicking I think might fix itself if you can get rid of that catch up, (or decrease it) because basically you do a 2 beat, and then glide as your arms move… you might want to do some fin swimming to help accentuate perfect swimming vs. lopey kicking. Otherwise, 1 arm freestyle is always a good drill (breathing to none arm side). good luck
Beanster. first of all, 23 something is fast for a 1500m swim. (relative to an age group triathlete)
As for the thing your right arm does during the glide phase…you should work to fix it but I don’t think it’s having much impact on your speed.
I’m not down on the whole catch-up stroke approach for swimming distance in triathlons. When you race an oly distance tri for instance, you need to be pacing yourself as if you were swimming a 10k open water race practically. That kind of efficiency and relaxation needed can often be effectively found with a more catch-up style of swim.
I don’t recommend it for a one-sport swimmer who’s competitive but for us triathletes I don’t see a problem. Also I noted how long you were coasting without any propulsion and it was pretty short due to your fast recovery.
I also recommend you DO NOT tighten your abs in an effort to get your hips higher. I think that tends to sink the legs and adversely affect breathing. You need to relax the abs and breath through the stomach (if that makes sense…in all events not just swimming).
I think where I’d focus your attention is on the catch and pull. Here’s what I see: Catch seems to be technically close…but doesn’t look effective. There’s just a ‘look’ you can see when a catch is great. It forces the elbow up and it rockets the body forward. It seems like HALF your propulsion comes from the catch when it’s an awesome catch. You don’t have that. Once the catch is complete your are pulling with your arm only. There’s very little roll in your pull. You need to quickly transition from side to side with the pull so that body rotation accelerates the pull and rockets you forward without much sensation of muscular effort.
That’s my uneducated two cents.
Oh! almost forgot. I thought your kick looked good.
You can swim a catch up stroke; you can swim a two beat kick; but you can swim effectively doing both of them. (Only elite 10K swimmer I’ve seen doing that much catch up is Australian Ky Hurst, and he’s a most excellent kicker)
I’ll agree with what moulli said and also note that for all the gliding you do, you aren’t getting a good body roll into that glide on the right side like you are on the left. Doesn’t have to be exactly the same as left side in that regard, but you’re decidedly cutting it short.
Left hand could be a little wider on entry. It’s not major, but there’s a hint of a crossover there.
You are basically swimming catch up freestyle. This leaves a big “lag” when neither arm is propelling you. You slow during this lag and then are required to accelerate yourself again, this is very inefficient (tiring and slow). You could try something like reverse catch up but just being conscious of it and trying to always maintain pressure with one hand should help.
Your catch is not as high as it could be, especially with your right arm (you are leading with your elbows a bit). Really focus on a getting your wrist and forearm down while your elbow is still up. Sometimes swimming waterpolo style can help. If you don’t have a high catch you won’t be able to move forward or keep your head out of the water without swinging it from side to side.
Your left arm is swinging out when you start your catch. Basically your fingers should face the bottom of the pool, yours swing out towards the wall of the pool. This is weak. Think about drawing a line with your fingers along the bottom of the pool. This should straighten things out.
Those are the major things to my mind. You could also try to be more consistent with your kick but you’ll get most of your improvement by fixing your catch.
Good luck
Been trying this at the last few practices and it is tough. 25m is all I can muster before I’m toast. It seems to be helping me speed my stroke rate with less catch up though. Is there an ideal SPM to achieve? I feel if I can keep my stroke length then by upping my SPM I will get faster. I am at around 52 strokes a minute now. What should I aim for? An increase of around 5 SPM then sustain it and try another 5 SPM?
i think your technique looks great, and while, yes, you swim a little too much catch-up, that technique does actually work well with a wetsuit on (you tend to swim a bit more catch-up with a fullsuit than without a wetsuit or with a longjohn).
if you swam with an aggressive masters group, repeating on the 1:30 base (SCY) with a guy next to you that you have to strain to keep up with, you’d lose that excessive catch-up in a hurry, and your stroke rate would rise. if you don’t swim with a masters group, i’d at least do a set of longer rest / faster paced stuff every time you swim, to knock you out of that zen, sing-songy rhythm of yours.
that said, i can’t think of a better base to work from than your current technique. shortening your stroke is a lot easier than learning how to lengthen it. and, your kick is fine. leave it alone.
In regard to your stroke rate question…Really, the stroke should be long. If you were to target a certain stroke rate, you would have to vary your stroke length at different speeds – just like we do running…ie. we shoot for a cadence of 90/180 no matter the speed and our stride length changes.
But in swimming you maintain the stroke length and the cadence changes with the speed. So there is NO specific stroke rate you need…you increase your stroke rate as you increase your speed and to do this at a given distance requires better conditioning.
The exact length of each stroke will depend on the length of your arms.
But if we distinguish between length and distance per stroke then one important metric is for your distance per stroke to get longer. This can be accomplished with a better catch on the water such that the distance you travel with each stroke can approach the length of your stroke (3 foot long arm can move you 6 feet)…or due to momentum you can even travel more than 6 feet with one pull.
But as I said before I do think your swim looks very respectable. I hope you know that.
Got some underwater (and above) footage shot of my swim the other day. I’m an average swimmer who puts in about 10,000m a week with an olympic swim of mid 23 mins.
I’m having trouble with learning a 2-beat kick.
What are my glaring flaws?
I only watched the first clip and saw enuf there. Actually you have no “glaring flaws” and a lot to be recommended. As with any human swimmer, there are always “kaizen opportunities.”
First, what you’re doing well:
Your legs are “drafting behind” your torso. When examining the kick, your first focus should always be to ensure you’re not creating drag or turbulence. Only after getting that right should you focus on the propulsive aspects. Why? Because drag reduction saves energy. Increasing propulsion costs energy.
Your kicking is relaxed, not energy-sapping, as is the rest of your stroke.
Next, what can be improved and how:
For most people (i.e. those of us lacking natural gifts) getting the 2BK to coordinate with the whole stroke is a “project.” I’ve been working on it for 4 years and feel I’m still on the steep part of the learning curve. Even so what I learned in the first year or two added significantly to my performance.
Your goal in this project is two-fold: (a) Add power to your stroke while (b) minimizing the energy cost of that added power . . . by relying primarily on weight shifts and core muscle, not on fatigue-prone thigh muscles.
Understand why your legs are not coordinating naturally. In your case the causes are plainly visible – and in the FRONT of your body. Your hands cross to the centerline and scoop upward as you extend forward. Both actions have the effect of destabilizing the torso and legs. The legs - responding to your “internal gyroscope” respond with steadying actions – i.e. those extra beats you see between the ones that actually add to propulsion.
So your first step will be to remodel your stroke to create greater lateral stability. That will quiet your legs and allow you to focus on increasing the coordination between leg drive, weight shift, and armstroke.
i think your technique looks great, and while, yes, you swim a little too much catch-up, that technique does actually work well with a wetsuit on (you tend to swim a bit more catch-up with a fullsuit than without a wetsuit or with a longjohn).
if you swam with an aggressive masters group, repeating on the 1:30 base (SCY) with a guy next to you that you have to strain to keep up with, you’d lose that excessive catch-up in a hurry, and your stroke rate would rise. if you don’t swim with a masters group, i’d at least do a set of longer rest / faster paced stuff every time you swim, to knock you out of that zen, sing-songy rhythm of yours.
that said, i can’t think of a better base to work from than your current technique. shortening your stroke is a lot easier than learning how to lengthen it. and, your kick is fine. leave it alone.
Slowman, First I want to thank you for taking the time to comment.
Second, when you say “shorterning my stroke” do you mean that literally or am I misunderstanding you? Wouldn’t I want to keep the length and up the turnover?
You and Terry Laughlin commenting on my vids. I feel honored!
if you swam with an aggressive masters group, repeating on the 1:30 base (SCY) with a guy next to you that you have to strain to keep up with, you’d lose that excessive catch-up in a hurry, and your stroke rate would rise.
This is slightly off-topic but Dan makes an underappreciated point here about the potential liabilities of putting yourself in situations where you’re straining to keep up with what you assume is a beneficial - i.e. faster - interval.
It’s not just that you run a distinct risk of losing a relaxed stroke that is well suited to long distances in OW, but that you also run the risk of developing a stroking pattern far better suited for a 25y pool than for OW.
I don’t want to make this post overly long but some years ago Jonty Skinner (performance science director for USA Swimming) did a study comparing video of freestylers who were more successful in SCY (25-yd) courses vs those more successful in LCM (50m) He found the two groups swim with distinctly different styles.
The SCY specialists had developed a flatter, shorter, more aggressive stroke that relied on higher arm forces. (Think of how sprinters swam in Beijing – the high tech suits, among other things, help “forgive” the cost of arm-dominant swimming, but not for longer than about 50 seconds – before those suits it used to be less than 30 seconds).
The LCM specialists had developed a stroke that was longer, lower rate and relied more on hip rotation (I prefer the term weight shifts) and far less on arm forces.
His analysis was that the ratio between swimming and “not swimming” (particularly with the 15m underwater dolphin) in SCY can be as low as 2.5 to 1. That’s a significant amount or “arm resting opportunities.” The ratio between swimming and not-swimming in LCM is about 8 to 1.
The arm dominant stroke can generate more speed over short stretches. Beanster’s stroke (I prefer the descriptive “patient” to “catchup”) doesn’t generate as much speed over the short term, but is unquestionably better for longer stretches.
So, back to the potential liability of swimming with Masters groups. I swam with one for 15 years (until last year). About half of the members were triathletes. Whenever the coach gave us shorter repeats, the triathletes - like everyone else - would respond to the coaches urgings to “Go Hard” by churning their arms furiously because that was the best way to "win"the repeat. But in doing so, they were “losing” the race they were really training for.
When I swam with them, I maintained my “OW stroke” even on the shortest repeats. I would swim AS FAST AS POSSIBLE on 15 strokes or less. I might “lose” the repeat to someone taking 20 strokes, but I seldom lost an OW race.
For most people (i.e. those of us lacking natural gifts) getting the 2BK to coordinate with the whole stroke is a “project.” I’ve been working on it for 4 years and feel I’m still on the steep part of the learning curve. Even so what I learned in the first year or two added significantly to my performance.
And what was it that you learned in that two years? Coordinating a kick is difficult, what did you do that made a difference?
Your goal in this project is two-fold: (a) Add power to your stroke while (b) minimizing the energy cost of that added power . . . by relying primarily on weight shifts and core muscle, not on fatigue-prone thigh muscles.
Any tips on how to do that? Suggestions, drills, technique shifts?
Understand why your legs are not coordinating naturally. In your case the causes are plainly visible – and in the FRONT of your body. Your hands cross to the centerline and scoop upward as you extend forward. Both actions have the effect of destabilizing the torso and legs. The legs - responding to your “internal gyroscope” respond with steadying actions – i.e. those extra beats you see between the ones that actually add to propulsion.
I’ll agree on the scoop motion. In addition, the hand entry (especially on the left hand) is WAY tilted. The hand should enter almost flat, the OP is losing time/power by over rotating, and then having to “flatten” the hand before the stroke can begin. (It’s also hard on the shoulder). I disagree to some extent that it’s causing the kick dissociation. The kick should be like the bass beat from a drummer, it just keeps going almost irregardless of what the hands are doing.
To the OP: You are carring the “glide” phase a bit too long, and during that glide you don’t really kick, you, well, just glide. That causes your hips/legs to start to sink, and you have to give that extra kick every now and again to overcome the sinking. I don’t like the term glide because it produces hesitations like yours. Yeah, there is a brief moment when the body is gliding, but it’s nowhere near as long as yours.
What I’d personally work with you on is when you extend your hand out in front of you, a bit flatter entry so you don’t swoop (Good term, Terry), and a little more straight extension from the shoulder (And not quite so much internal rotation of the wrist/palm). To do this, you need to have a good roll going on. As SOON as your hand/arm/shoulder hit full extension, start the pull. This will help keep the momentum, and then once that is established, the kick can do what it needs to, i.e. just balance you rather than working so hard to keep the hips up.
Edited to add: Were you going race pace here? Or were you “swimming for the camera”? I’d like to see a shot at race pace, I would bet it’s a somewhat different looking stroke.
http://www.youtube.com/...&feature=channel
Yeah, in that one your turnover is a little quicker, you don’t have anywhere near the “save my hips!” extra kicks. Can’t tell about the swoop and the internal rotation, though.
I suspect in some of the others you were swimming for the camera and really concentrating on trying to make the form look good rather than just swimming (Whether you realize it or not). The one above looks better already than some of the other shots.
“when you say “shorterning my stroke” do you mean that literally or am I misunderstanding you? Wouldn’t I want to keep the length and up the turnover?”
i’m not suggesting that you extend less during the catch, and i’m not suggesting you truncate your exit. i’m saying you should start your pull a little earlier and, if you do, your stroke length will be exactly the same, but your stroke rate will be higher. the only thing you’ll lose is a bit of glide time.
i had a discussion about nomenclature with someone (maybe here on the forum) a year or two ago. i don’t remember who it was, but whoever it was made a very good point. he objected to my use of the term “glide” phase, and instead suggested i call it the “extend” phase. i think he was right, because, while there is the need to extend, “glide” connotes a phase where no propulsion occurs. “extend” is better.
so after you’ve fully extended after the catch, you’re prepared for a stroke that is as long as it can be. if you glide further before you commence your pull, you’re slowing down your stroke rate, but i don’t see how you’re lengthening your stroke any. so, after a fully vested extend phase, start setting up your pulling surface without delay, that is, with your elbow high, commence creating a pulling surface with your forearm perpendicular to the direction you’re traveling.
here’s a link to grant hacket videos. watch any of these videos that show him underwater, you’ll see what i’m talking about.
What’s the title of it?