Critique my swim pls

RE: Critique my swim pls

smontanaro — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:37:49 GMT

I learned a "golf" drill several years ago which I come back to fairly frequently. Swim a 50. Your score is the time plus the number of strokes. So, for me, a reasonable "cruise" pace would have me taking about 27 strokes for a 43s 50, giving me a score of 70. The goal is to speed up without increasing the number of strokes or the reduce the number of strokes without slowing down. You might find that useful as an objective measure of improvement as you experiment with various technique changes, EVF, better streamline, bilateral breathing, etc.

RE: Critique my swim pls

Allen Stark — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 01:34:47 GMT

I agree. Any tips on how to do this? Does inflexibility play a role? I am pretty inflexible and I feel i really need to tighten in the shoulders and arm to get the elbow high and hence I am not relaxing and consumer a lot of energy. I always read and hear about the EVF and high elbow but I have a hard time making it happen. I find EVF is easier to attain if you concentrate on front quadrant swimming.I'd recommend using a center mount snorkel so that you don't have to think about breathing and maybe use fins or a pullbuoy so you don't have to think about keeping your legs up and can just concentrate on the pull. Do some overlap swimming working on one arm at a time.Do some fist swimming to focus on feeling the pressure on your forearms.Do some dog paddle keeping your arms in the front quadrant all the time and getting into EVF.

RE: Critique my swim pls

Former Member — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:24:58 GMT

You have a good rhythm and body roll.In your pull, you are dropping your elbows,only a little at the beginning but it gets worse as you get tired.QUOTE] To me that is the most important thing you can work on. Your elbows are leading your pull which means you are only really pulling water with your hands not your entire forearm. Work on this and your strokes per lap will drop and you will be able to go much faster. Keep that elbow nice and high in the catch. I agree. Any tips on how to do this? Does inflexibility play a role? I am pretty inflexible and I feel i really need to tighten in the shoulders and arm to get the elbow high and hence I am not relaxing and consumer a lot of energy. I always read and hear about the EVF and high elbow but I have a hard time making it happen.

RE: Critique my swim pls

Former Member — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:47:04 GMT

I agree. I swim about 25 strokes in 25 yards. 10 strokes means someone either has serious kicking power or extremely long arms. It does depend a bunch on height of course... even more so on armspan as you pointed out, and to me in that video the OP looks reasonable tall... 6 footish maybe a hair more. Let me clarify some things though... I didn't say "you HAVE to cut it in half" I said TRY to cut it in half. Practice it, see if you can do it. Merely training and trying this will help in the battle to achieve more distance with each stroke. In practice, when I kick 3-4 dolphins off my turns (which is important to practice too, and i pointed that out), I'm taking 11-12 in a SCM pool and I'm 6'2". Shrug. When I try for DPS drills I'm getting 10 in SCM with a pull bouy. Seems reasonable it could be cut to 10 in SCY for "long stroke swimming" in practice for someone else. I guarantee I could do 10 easily in SCY so its not impossible, and I am not a prime specimen by any means. FTR count goes up when i sprint. my 100 free stroke count last year was 11,13,13,14 for SCY100... and 11,13,14,14,14,14,15,16 for my SCM200 (piano dropped, lol). . Sure does seem plausible to shoot for 10 in SCY to me, depite all those jaws on the bottom of the pool to swim around :) I guess if the OP is 5'10" then try for 11? :angel:

RE: Critique my swim pls

__steve__ — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 06:21:12 GMT

Decreasing strokes per length helps me, but it's something I have to constantly work on because I easily revert. It must also be practiced with solid form, or it may create an additional flaw to have to fix (anecdote)

RE: Critique my swim pls

Former Member — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 12:40:48 GMT

RE: Critique my swim pls

Former Member — Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:50:46 GMT

:eek: 10 strokes per 25 yards? I agree. I swim about 25 strokes in 25 yards. 10 strokes means someone either has serious kicking power or extremely long arms.

RE: Critique my swim pls

Former Member — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 14:46:06 GMT

What kind of effort was this swim on your part? 50% 80% 100% ? By this i mean, was it race pace, or cooldown pace, etc? My reply assumes this was nearly 90% effort on your part. You should work on stroke efficiency. ~20 strokes in a 25 is just too many on a long stroke swim imo. It seems to start out ok the first few strokes but by the end of each length it looks like you are swimming against current :) Work on some DPS drills to get the stroke count down, then incorporate those drills into normal swimming. You seem reasonably tall. I would try to cut that count in half for normal long stroke swimming (if this is yards). Finish each stroke. You seem to be pulling your hand out right near the waist. Some streamline work will help also because you'll be further before you need to take a stroke. Your streamlines are not helping you to preserve the speed you're making on the pushoff. Tighten up the streamline, and add some underwater kicks. This will save your arms a little more too by taking a few strokes off each length. If you push off with a tight streamline, you should easily be able to get out to the flags with nearly zero effort applied. With some kicks you should be able to surface with your feet past the flags. (with some practice of course). Right now your turns and streamlines hold a lot of time you can drop off your swims. Also on your recovery, seemingly at random you're swingin that hand way above the elbow... don't do that :)

RE: Critique my swim pls

taruky — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:35:13 GMT

What kind of effort was this swim on your part? 50% 80% 100% ? By this i mean, was it race pace, or cooldown pace, etc? My reply assumes this was nearly 90% effort on your part. You should work on stroke efficiency. ~20 strokes in a 25 is just too many on a long stroke swim imo. It seems to start out ok the first few strokes but by the end of each length it looks like you are swimming against current Work on some DPS drills to get the stroke count down, then incorporate those drills into normal swimming. You seem reasonably tall. I would try to cut that count in half for normal long stroke swimming (if this is yards). Finish each stroke. You seem to be pulling your hand out right near the waist. Some streamline work will help also because you'll be further before you need to take a stroke. Your streamlines are not helping you to preserve the speed you're making on the pushoff. Tighten up the streamline, and add some underwater kicks. This will save your arms a little more too by taking a few strokes off each length. If you push off with a tight streamline, you should easily be able to get out to the flags with nearly zero effort applied. With some kicks you should be able to surface with your feet past the flags. (with some practice of course). Right now your turns and streamlines hold a lot of time you can drop off your swims. Also on your recovery, seemingly at random you're swingin that hand way above the elbow... don't do that :eek: 10 strokes per 25 yards?

RE: Critique my swim pls

__steve__ — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:23:40 GMT

Is that meters ? You have a natural feel for the water. I don't know if it is due to your height but that first 25 m was covered in about 16 seconds with a mild and deep kick. I have to sprint to maintain that. Start working on your turns,do more drills, get more streamlined and keep getting feedback

RE: Critique my swim pls

Former Member — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 15:19:11 GMT

Hi Andreasjs, The link you provided is not working. The older ones (June 2011 and Jan 2012) can be viewed however. Sorry, bad copy paste :( Here it is again: www.youtube.com/watch

RE: Critique my swim pls

__steve__ — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 09:11:21 GMT

Hi Andreasjs, The link you provided is not working. The older ones (June 2011 and Jan 2012) can be viewed however.

RE: Critique my swim pls

Allen Stark — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 08:09:25 GMT

You have a good rhythm and body roll.In your pull, you are dropping your elbows,only a little at the beginning but it gets worse as you get tired.On each turn(except the flip) you are way too shallow.Go deeper and stay in streamline longer.On the flip turn,it started well,but don't try to turnover before you push off,push off on your back and then rotate to on your stomach.