I was hesitant to post this footage of my swim stroke, but after some encouragement from my husband decided to go for it. I have no swimming background. I taught myself to swim as an adult in preparation for my first triathlon 10 years ago. Over the years, I have made huge improvements but am looking for some insight on what I may need to change. I like the long stuff and am doing my 3rd IM this June.
Thanks in advance regarding any feedback.
Rebecca
Hi Rebecca,
What kind of effort are we looking at here? I just notice from the get-go that you are kicking up a storm and wondered if that was because you were trying to go at a hard effort closer to race pace.
What are your pool times like? What are your race swim times like?
I would call this a moderate effort. I wasn’t trying to go all out or swim at race pace for a sprint tri. I would consider this effort is pretty close to what I hold during an IM.
How do you recommend I change my kick?
My pool is set-up for yards and I usually swim my 100s at a moderate effort in 1:32-1:34.
My last IM was Nov 2008 I got a 10:44. My swim w/ the current was 54 minutes. The fastest male swim time was 45 minutes so I was really happy with my swim in that race. My olympic distance swim time is about 26 minutes. I have noticed that my swim with a wetsuit goes MUCH better than without.
You should bike more! How fast do you want to swim? You could take more off of your bike time than your swim; you swim very well indeed!
It wouldnt hurt to get your left arm closer to you ear when its out front… it looks like your right arm is fine but your left is a little farther out. Also, your pull for both arms is a little far out IMO. If you pull down closer to your body your arms might be somewhat less fatigued.
Off the top of my head…
During recovery your forearm is off to the side a bit instead of in line with your body.
As someone else mentioned, your kicking alot, not in itself a bad thing, but it could be compensating for poor body position. I try to kick as little as possible when I swim, just enough to keep my body balanced in the water, legs will get there work later in the day.
Seems as if your looking straight down at the bottom of the pool, look a bit more forward.
Overall, no huge flaws, but some things you could play with and see if anything better happens.
A little bit more body roll might help.
You lead with your elbows on the recovery. Ideally, it’s the shoulders that drive the recovery movement and where it should feel like the recovery motion is coming from. You want to feel like you’re shrugging your shoulders backward toward your spine and in the process showing the world your arimpits. Arms and hands should be more relaxed (either straight arm or bent elbow recovery is fine- whatever you’re most comfortable with)
You aren’t fully extending on the front end before the start of the catch. Let your hips/core drive your hand further forward as your boy rolls to the side. Done right, the rotation of your body should drive your hands toward your midline more, so when you play with this, it should feel like your hands are going in pretty wide in order to prevent crossing over.
not that bad… good basic body position, your kicking is probably helping that though, to decrease your kicking focus on really tight abs (clench them) and your hips should rise with less kicking. You can work on being more relaxed during your recovery, I know FLAJill stated roll more, but i think you have good roll however, I 100% agree with her in that you should start with your hips. You enter wide on both sides too, I think arms should be in line with the shoulders (roughly) and you should initiate your catch earlier.
Those are my quick thoughts
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for the post, since I think many of us will have benefitted from the exercise of critiquing your style and then reading the sound advice given by those far more experienced. We’ve all watched the Hackett, Thorpe et al on you tube. I just feel it is very useful to see an athlete at your level perform.
If I could ask though, since you have such good times and you say you are self taught, how long did it take you to make inroads into your times? What times would you have been doing say after one year, two years, five years. Was it a process of improve-plateau-breakthrough-improve etc or has it been a long steady improvement?
I know many of us older in years are a little impatient to improve our times, do you think there were definite things over the decade that you feel made a greater improvement - fitness or technique related or has it just taken this long because you came to it *relatively *late in life (i.e not aged 6 like my niece who swims almost as fast as me)?
Thanks in advance and sorry for piggybacking your OP.
John
you’re dropping your elbows. work on your catch, you need to set your elbow on each arm when you’re fully extended out front. your entry and extension are also a bit wide, bring them more in line with your shoulders. with how smoothly you are swimming you should be swimming those 100’s a bit faster with no additional exertion. way to go on self-coaching yourself to this point, that is really impressive.
You are a brave woman, to post a swim video. That is something the guys around here will never, EVER be able to talk me into.
All of this feedback was been extremely helpful. This is great! Thanks everybody.
John,
I should first say that I have not trained consistently over 10 years. For the first 7 years, I would choose random races and then start training just a few months before. After the race was over, I would usually sit on my butt until I started to feel out of shape and then the cycle would start over. 2008 was the first year I triathlon a bit more seriously.
Here are some of my swim times over the years at the same courses. I only started timing my 100s in the pool in 2008 so I can’t give you that information.
Duke half: 2002 36:17 w/ a wetsuit, 2004 52:22 no wetsuit super choppy (fastest woman was 34min), 2008 37:42 no wetsuit (fastest woman was 29min)
White Lake half: 2005 39:17 w/ a wetsuit, 2006 39:03 w/ a wetsuit
I would say that any breakthroughs I had were completely technique and a more consistent approach to training. When I was training for IMFL in 2006, for the first time ever I felt like I was no longer ‘fighting’ with the water. I never timed myself, so I have no idea if the breakthrough affected my pace, but I started to feel more comfortable in the water and found an effort that I knew I could easily maintain for 2.4 miles. I should mention that my IMFL swim time was slow, 1:19. I was terrified of the swim and spent a full 3-4 minutes on the beach after the gun went off. I then swam so wide that I am sure I covered an extra 400m. I didn’t care though, I just wanted to survive. I went on to have a good day and finished in 11:58
2008 was the first year where I swam consistently (about 2x/wk starting in Feb) and followed a structured training plan. I used Matt Fitzgerald’s Essential Week-by Week Training Guide. I think having an actual workout for each swim, and a periodized plan, helped immensly. I didn’t swim a lot, only about 2x/week (I usually dropped one of the scheduled swims) and usually around 3000m/wk. Not a lot I know, but swimming is boring to me and I am not interested in swimming more. If you have never seen this book, check it out. My husband also used that IM plan (it has levels 1-10…I did level 1 and he did level 4) and he improved his IM time from 11:40 (IMFL 2006) to 10:08 (Beach2Battleship 2008).
Sorry that my response is so lengthy. Hope this helped.
Rebecca
You need to swim more 
I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear, but your form is pretty good. You really won’t get any faster than you are now only swimming ~3,000 per week.
I think we could really get a better idea if you re-film with a two piece suit 
.
My pool is set-up for yards and I usually swim my 100s at a moderate effort in 1:32-1:34.
My last IM was Nov 2008 I got a 10:44. My swim w/ the current was 54 minutes. The fastest male swim time was 45 minutes so I was really happy with my swim in that race. My olympic distance swim time is about 26 minutes. I have noticed that my swim with a wetsuit goes MUCH better than without.
An earlier catch/pull will result in a higher body position in the water, which would account for the difference with a wetsuit. You’ve got a pretty decent stroke, so when you add the wetsuit to help with better position, that gets you the better time.
Listen to FlaJill.
John
I’m not normally a huge drill, drill, drill person, but I’d throw some fins on and do a little bit of the one where you do one arm stroke-six kicks-one arm stroke-six kicks while really letting your body move side to side.
The idea is to slow it down and get a feel for really getting your hand and arm fully extended in front of you. It’s like you’re overly concerned about crossing over the midline right now, and you’re stopping too soon on the hand entry. Try making it feel like you’re having to stretch to reach something on a high shelf, and about how it’s frequently easier to let your body go sidweways when you do that.
When you go back to regular freestyle, you don’t have to overexaggerate that tall reach so much, but you should work on being aware of not cutting the front end off.
Hi Rebecca,
Thanks for the response. Wow, those are good swim times considering how (relatively) little you swim. I better go and get that book you suggest, although we have just set up a new triathlon club and have a swim coach who is making us do set workouts which is a major improvement for us beginners.
I haven’t yet experienced that feeling of pulling myself over the water, I am hoping it comes sometime. When I speed my stroke up and kick more vigorously I sort of get the feeling - probably because I end up higher in the water. I am sure I have a late catch also, and so hearing the suggestions for and symptoms of that issue is also useful. I also fall into the camp of people who will benefit enormously from a wet suit.
Thanks and good luck
John
My pool is set-up for yards and I usually swim my 100s at a moderate effort in 1:32-1:34.
My last IM was Nov 2008 I got a 10:44. My swim w/ the current was 54 minutes. The fastest male swim time was 45 minutes so I was really happy with my swim in that race. My olympic distance swim time is about 26 minutes. I have noticed that my swim with a wetsuit goes MUCH better than without.
Video Here
and here
So you can hold 1:30s for 100s but swim :54 for 2.4? I swim mods of 1:12ish and had a horrible swim of 66min at IMKY.
Either your an endurence machine or those numbers are inflated, I could be completely wrong and if I am I apologize. But with the stroke in the video, I dont know if I could swim a :54.