I was wondering if anybody was willing to give me some insight as to what could possibly be wrong with my technique. I think i might be overgliding a bit but otherwise i am too much of a newbie to notice anything else. I am a decent swimmer but cannot kick even if my life depended on it. Or should i say, i am really efficient with my arm and have not really cared about my kick up until this point.
Please feel free to comment on anything you see that might be wrong about this!
I’ll play. Hopefully FLA Jill will chime in - she is a good swimmer AND good at analyzing others’ strokes.
Actually doesn’t look terrible.
Kick
Did you purposefully stop kicking as you were gliding into the far wall? Way before you got there, you went from kicking to waving your legs a little like they were just seaweed.
You kick wayyy too much from your knees. Kicking is a hip activity. I recommend the following:
-kick streamline on your back
-kick ‘streamline’ on your side (top arm will lay at your side, bottom extends)
-Repeat the above with fins (which seem to make it easier for people to use their hips and glutes)
-Once you’ve done the above, SWIM with fins. Once you get over the fact that you are going way fast, see if you can feel the hip-ness of your kick with the fins.
-Swim some backstroke. You have to really think about your kick cycles with this stroke otherwise the shoulder rotation and reaching back to take a stroke won’t work.
-Be aware that triathletes have tight ankles from all that running and cycling and you’ll probably never have that snappy kick that teenage swim team girls do. That’s ok - the point isn’t to be able to do fast kick sets - it’s to fix the current knee action in your stroke.
Armstroke
I think you may be “crossing over” a tiny bit - not terribly. ‘Crossing over’ means your hand is coming too close to the midline of your body as it enters the water. Yours isn’t going PAST the midline, but it’s a little close.
I don’t think you’re keeping a high enough elbow through the pull.
Here is a youtube video of Macca`s stroke. As you will see, he brings his hands inward, towards his body during the pull/power phase to maximize the pull. Its kind of an ‘S’ shape.
It looks like you are a decent swimmer, but you do not do this so perhaps you could try this and see if it improves your swim. I don’t want to say that how you swim is wrong because perhaps you have always swam that way and changing your stroke will not make you faster. When I played baseball back in the day, all my coaches told me I had to throw over the top and that was the way to throw, but there are many side arm pichers that throw very well that were never told this. Anyways, lets just say I have a beef with people that say there is a right or wrong way of doing things. Triathlon is also different from baseball so maybe there is a right or wrong way.
Your kick looks ok with me. I never kick (probably should) but I can do a 58 minute IM swim.
Hope that helps.
Maybe using a pull boy to work on pulling across your body would give you a chance to focus on the pull. What the PP mentioned about pulling across or is important. Something else that might help is looking directly down at the bottom of the pool. That will bring your hips up. At first it feels weird but it is now the prefered head position by some collegiate and high school coaches. It makes me faster. So, pull across your body not alongside of it and look to the bottom of the pool not toward the other end. Good luck. Thanks for the opportunity to try to help.
entry is to narrow…enter wider then roll shoulders and hips into the correct position…you swim sort of flat so you need to activate the hips and shoulders to get more distance per stroke
your kicking from your knees…use your whole leg…
your pull is to wide…enter with your arms…slightly drop hand so elbow is higher then hand, and pull but keep it narrow…remember from a front viewpoint you want to be as narrow as possible to eliminate drag.
I’m not so sure you are pulling *too *wide, maybe a bit. There are plenty of fast people that have a wide stroke like that. It can be an advantage in rough conditions. What I see, though, is your front quadrant part of the stroke is weak. It starts with your entry is too shallow. Your hand and forearm are slapping through the water surface at the same time. I’d try entering deeper - a steeper angle - spearing your hand through the surface. Then, start your pull by bending the elbow close to 90 deg while rotating forward at the shoulder until your elbow is directly above your wrist and then you can engage your lats to pull - which is what you are doing once your arm gets past your shoulder. This way you use not only your hand, but your forearm as a paddle and you are using a very strong muscle to pull you forward. RIght now, you are leading your pull with your elbow until your arm gets past your shoulder, from there, it looks OK.
Your head could be lower, too. Try to lower your head, by looking at the pool bottom, until you feel the water flowing over the top of it. For some, this is an exaggeration, but it should train you to keep it lower. Actually, water flowing over your head has less resistance than your head breaking through water because water surface tension is 20 times stronger than water in general. It’s why you can float a needle, that should sink, on the surface.
Your kick doesn’t look all that bad - maybe a little loose and sloppy. You seem to have reasonable ankle flexibility. It does, however, look like a lot of kicking effort. Can you sustain that for distance? I wonder what it looks like at the end of 1000 yards straight. I’d back the kick effort down, make smaller motions, engage it more from the hips, tighten up the knee action.
This website has an animated swimmer that you can view from different angles. The mechanics of the stroke are very clear. It helped me eliminate my cross-over/arm-flailing problem.
Bad angle, but I’d reckon you are pushing down with your extended arm as you breathe, effectively losing the front fourth or so of your stroke as you are pushing down instead of pulling.
Some folks would have you work on catch up drill to make sure your hand is kinda waiting as you recover, others would have you work on starting your internal rotation at the shoulder to make your catch as soon as your hand enters the water. The proper way for you lies somewhere in between. But either of those things should help. I use the catch up one to start people on.
A somewhat bigger problem is the lack of a mental image of what swimming should be like. So the mr smooth illustration can be helpful for you. To help get a detailed idea of what the crawl stroke looks like.
I though the stroke looked a little flat too. Kind of hard to tell from that camera angle, but the head was having to rotate an awful lot when you went to breathe. You seem to have above average shoulder flexibility for a non-fish, and if you can integrate that into good body roll, it’s a big part of a good freestyle.
Not too much glide on the front end, IMO. But I think you’re losing a bit on your catch after hand entry. Maybe some sculling drills would help build a better feel for the water.
Yeah that head rotation to breathe is connected to looking forward instead of looking down. The head has to go through some odd angles and the stroke has to adjust (provide lift) to get the mouth out of the water. When looking down, it’s a combination of body roll and a slight rotation of the head - keeping one eye in the water and tucking the chin. The head makes a trough in the water right at the mouth, then, to breathe from. The arms can then be used solely for propelling one forward.
Thank you all for those advices… It is incredible how you notice your flaws once they’re pointed out! I will try to work on my body rotation, my crossing over and my kick from the knee… I always thought i had pretty good body rotation though…
Just to make sure, i know i pull quite large but is that a bad thing? I am a rock climber and really have powerful lats so it might be the reason why i am pulling so large!
I will try that and post another video in about one month to try and see if you guys can notice the improvements!
You really have an awesome eye for details as it is true i have higher than average shoulder flexibility.
Can you point another drill or another video of the drill you are suggesting for water feel as i am not certain i understand what is going on in that video!
Also, in an OWS or long distance swim, your kick provides balance and not so much power. Over powering your kick will expire you in a long distance swim.