My masters coach told me my head was doing ‘something weird’ but she couldn’t tell me how to fix it.
So I videotaped and sure enough my head seems to bob up and down (especially when breathing) even though I try to keep it smooth.
Any idea on tricks to resolve this. ?
Notice how high I come out of the water when breathing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6WL7N-p4YE
All other critique (on my stroke) welcome.
thanks
i dont know if this is too useful, sorry if it isnt, but it looks like you need to keep your breath lower under the bow wave … maybe someone else can clarify
You’re pressing down with your extended arm to get your head out of the water to breathe. Try to do one arm drills with the non-stroking arm by your side. I’d be willing to bet you’ll have trouble breathing like that.
Makes sense. But how would I correct it ? Will the drills just teach me to rotate to breath ?
I wonder how bad this is given the need to sight.
head definitely rising too much when breathing. Need to keep your head flatter to the water level, one eye in the water one eye out. The one arm drill above is a good one to work on this.
The drill will teach you to breathe without the support of the extended arm.
When doing your complete stroke, you need to be aware that you’re using you’re pushing your extended arm down and… not do it.
Your head position isn’t bad except just before you breathe (not on every breath) when you tend to look forward before turning for the breath. Keeping the head in alignment with the body (looking down) is the best position from a ‘least frontal drag’ standpoint. Arching the back slightly which tends to cause the head to look forward slightly puts the arm/body in a favorable mechanical position to initiate the pull. Like so many things head position compromises between power and frontal drag.
Gary Sr.
Dang - I’m going to start posting swim videos here if I can get feedback from Olympian Gary Hall Sr. Awesome!
I used a drill to correct some of my head position issues last year. I’m not a very fast swimmer at all but FOR ME, the **swim and nod drill **helped me make some corrections. It actually took off a nice chunk off my pace almost immediately.
I believe it’s a drill that TI pushes. I know TI is frowned upon here but I stumbled upon this drill on google and feel that it helped me. Worth looking into in my opinion.
I have the same bad habit; my coach told me to imagine there is a tennis ball between my chin & chest, and when taking a breath not to let the ball get away
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I had lessons recently and the one arm drill/ opposite breathing that TheAuthority mentioned was also suggested to me. I haven’t mastered it yet.
Thanks Gary. It’s quite an honor to get a “not bad” from you. I get to swim in the pool you won your last Olympic medal in and saw you in 76.
Thanks to all that provided ideas. I will be trying the nod drill, one arm drill and tennis ball idea. With video feedback.
Perfect time of year to fix the stroke.
This will be the most unhelpful, or helpful, post in this thread: you are doing nothing adverse with your head. At all. There might be a little bobble in there, but it is nearly imperceptible, and not, in my opinion, harmful. You could relax a bit in the upper torso and neck. If you got more power out of each pull, that bobble would go away.
1-arm IS a good drill though (you need to do it as the previous poster said, but make sure also to “breathe away” from the pulling arm). it could help you learn to relax more, and more relaxation is generally a good thing.
Regards,
r.b.
This will be the most unhelpful, or helpful, post in this thread: you are doing nothing adverse with your head. At all.
Thanks Robert. Between what Gary and you said, maybe my head position is a smaller part of the problem, especially since I will end up having to sight every 6 or so strokes in open water.
The way this whole thing started is that I can pull (with a pull buoy) faster than I can swim. I was explained it was because my butt is too low and this starts with the head position which was too high. So I decided to tackle that first.
I probably need to focus as much on the kick, the butt position and the head at the same time.
I am curious, how can you tell I need to relax ? I have a ton of tension in my neck and shoulders but how can you tell ?
I just got the impression from your form that you were carrying tension up there. There was just a lack of “flow”. As for the pull-buoy/swim comparison, this is a kick-timing issue for most - at least if you are comparing short distance times (a little hard to see from that video). Long distance pulling and swimming is a tough thing to judge on. Some folks legs demand a good deal of O2, although you should be able to be somewhat faster with a kick, just not as much in a sprint.
Regards,
r.b.