I love swimming IM, i’d rather swim a 400 or 800 IM than Free. Partly it’s because I suck at free, hate the monotony of it, and partly because I’m (comparatively) WAAAAYY faster at the other three strokes than I am at freestyle. I’ve been going to Masters swimming for a year+, various organizations due to moving, etc…and through all my experiences, it’s always the case that when I swim with my appropriate freestyle lane (1:40) I can create huge distance swimming the first three strokes and when I swim IM with the faster free lanes (1:20-1:30) I keep up just fine. (I’m not doing anything tricky like pulling lane line rings while doing backstroke)
What can I learn/pay attention to from Fly-Back-Breast that can be used to improve my free?
I am trying to get GoPro underwater video to show you guys, but I’m still trying to find a cheaper solution than throwing down $200 on a camera
I think that freestyle is the most dynamic of the four because a lot of moving parts have to be poised and synchronized when you release your hips. It’s easy to miss the timing, have a hosed up kick that counters your rotation, drop an elbow, delaying your recovery entry, cross over, not employ a good catch, and so forth. It’s not hard to have several deficiencies, all conspiring against forward momentum. I don’t think any of the other four strokes are as complicated.
Full disclosure…I stink at everything except long freestyle!
Pure swimmers have different strengths and swim strokes at dramatically different speeds. This will be even more pronounced if your swimming group is mainly triathletes or others who took up swimming later in life and who focus exclusively on freestyle.
As for what you can learn from the other strokes:
Butterfly: body position. If your hips are low in fly, you’ll know it. Learn to recognize that in your freestyle. Butterfly is also really good for highlighting what you should do in the back half of your freestyle pull.
Backstroke: notice how/when you engage your back muscles rather than arms and shoulders during the catch and first half of the pull. Replicate that on your stomach.
Breastroke: pay attention to the gliding / extension portions, and how you can swim faster with better execution of each stroke rather than more strokes.
I swim a lot of IM in training because I enjoy it. That gets me to the pool more often. Also, as my IM gets faster, so goes my freestyle.
I think that freestyle is the most dynamic of the four because a lot of moving parts have to be poised and synchronized when you release your hips. It’s easy to miss the timing, have a hosed up kick that counters your rotation, drop an elbow, delaying your recovery entry, cross over, not employ a good catch, and so forth. It’s not hard to have several deficiencies, all conspiring against forward momentum. I don’t think any of the other four strokes are as complicated.
Full disclosure…I stink at everything except long freestyle!
Good comments - f/s is kinda a like a golf swing, if one thing if off, you slice the ball. Just like holding onto the handlebar of a bike, the kick is the foundation of f/s in influences many of Nacly’s comments.
OP how’s your kick? Can you complete 5 x 100 on 2 min interval?
Thanks for the tips scottm. I will be doing quite a few laps of IM next time I get pool time. I like doing freestyle after breastroke/underwater pull+glide since it seem to accentuate the catch and pull and since my muscles are all tight it slows me down a bit and forces me to pay more attention to how my arms are moving the water.
ShoMyOFace - my kick is mediocre, and I’m pretty sure the timing of my kick relative to my freestyle stroke is all messed up. Not sure I can do 5 x 100 on 2:00 since I’ve never tried. I believe I can do 400 kick on my back in about 8-9 min. I seem to be way stronger on my back when doing flutter - perhaps it has to do with being in a more natural position rather than that sorta “arched” positions where I’m on my stomach holding a kickboard with my head out of the water. (Kicking takes a lot outta me, always did the underwater pull with another lane mate when we do circle pattern…:D)
It sounds like you need to spend some time refining your kick along with timing of the hips and pull. These would include kick sets without board and adding drills to assist the “roll” and pull. You can google videos that help with such.
Why do you say it’s “uncharacteristic”? I swam all through skool, kids are on swim team now, so I’ve only watched 1000s of swimmers for 1000s of hours, and very few are equally good at all strokes. They all place slightly different demands on the body, so it only stands to reason just about everyone will be somewhat better suited to some strokes and less favorably built for others. Most people’s worst stroke tends to be either backstroke or breaststroke since those seem to be the most different in terms of optimum physiology, but I’ve seen plenty of good swimmers whose worst stroke (compared to the mean) is freestlye. They tend to be good IMers, since having a relatively weak free usually ends up giving back less time than you lose having a poor backstroke or breaststroke.
Just think of it as being exceptionally good at the “off” strokes rather than having a sub-par free.
I’ll echo the diagnosis that mediocre kicking as one of the main culprits here. At least that has been my experience.
Swam breaststroke all through junior high and high school with some success but was never any good at freestyle. I think over the years my ankles became quite flexible at rolling out and together, which contributes to a strong breaststroke kick. But now in my later life as a triathlete, where all I do is freestyle, my kick is totally worthless. Don’t have the “right kind” of ankle flexibility - a prominent toe point while maintaining a broad, flat surface on the top of your foot - to generate a strong, propelling kick.
If you are somewhat decent at back and fly, then I think there is still hope for your kick. But I would pay attention to you feet and try to make your kick a strength rather than a liability.
Proper backstroke flutter kick should carry over well to freestyle, and there’s a fair amount of mechanics carryover between free & back in general. I’m wondering if you’re throwing your body alignment out of whack when you breathe on freestyle.
Good breaststroke doesn’t really carry over to the long axis strokes at all, and only has some minor timing/torso movement & turns carryover if you compare it to butterfly.
The butterfly carryover is the development of speed/explosiveness (common to see a lot of overlap between good sprint butterflyers and good sprint freestylers) and you can also take something away from it in terms of learning how timing & technique can trump brute force in getting across the pool.
Without seeing your stroke I can offer a boilerplate recommendation to incorporate some vertical kicking into your workouts. Just allocate 5-10 minutes a few times a week to some vertical kicking intervals. You might start with 20-30 seconds on and 30-40 seconds off. Put your hands on opposite shoulders (crossed) like you are trying to hug yourself and keep your eyes/chin up. Don’t flex abs but do keep navel pressed towards your spine, like in Pilates if you’ve ever tried that. I’d kick at a very high rate with no more than a foot or so of travel on either side of the centerline. Ultimately these should be sprints, but you will have to use your judgement at the beginning. Oh, and keep your toes pointed but your ankles loose. This type of training will strengthen your core and help shore up and muscle imbalances you might have.
Once you get it down, then you can do intervals where mid-interval you change directions, say 45 degrees. This will challenge your obliques and help to mix things up.
Are you my water polo coach? hahaha, that was definitely one of the more terrible drills I had to do in high school…coming back to bite me in the ass.
Thanks everyone for giving me their input! From the looks of things, it looks like I’ve got to spend a bit of time working on the water legs. From my masters workout today, I’m pretty sure i’m not kicking from the hip enough and kicking more from the thigh/hamstring area. Looking at good swimmers, they seem to really “snap” at the hip when rotating their body. Lotta things to work on.
