Originally, I sent this video as a PM to a couple of the fishes on the board and then decided to just man up and post my ugly swim for the world to see. However, several of the comments I received by PM were so helpful that I wanted to post them. Although I know EVERYONE on ST swims 100s on 1:10 except when they want to chill out and then they swim 1:12s, I know there are a couple of bricks out there like me that can use the help;)!
One noted fish wrote:
Looks like you’re both gliding too much on the catch and not getting full extension out in front of you before you start the pull.
Think of how it feels when you’ve got to reach something on a high shelf- arm goes up, and then you roll your body sideways in order to get that extra couple of inches extension to get your fingers on what you’re trying to grab. Same thing in swimming- using body roll all the way through the stroke process lets you get longer and move through the water sleeker.
When you start reaching forward and trying to work on this, it’s natural to go too far inward with your hand until you cross over the midline, so try thinking about aiming for about shoulder width apart with your hands on the entry as you work on extending your arm in front of you. Watching again, it looks like you could work on body roll a little more in general.
There are probably some good drills someone else can recommend to work on extension up front. (Drills aren’t my area of expertise)
Glide- way too much of it right now. You’re having to kick way too much for a triathlon swim in order to keep forward momentum while you glide. Once you’ve got arm extended fully in front of you, start the catch almost immediately.
I’d also suggest posting a link to the video on the board itself. There are a number of other good swim eyes there and everyone picks up on something different when they watch.
Happy swimming!
Another added:
First off, I don’t know what kind of effort your video shows, so that’s one issue. Is that a yards pool? How many strokes per length do you typically take?
The following are only in the order in which I observed them: **Your turnover is really, really slow. I counted something like 1.2 seconds per stroke. If you took 18 strokes per length (and I suspect you take many more), that’d be :21 per 25yds not counting time spent on turns. I think you need to work on increasing your turnover. ** **Your hips seem to move horizontally quite a bit; it’s like fishtailing except it’s the hips instead of the legs that have the sideways motion. I’m not sure why that is. ** **Both arms appear to extend bent, as opposed to straight, prior to the catch. Drive the hand into the water and forward so the arm is perfectly straight; you should be rolling onto that side as you extend. Make sure you don’t change your good arm position as you reach (your reach is pretty good). ** **The biggest flaw, and the place where you can really make fast improvements, is that you have essentially a “catch-up” stroke. Your pull doesn’t start until your opposite hand has nearly completed its recovery. This has a key ramification: you are only actually propelling yourself about half the time! This shows itself in three ways: 1) you are slow, 2) your body is really low in the water (watch your head bob up and down between strokes around 1:15-1:20), and 3) you appear to be kicking like mad to avoid drowning. When looking at the underwater shots (which are really useful), you can see that your head is entirely under water at times, as are your shoulders. This is a lot of water that you are pushing. Your body should be such that more of your head is above the water, and each shoulder should be at the surface when pulling and completely out of the water when recovering. You need to start your pull much sooner. Drive the arm forward and as soon as it is straight, begin your pull. Think paddle wheeler: there should be some pulling going on almost all the time. If you were a real fish and could do a 100yd kick in under a minute, you could get away with the longer glide (aka “front quadrant” swimming). But you (and I) can’t, so we need to pull as much as possible. I figure my hand is approaching my waist when the opposite hand enters the water; yours is just beginning its pull at that point. Changing this will address the turnover issue above. ** **Right hand catches a bit too far under the surface; try extending it just under the surface. ** You appear to be dropping your left elbow on the pull (but not your right). This may be contributing to your fishtailing above, as you are getting more propulsion with your right than your left arm. Concentrate on imaging that “over the barrel” on the left to keep the elbow up (remember that by keeping a high elbow, you are presenting more forearm surface perpendicular to the direction of the pull, which is how you get more speed).
Believe it or not, this is all good news. It’s pretty obvious what your errors are, and they are easily addressed (with lots of practice, which is why they call it swim practice). I see a lot of good stuff here! Your pull is relatively straight front-to-back as opposed to s-shaped or crossing over the midline (common errors and harder to fix). Your hand entry seems to be in front of the shoulder where it should be. Your kick is compact (a huge error in triathletes). You have appropriate body roll. You seem to be completing your pull at the right place (back at your hip). Your breathing seems appropriate.
What kind of intervals do you do? Send-off time, finish time, number of intervals, distance, etc.
One final caveat: I’m prejudiced towards higher turnover for triathlete swimmers for lots of reasons. It might not be for everyone.
Obviously, I’m appreciative of all of you who have taken the time to help on this project. Now I need to see if I can make some of this happen.
Phil Combs
