dry land core exercising

trying to cut my free stroke rate down (currently a fustrating 25 per 25M)Not trying to be critical in any way, but there's no reason you can't be in the teens for this (per lap). A good streamline at the push-off will help drop the stroke count for starters. And so will working on your reach at the catch...which is why you probably asked about rotation to begin with. Many lap swimmers or new swimmers tend to pull back too early. It not only adds more strokes per lap, but this creates resistance. Try thinking about each stroke like the stride of a speed skater rather than paddling your torso as if it were a rubber raft. When the lead arm is out front...reach for the wall and don't claw backwards right away. Not having seen you swim, it's a good bet that this is what's going on. ...from Coach Emmett Hines...Whenever you change stroke counts you employ different muscles or muscle fibers. If one is making a large change, say going from 24 spl (strokes per length) to 15 spl or fewer, it means using perhaps 70 percent different (and as luck would have it, completely untrained) muscles. This is the range where someone shifts from swimming primarily with their arms and legs to swimming primarily with their core body, changing the role of the arms to that of transmission rather than engine. From a muscular conditioning standpoint this is almost like starting over from scratch. There is a rather long conditioning curve just as you would expect from taking up a new sport that asks you to use previously untrained parts of your body.www.h2oustonswims.org/.../questionable_stroke_counting.html best drill for fine tuning a high stroke count: catch up drill Swim - Drill CATCH UP - YouTube

Thanks for the advice and links, very helpful. I liked the analogy of a speed skater and will bear that in mind next time I'm in the pool, also I'll hold back with my catch as you suggested. I hoping to break 20 before christmas. Cheers again

Since this thread is about the core, let me ask something to my expert friends here. I often hear the term "engaging your core". I have gotten to the point (I think) where I do use my core without thinking about it. But I was looking at a Thorpe video I've seen dozens of times and noticed something. He seems to pull his shoulders back a bit when swimming. That reminded me of something I read on the Swimsmooth site, so I went back to it and they were talking about engaging the core by tightening the butt and pulling the scapula together a bit, like you would standing with good posture. I have never really thought about that while swimming and am wondering if I should make an effort to pull my shoulders back. It seems like that would make it harder to extend the arm, but maybe not. Anyone ever made a conscious effort to "engage the core" more besides trying to get EVF? The terminology we now use is to "brace through the core" when doing activities where stability of the abdomen, pelvis and back is necessary for proper form. You can feel the abdomen brace by making a tssss sound. Rolling the pelvis under and squeezing the buttocks can prevent you from over-arching the back.

Why use tubing as opposed to actual weights? You can do safer speed work with tubing (than machines and dumbbells) when used properly. It is also an excellent tool to stabilize the shoulder girdle and improve posture to prevent injuries.

Yoga. I recently started doing some poses I found in a book. I thought it would help my swimming and it does, I think. Some require flexibility or balance, and some need tremendous core strength and stability to maintain, like the peacock. Here you basically hold yourself in the horizontal plank position, but only the hands support your weight, rest of your body is in the air. I can only hold for 15 seconds before I loose balance or stamina.

Cheers Steve Will look into some basic yoga

This is a link to a second article by Marshall Adams on this subject: www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/.../200007-01st_art.asp In the first article he points out that Silvia identified four distinct mechanically superior parts of the stroke that Rose, and more recently Thorpe and others utilize. Silvia called them the "big four" and they are: " Inertial shoulder girdle elevation and upward scapular rotation Shoulder joint medial rotation and elbow flexion Shoulder joint adduction and downward scapular motion Inertial round-off and release (partial supination and shoulder joint lateral rotation). " In the first article Marshall indicates: "The effective 'core' muscles for shoulder adduction used in all swimming strokes are the great trunk muscles that originate from the chest and back of the body (core) and have their insertions on the upper arm (humerus) bone. Many muscles originate from the chest and back but these muscles are the major adductors that work to bring the arm (humerus) in toward the mid-line of the body (adduction). The muscles include the latissimus dorsi, and teres major on the back (posterior) and the pectoralis major on the front (anterior). The teres major originates along the lateral boarder of the scapula, thus this important adductor muscle does not completely follow the definition of a core muscle since it does not arise from the trunk but arises from a bone that is close to the trunk. The scapula glides on the surface of the body's rib cage. Why are these major muscles that for the most part originate from the 'body core' so important for effective swimming technique over and above other muscles which are also capable of producing or assisting in shoulder adduction? The answer can be found in the structure of the shoulder joint and the nature of these major 'core' muscles. These muscles are large, relatively powerful and are served well by the proximity of the heart's fresh blood supply. " If you do some dry land work to build strength in these core muscles, drills to build the mechanics described by the Silvia's big four, and KICK drills, you'll soon be swimming like Thorpe! :) At any rate, read the first article if you want to learn where the core concept came from more than 50 years ago, and the second article if you want to learn how we went astray with S strokes.

When you retract your shoulders, you're engaging your trapezius muscles, which help stabilize your shoulders by engaging the little muscles. (I came across an article with citations for this but I don't feel like going through my history right now, if you're curious reply to this and I"ll dig out the citation.) Food for thought... when you pull just from your shoulder, you've got a second class lever (fulcrum is at the glenohumeral joint = where your upper arm attaches to your torso; effort= muscles around that joint)... but note in Silvia's description the "inertial" parts. (Shoulder girdle elevation and rounding off the end of the stroke). I have reason to believe that what you get when you retract your shoulders is that you strengthen the connectivity between the two upper arms, such that you get a 1st class lever, which is much more efficient (so some of the downward rotation from the hand dropping down into the entry transfers to the finish of the other arm... Jonty Skinner went over this in closer detail in the goswim.tv forums a while back with his "angular momentum" theorizing. You can get angular momentum to help you out if you use a straightarm recovery, and tightening the traps by retracting the shoulders serves to enable that. Regarding the core... Todd Sayce ran an excellent series about core work for swimmers. Start with "sit up saga". saycoperformance.com/.../ Think about what the core encompasses. It's not just the "abs" (colloquially, the 6 back, aka the rectus abdominus)... think about what you want your core do be doing. Do you want to be flexing (curling forward)while you swim? Or do you want to be keeping a straight and stiff body line? Core work for short and axis long axis strokes is different. (So what helps your butterfly undulation may not DIRECTLY (at least neurally) help your core stability in freestyle. I have some other notes about core work, but I would suggest poking around saycoperformance, swimmingscience.net, some of Mike Robertson and Eric Cressey's articles about core strength. I think the biggest thing with any exercise is to understand WHY you're doing the exercises (rotation? .Flexion? Extension), exactly HOW the exercise should be done, as well as what BAD FORM looks like because you don't want to injure your spinal disks. Have someone watch you. It's easy to "cheat"... doing russian twists by moving your arms a lot so you touch the ground, but you don't really end up rotating your core... or when doing situps, bending at a bad part of your spine (lumbar, neck... not sure myself whether you want to be flexing your t spine) Wrote this quickly, hope it makes sense, feel free to ask for clarification.

Here's a good article on what is meant by the core swimming muscles : www.swimmingcoach.org/.../JL06132002.asp . Had a chance to swim with Coach Silvia during HS in the mid-60s, two or three summers at Pine Knoll SS and some lessons too. Wish I had been older, more of it stuck, and that i kept my notes and handouts.

These are good for long axis rotation Dryland Exercises for Swimmers - YouTube Rotational Repeat Slams - YouTube advanced below Dryland Swim Exercises - Swimmer push - up - YouTube and these are good for short axis rotation Superman - YouTube Band Extensions - YouTube Dryland Exercises for Swimmers - Streamline on the Bosu - YouTube advanced below Explosive Hypers - YouTube