Not bad! Be careful to not drop the elbow on the pull, and try to anchor your lead hand a bit deeper. Don’t try to scoop water behind you, pull your body past your hand.
slow down your cadence a bit and make sure you are finishing your stroke. Your hand was coming up out the water way before your waist line. push through the entire stroke and glide just a bit. your arms look to be flying forward awful quick which could add to fatigue therefore weakening your pull.
my bad. What i meant was, windmill your arms as fast as you can and don’t allow yourself to glide … why would you want any free forward motion? Also, make sure your hands come out of the water up near your chest so that you don’t pull yourself past as much water as possible.
slow down your cadence a bit and make sure you are finishing your stroke. Your hand was coming up out the water way before your waist line. push through the entire stroke and glide just a bit. your arms look to be flying forward awful quick which could add to fatigue therefore weakening your pull.
my bad. What i meant was, windmill your arms as fast as you can and don’t allow yourself to glide … why would you want any free forward motion? Also, make sure your hands come out of the water up near your chest so that you don’t pull yourself past as much water as possible.
You need to really pick up your stroke rate. Don’t ‘glide’… it’s not helping your body position (which isn’t too bad) and looks like it’s impacting on your initial catch - it appears your right palm is ‘pushing’ as it lifts during your glide-thing before you drop it… You can survive in a pool like that no problem, but add a little chop and you’ll be going nowhere fast
Have a look at this guy at race effort (or google Janet Evans)… quick stroke rating, no pause or dead-spot, high-elbow catch, quick recovery… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND1L8I2ZY5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdXvWJ8E94Y
I wrote up a brief critique. For one, that’s really impressive that you managed to film yourself in the water. Most of us need a friend to do it for us
I’ll start with stuff that matters in open water.
Pace isn’t bad, for your background. I got you at about a 1:30 for 100 scy. Basic body position is OK, mechanics are more or less fine, so a lot of what I have consists of relatively minor tweaks.
Breathing – you turn your head way too far. It shouldn’t really feel like you are turning your head at all
You are doing a very-front quadrant heavy stroke, but you don’t have the kick or the EVF necessary to pull that off. You should really be doing a more conventional stroke timing, with less of a pause at the front, and taking a bit more time to set up the pull.
Head position is too high, causing your hips to sink slightly.
That pause is causing you to slow down with each stroke, which in turn is killing your DPS because you have to re-accelerate your body with each stroke.
I counted 21-22 strokes per 25 yards (looks like a yards pool?) For comparison, if I swim in a similar style to you (front quadrant with that pause) I do 15-16 strokes (SCM), which would be 13-14 strokes in a yards pool. But I have a much stronger kick than you.
Get your lead hand deeper before you start pulling back. You are slipping a lot of water.
Other stuff that doesn’t matter in open water.
Turns are pretty ugly – you are windmilling your way around the turn. At the start of the turn, your arms should be pointed straight back at the far end of the pool. Someone (either halfspeed, ericmulk, or tigerpaws, I think) posted a good video on turns.
Push off on your back, and rotate to your side after the pushoff.
Get the streamline off the wall tighter, and don’t look up before your first stroke.
Thanks for the critique Jason. I will work on the items mentioned over the next few weeks.
In replying to your first post asking for my opinion, the 2 things that stand out to me are: 1) late breather & life my head up too high (as you pointed out), 2) my right wrist is not always straight upon entry (as steve_c pointed out). I swim in a 25m pool in Canada.
I would add:
Work on rotation and kick timing. Your body position is good, but the kick seems weak and does not drive your hips and rotation.
Jason has already said this but I also have to say that you really need to improve your catch. I counted like 26 strokes for that last 25 yards… It is partially from you decelerating when you stop slightly and glide, but mostly from leading with the elbow under water. Look at Ryan Cochrane swimming (not Sun Yang since he’s super long stroke might make you want to glide more than you already do) and try to mimic him under water. Heck, you might even want to watch Lotte Friis and Janet Evans to see how rhytm and excellent catch can propel you at 1:00/100m. Absolutely 0 glide among these ladies.
I thought your stroke looked pretty good, if not particularly muscular. When you take away the effects of a rather short turn, your stroke count over 25M is quite reasonable.
My only observation is that you seem to have a very short breathing cycle.
Someone else (a coach), I am sure, can tell you why and how to fix it.
There are a ton of videos on youtube that deal with it.
Not getting a full breath coupled with an alternate stroke breathing pattern, will affect your strength and speed over distance, quite dramatically.
I am not and never will be a fan of alternate stroke breathing. Although many are, and without doubt, you should be able to breath both sides.
However consider this. It takes you about 25 seconds to swim a length and in that time you can take 8 breaths, which translates into about 18 breaths a minute.
A resting person takes about 14 breaths, distance running more like 40 breaths. Biking at any speed probably closer to 30.
Even breathing on one side will increase your breathing rate to only 26 breaths a minute, which is a fast walk breathing rate.
You’re swimming, a sport that uses the entire muscular structure and breathing barely above a resting rate.
And then doing it without a full breath.
Oxygen. Useful stuff.
For the style of swimming he’s trying to emulate, stroke count should be lower.
I agree with you on alternate breathing in competition, but there are also good reasons to do it in training, so I left it out. one is to get you used to not having that breath when you inevitably get a faceful of water, another is that it’s easier to focus on catch technique if you aren’t also trying to breathe at the same time. I’m predominately a right side breather, but I’ve noticed that I occasionally breathe 3, 4 or even 5, depending on pace and how I feel. Pull sets I usually breathe every 3.
In my critique, I deliberately left out any mention of things that relate to fitness, like kick strength. If the OP starts working on kick sets in practice, the kick will get better.
The #1 thing the OP needs to do is improve catch mechanics at the front of the stroke.
500 to 600m consisting of 50-100m repeats on 1:50/100m base
300 to 400m pull with buoy and ankle band
sprint set 4 x 50m on 1:30.
cool down 200m
Swim background
2007-2008: high school swim team (6-8km/wk, 4 months)
2011-present: 8-15km, 20 to 25 weeks a year
Low 14 minute 750m splits with a wetsuit in 2012, no triathlons completed in 2013
On workouts, if that is your typical workout, then I’d suggest a few changes.
frequency is important, but so is distance. try to bump up your practices so you are getting at least 3000m 2-3x per week.
You need to work on pull, but you are doing too much of it relative to the length of the practice. I’d swap one of those pull sets for a kick set.
try to work in other strokes, they’ll help you develop better feel for the water. breaststroke can teach you a lot about the catch, in particular, and it’s such a technical stroke that it will help develop really good awareness of streamlining and timing.
for workout ideas, look up the favorite sets thread, and the monthly swim threads.
You’re a fish. So you probably breath right. He’s not yet a fish and I really believe in breathing, it’s got me this far.
Especially if he’s going to lower his stroke rate/count.
I disagree with just about everything you said there. I think you are relatively new to swimming, yes?
I’m a completely new swimmer (started two days a week last August and am now doing 3-4 days a week). My times are similiar although i don’t know them for sure. Haven’t really started using the clock, just want to swim on feel! One thing I notice is that when i slow down I over rotate especially to breath. Almost creates like a wiggle effect in the water with my hips which as you can imagine creates a ton of drag. My kick also goes away which doesn’t help keep the body flat in the water. My kick is not used for thurst one bit but it does help keep me upright! I have actually done a lot of work with my kick so that when i start to swim slow it becomes more atural. Also, I work with the pull bouy a lot to help keep my body alligned.
There’s a lot of sub-par advice given on swimming. Learning to pick out the good from the bad is step 1. Then following the good advice is step 2.
