Asking for a friend. that’s it, a friend.
Geez that stroke is ugly… my friend also has to lose 20 lbs (10 gone so far…)
bump for the morning crowd and fixed the privacy settings.
No commentary. Just an observation and a question. It looks like you glide with your right arm as it enters water then pull. With your left you seem to pull straight away. Is there a reason?
Is that set up on the bottom not the wall?
Lower your saddle.
Catch on your left side sucks because you have a timing error. Catch is quite frankly shit.
You are tilting your head and pull yourself out of alignment instead of rolling fully to breath.
I suspect that the backend of your right hand is truncated causing the timing error.
You loose breath space because of this and begin your left stroke too early.
First left stroke off the wall is wide and the rest have too much crossover.
Insweep of the right arm is suppressed and this probably leads to the truncated rear end as the upsweep/outsweep has no space to work in.
If I was coaching you I would give you a slap on the back of the head for being a smartarse, I mean I would have you doing one arm stroking with the other arm at your side breathing on the non stroking side to sort out your timing.
You obviously breath mostly on your right side as your whole stroke has bias in roll position to the right.
This is what is causing your excessive crossover with the left hand.
Sort out that roll timing, get your head aligned, and it should all fall into place.
I’m sure this swimmer is better than me. But for what it’s worth it looks like during the breathing stroke that hand is slipping more water than the opposite. On the non-breathing stroke the propelling hand stays between vertical lines dropped from that elbow and shoulder. On the breathing stroke the propelling hand comes inside that shoulder and across the body. So it isn’t holding the water, the force has to go somewhere and it slides about. I guess there are lots of possible reasons and a side on video might help. Why that happens is probably for someone smarter than me but for me it happens when my timing and rhythm is off (like 95% of the time) and those pauses make it harder to flow from one stroke to another. Then it feels like the stroke is trying to accelerate rather than maintain speed but it can’t so it slips. A bit like a wheel spin but that is far too dramatic a description for what happens when I swim.
Boy you’re a shitty friend. I would have recorded my “friend” from multiple angels. You just seem to hang on the wall. Tell your “friend” to find someone who is actually willing to help !
ETA - looks like slowman finally sent you your GoPro hero ?
Boy you’re a shitty friend. I would have recorded my “friend” from multiple angels. You just seem to hang on the wall. Tell your “friend” to find someone who is actually willing to help !
ETA - looks like slowman finally sent you your GoPro hero ?
I know, right! Not only should have I used multiple angels, but also a few different angles. 
I do have a couple of different views, but I just haven’t put them up yet. All are underwater from approximately the same depth, and not all are great as I was experimenting with placement. gopro set up on a bike handlebar mount and that was clamped to a 5lb dumbbell on the bottom of the pool, in that view set up about 3 or 4 m from the wall on the black line.
It was the first time my “friend” had ever seen his stroke from underwater. A lot of stuff he knew about, but not how bad it was, and some he had no idea he was doing until he saw it on video, particularly how crap that left arm is…
and yeah, big thanks to slowman!
I’d like to record myself swimming one of these days but it’s been 20+ years since I’ve seen my stroke.
On a side note I’ve seen the older kids at swim meets playing around with them this summer. One night when I was timing they had it mounted to the block and I couldn’t figure out what they were up to. They made a really cool video for the end of the year banquet. Some of the backstroke starts were great with the angle.
So my “friend” took the gopro to masters today, and got a little more video. I took out a snippet (as it isn’t just me, I mean, my friend) swimming here.
I think the left arm is better than it was, although it wasn’t consistent and I might have been doing a bit of cherry picking. This is from a set of 12x50 on 55, close to the end of practice. one of the middle repeats, maybe #5 or 6.
So much assymetry.
Oh I know.
I don’t particularly care about “my friend” being symmetrical, as “he” is a right side breather anyway and developed a little bit of a lope over the years. I don’t want to be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, but the catch on the left arm, the crossover on the right arm extension and crossover on the left arm pull are all things that can and should be fixed.
The roll asymmetry is a big part of the problem.
The limbs are just adapting the best they can.
Why is the left arm in such a hurry?
because if I don’t then I stall. if I leave it out there longer then I go slower, cuz that creates a dead spot in my stroke. I’m not saying it is perfect, but it works for me and my idiosyncracies, and I’ve been swimming this way for so long that I’m hesitant to completely change everything.
besides, it seems to be pretty common to get pulling quicker with the pulling arm on the breathing stroke. I see a few guys in this race doing it. Check out leClos at the bottom of the screen…
Looks to me like the left arm is consistently drawing slightly deeper that the right, which has a slightly higher elbow and looks more appropriate to me. It may be a roll issue, I don’t know. Still his swimming form looks pretty good.
good catch, I agree.
I might try breathing to the left instead of the right and seeing what that does to the stroke.
a simple suggestion that has been given to me over and over again: on stroke enter do not go anywhere near the centerline… almost sure to cross it at some point and will then not swim straight. whenever i don’t swim straight, it’s because of this.
Looks to me like the left arm is consistently drawing slightly deeper that the right, which has a slightly higher elbow and looks more appropriate to me. It may be a roll issue, I don’t know. Still his swimming form looks pretty good.
eh - more drills and thrills, as I don’t think any band-aid style tweaks will make too much of a difference. Visit a high-performance center and see what they are doing.
The guy behind however, is much more of project!
because if I don’t then I stall. if I leave it out there longer then I go slower, cuz that creates a dead spot in my stroke. I’m not saying it is perfect, but it works for me and my idiosyncracies, and I’ve been swimming this way for so long that I’m hesitant to completely change everything.
besides, it seems to be pretty common to get pulling quicker with the pulling arm on the breathing stroke. I see a few guys in this race doing it. Check out leClos at the bottom of the screen…
You are hurrying into your left stroke because you are not getting full quid out of the back of the right stroke.
left hand sweep comes way over center, likely to support breathing habits. i find once you balance breathing, the sweep cans ort itself out.