I swam competitively as a kid for 7 years, before getting into triathlon from age 14-20. Took a few years off, and came back. I picked up bad habits in the last two years of my swimming days (coach was obsessed with mileage & no stroke correction).
I’ve analysed the videos myself, and summarised the main things that stood out for me:
Head is being lifted too high out of the water to breathe – as a result, leading arm sinks due to pressure on deltoid, and obviously more drag due to head out of waterTwisting from hips to breath – legs not rotating with bodyLeading arm dropped and straight pulling in the water due to lifted headBody sinks due to head lift, and leading arm cannot grab and catch the waterA ‘scissor kick’ is obvious on the second video when I push off the wallBody is not rotating like ‘log’ to breath – instead the upper body is being twisted, causing legs of spread wide and scissorBody is ‘fish-tailing’ down the pool = dragBending at the waist to breath & head lifted vertically Leading arm sinking, & being pulled straight- with no proper catchRecovery is not relaxed – hands are excessively rotated thumb down, which is putting strain on shoulders?
At the time of these videos, I was doing about 15km/week over 4-5 sessions, including drill work. I think my technique (or lack thereof) was overworking my delts, which contributed the premature fatigue I was getting after about 1km straight swimming.
Anyway, I would be grateful for your thoughts or advice (two cents worth is fine!). There may be something I am missing.
Think chin towards shoulder when you breathe. swim with the eye that will be out of the water closed. If when you breathe you can see anything other than water, then your head position is wrong. Usually only takes 1-2 days until you get used to the new head position. It’s instant feedback on what your head position is. Fixing the head position usually makes it a lot easier to fix other things.
I am going to post a hunch here that you swim mostly longer distances in your practices, like sets of 500s or 1000s instead of sers of 50s and 100s. Or more specifically, that you don’t swim many fast intervals.
The reason I say this is that your stroke has no “umph” to it, it just feels lazy when I watch it.
If I am right about my hunch, your stroke may very naturally improve with some faster effort intervals. The form looks good enouh to build some power onto it imho, and I feel like most of the bad habits will go away on their own over several weeks.
Try something like sets of build 150s or something, where you swim the first 50 about like you did, then faster the second 50, and faster again the third 50. Then a bit of rest before thenext 150. You could also do some 50s or 100s or whatever at a faster rate. Just be sure to rest enough that you can go noticeably faster then normal on these.
Look straight down instead of ahead at an angle. Will help a bit with your body position.
Might try swimming with an ankle band to work on body position for awhile, just an old bike tube tied in a loop (probably start with some air in it), if your slithering (and at a glance it looks like you are, plus you said you were) it’ll help with that, feels awkward when you first use it though.