Ok, I’m finally going to join the ranks of the “analyse my x” crowd.
In this case, my swim stroke. This is just two 25m laps. No flip turn, because I wanted as many strokes on video as possible. Not a hard pace, ~1:40. And it was at the end of my workout, so I was tired, but possibly a touch more focused on technique than if I were really pushing.
And yes, I swim with my Garmin. It’s for a couple reasons: I don’t wear contacts so I can’t see the clock for pacing/timing, and I have the worst attention span so counting laps, let alone intervals, is an exercise in futility unless I have some way to record it.
Biggest thing I noticed was a lack of rotation, which prevents you from really engaging your lats. As a result it looks like you’re just dragging your hands backward through the water but not really catching much water.
I suspect you’re dropping elbows quite a bit - your turnover is pretty high for your speed. I’ll go 1:35/100 with almost a 2x slower stroke rate, and I’m short, so it’s not a matter of arm length. I’m faster breathing right than breathing left by about 7sec/100, and the one thing I immediately notice when I’m breathing left (slower) is that my stroke turnover has to go up a lot to maintain same speed (unfortunately also with significantly increased cost of aerobic effort). I think you can def work on catching more water, with a higher elbow in particular, but also reaching deep with a high elbow.
…and I’m short
Not sure what’s “short”, but I’m only like 5’8". But if that’s calling me tall, I’ll happily take that compliment (for possibly the first time in my life, lol).
You are certainly lacking a high-elbow catch. This will happen out in front of your body. Think about getting your hand into the water about 2-3 inches below the surface and once you extend, pop the elbow high (try using paddles to help you feel the catch out front). A high elbow catch will allow you to anchor your hand in the water while also creating a bigger paddle through the engagement of your writs and forearm. Once the arm gets further under your body, your bicep will play a role as a paddle as well. Keep in mind, if you want to go forward, you want the biggest paddle possible facing int he opposite direction (facing the wall you pushed off from). I suspect you feel the water mostly underneath your body. In the video, I see that you get into the water in a nice spot in relation to your head. I’d like to see you enter at a steeper angle and get right into your catch. People get too caught up in placing their hand right on the surface and extending from there. You want your hand to enter the water through a single hole (finger tips, hand, wrist, forearm, elbow all through the same hole in the water surface). In the video, it looks like your focusing far too much on how your hand gets into the water and as a result, your paddle unit is slapping the water simultaneously (easy to see on your right hand on the first 25). Get in the water, get to your catch and once you establish this position, everything that was said about the body role is the next thing to take care of. Best of luck, my friend!
Also, watch your left arm on the way back. I noticed that once you extend and should be setting up your catch, you are “catching” laterally, pushing away from your body. Try keeping your hand under the shadow of your shoulder throughout your stroke, including when your body is rolling.
I’m not telling you to reach but when you start your catch, your entire arm is on the surface of the water…you are swimming flat. You have to rotate some to generate the propulsion you need.
I’m not a big TI person but I think the Zipper Switch drill allows you to work on this (it will helps with your EVF) (Correct me if I am wrong on the name of this drill too).
Kick on your side with one arm extended, & the other at your side. Look down your arm & move it down towards the bottom of the pool & then back up the the surface. THere should be some point where you feel the least amount of resistance & it will help you balance in the water too. This is where your arm should be upon entry. Take a stroke & repeat on the other side.
I use a slight variation called the protractor drill. Swim a 25 or ideally 50m if you have access to a long course pool. Start with the arm entering flat, just as you do now. With each stroke, lower the arm a few degrees so that you enter at more and more of an extreme angle. By the end of the length of the pool, enter directly in front of your head and to the bottom of the pool. The majority of these positions will feel awful as you are going from one extreme to another but as the previous poster mentioned, one of the positions will feel right and you’ll know it once you feel it.
In my opinion, this is about your kick and not your catch.
Doesn’t look like you are getting much, if anything, out of your kick, which is causing your legs and hips to drop. With better leg fitness, you should be able to hold that same 1:40 pace with a two beat kick. The best your hips looked was coming off that turn when you had some speed and added some kick. Do you see how your hips immediately drop? Just a few inches of floation at the hips makes a huge difference in body position. That’s lack of propulsion from the legs and in my opinion has nothing to do with your catch.
Adding more strokes or pulling harder or pulling more efficiently is not going to lift your hips, which is critical for getting your body in a position for fast swimming. You can try to press into your “T” a bit more (the part of the chest where the imaginary horizontal line connecting your shoulders intersects perpendicularly with the imaginary vertical line down the center of your body). That will help lift your hips a bit, but won’t be enough. And getting a better catch is not a cure-all either. An extreme example is pulling with only an ankle strap. Your hips and legs most certainly will drop and you will go slower, even if your catch is awesome. So it stands to reason that you’ve got to get more out of your legs. If you improve your pull you may go faster, but to me the kick is your most obvious weakness.
Now, some will immediately read this and say that pool swimming is different and “you don’t need to kick as much in a triathlon swim,” but I think that’s misguided. I think any good swimmer will tell you that it is actually WAY easier to kick less when you have a good kick, because you can be much more efficient. A great kicker can sustain a powerful and economic two beat kick for a VERY long time; whereas, a weaker kicker will have to put much more effort into the kick, consuming more energy and causing premature fatigue. That’s why even distance swimmers do significantly more kicking as a percentage of their workouts than do triathletes. I used to train in the “distance” group in college (we did significantly more yardage than those who competed in shorter races), and my teammates and I did some very solid distance swimming test sets in the pool doing only a two beat kick (e.g., 5,000 yards under 50 minutes), precisely because we had strong legs. Had we been weaker, we would have had to kick much harder and would have been toast from the extra energy expenditure (kicking hard consumes a lot of energy). Many years later, I can’t get anywhere near those times in practice, in part because my legs are nowhere near as strong as they use to be.
Food for thought.
Best,
Rob
I’m not a fish, but I know for sure that with practice, my legs don’t sink even with use of an ankle band, and only with a minimal occasional dolphin kick that can barely be called a kick.
Even better yet, check out the youtube videos of swim coaches doing the dead man’s float drill, and they can maintain a full horizontal position with no motion in arms or legs. (I still can’t do that!)
I’m not a kicker, but seems to me it would make more sense to get the body position correct without the kick, so if you do choose to kick, it’s a propulsive kick without wasting energy vertically on keeping legs higher.
The point I was trying to make is that you can’t get optimal body position without kicking. In my opinion, one cannot disconnect the legs in swimming from the arms - they have to be connected and you have to train both if you want to go fast. You simply can’t go as fast without adding some amount of kick.
The kick is both a stabilizing force and a propulsive one. So even if you dial back the propulsion, which of course one should do in a triathlon race (no one is advocating a six beat kick for an aerobic or threshold swim - outside of the start perhaps and maybe if you need to bridge a gap to stay with a pack), but you need some amount of kick for stabilization. The observation I offered was that the OP’s leg fitness appears to be insufficient, because he was kicking way too hard for the amount of stabilization and propulsion that he was getting from his flutter kick at a 1:40 pace. With stronger legs he could go faster and have better stabilization with much less effort.
In terms of drilling, I can do a deadman’s float and be in perfect alignment, but I’m not sure I follow you. I’m pretty sure I can do it now because I’m fatter than I was in college. In college only a few people on my team could hold perfect alignment, and we’re talking about world class swimmers here. Regardless, even now when I can hold perfect alignment, as soon as I start swimming out of a deadman’s float, even with a fantastic catch and excellent head and chest position, my hips and legs will drop if I don’t add legs. No question. And when I swim at speed with an ankle band, my hips and legs absolutely ride lower than if I am also kicking. I tested it last week. I’m not saying they drop to the bottom, but even a couple of inches of drop compromises optimal position. That’s why the lift of a wetsuit or neoprene shorts or a pull buoy makes such a difference.
YMMV, but just wanted to offer another viewpoint on the stroke analysis since there seems to be a tremendous emphasis in triathlon swimming on upper body work and little to none on lower body work, which stands in huge contrast to the approach taken by the competitive swimming community.
Best,
Rob
I’m not a swimmer but it doesn’t look like youre catching a lot of water. This is probably due to the lack of rotation. As a non swimmer, I can notice what you’re doing wrong but I really don’t know how to fix them.
Good luck.
In my opinion, this is about your kick and not your catch.
Doesn’t look like you are getting much, if anything, out of your kick, which is causing your legs and hips to drop. With better leg fitness, you should be able to hold that same 1:40 pace with a two beat kick. The best your hips looked was coming off that turn when you had some speed and added some kick. Do you see how your hips immediately drop? Just a few inches of floation at the hips makes a huge difference in body position. That’s lack of propulsion from the legs and in my opinion has nothing to do with your catch.
Best,
Rob
Rob, I think you are 100% correct and I think that you are one of the few on this forum who has the “muscle” to shift the predominant thinking on this. The predominant thinking being that kick/hip position is not a determinant in attaining an EVF. Or perhaps: That EVF is a self contained thing, to get it, you simply work on it.
Anyhow, I am going to make a modest assertion: I think the swimmer here is the PERFECT candidate for the SIM suit. Can I suggest to you that you send him a SIM with the understanding that he will post an “after” video.
(I do not know the OP.)
In my opinion, this is about your kick and not your catch.
Doesn’t look like you are getting much, if anything, out of your kick, which is causing your legs and hips to drop. With better leg fitness, you should be able to hold that same 1:40 pace with a two beat kick. The best your hips looked was coming off that turn when you had some speed and added some kick. Do you see how your hips immediately drop? Just a few inches of floation at the hips makes a huge difference in body position. That’s lack of propulsion from the legs and in my opinion has nothing to do with your catch.
Best,
Rob
Rob, I think you are 100% correct and I think that you are one of the few on this forum who has the “muscle” to shift the predominant thinking on this. The predominant thinking being that kick/hip position is not a determinant in attaining an EVF. Or perhaps: That EVF is a self contained thing, to get it, you simply work on it.
Anyhow, I am going to make a modest assertion: I think the swimmer here is the PERFECT candidate for the SIM suit. Can I suggest to you that you send him a SIM with the understanding that he will post an “after” video.
(I do not know the OP.)
You think that the lack of kick is the reason for his legs and hips to drop?
Thx. The SIM is a cool tool, but he can get hip lift from a buoy or from fins, too. Of course we think the SIM is more functional than those other tools for certain applications, which is why we made it. But I wasn’t trying to generate business for us with my post.
I really think the big takeaway is to work on the kick. Once he has a stable kick he’ll be able to support additional extension with his arms, which will facilitate a better catch, whether it is high elbow or not. If you don’t have a stable base from the legs, which can be provided by a solid two-beat kick, then you can’t optimize your extension and catch - no matter how strong or efficient you are. Your stroke shortens and you have to increase your rate, which I think you’re seeing here. A stable kick lifts the hips, for sure. I’m not saying his catch is as good as Ous Mellouli’s. Obviously the OP can work on that too. But think he would get more bang for his buck adding some real kick sets to his workout. Just my $0.02.
“Adding more strokes or pulling harder or pulling more efficiently is not going to lift your hips, which is critical for getting your body in a position for fast swimming.”
Quite on the contrary, while I don’t disagree that there are opportunities for improvement on the kick and that it can support a great kick, efficiency of the pull has an enormous impact on body position. Setting up a good catch and paying attention to your vectors will allow you to generate power towards the wall you pushed off from. This will propel you forward. With a more efficient stroke, the energy you are putting into your stroke will be used to move forward instead of the lateral and downward movement that we can see in your stroke. Moving through the water faster will cause your body to lift in the water towards a more optimal position, which should be supported by your kick.
What stands out to me is that your hands are entering the water too late.
Get them in earlier and then finish your reach.
You’re an awful person…and your stroke needs some work, too. 
With respect, I understand stroke mechanics, and obviously the pull is critical to fast swimming. I think you’ve taken that quotation out of context. I was talking about the OP specifically and was not making a general statement. With better pull strength/efficiency I just don’t think HIS hips will ride all that much higher; however, with an improved kick I’m certain his hips will rise, putting him in a faster body position. What’s more, with a strong kick he will also have a stronger platform for improved arm extension (which will help his catch and rotation). He could probably also benefit from using paddles, bands or a Vasa trainer to improve his upper body strength. It’s a system though - arms and legs - not either/or. Without the legs the pull is not optimized. I’m not saying he shouldn’t do both - work on upper and lower body strength and efficiency. What I’m saying is that the OP appears to have an imbalance of strength between his upper body and lower body. My suggestion is that he should consider focusing on improving his kick as much or more than focusing on his upper body strength/efficiency - to cure the imbalance. Lots of ways to do that with kick sets and vertical kicking.
Best,
Rob