I previously swam by reaching as far as possible, extending my arms and hands in order to enter the water as far as possible, and pull all the way nearly touching the knees in order to lengthen the stroke. However, my coach told me to drop this practice and enter the water near my head instead (she gave me a kickboard and let me do one-arm drill such that the hand enters the water BEHIND the kickboard), and told me that looong stroke is a kind of old-fashioned swimming in the 80s. That's exactly the opposite of this video tells:
www.youtube.com/watch
So what's exactly the mechanism of entering short? This club is running Swim Smooth, or should I switch to one which runs Total Immersion instead?
Paul Newsome, the founder of Swim Smooth, is a great guy (and coach). If you want to correspond with him directly, FRIEND him on Facebook. He's good at responding.
On a related note, Swim Smooth is currently offering 10% off of their Swim Guru with LOTS of great, professional videos, tips, and training session: www.swimsmooth.guru with the promo code VUQ8-7G2G.
I like both Swim Smooth and TI, but prefer the former if you're already a descent swimmer.
Mark
I have just returned to the pool and tried to do what the coach told me, but the time for 400 increased by more than half a minute, and for 200 increased by about 20 seconds, which meant my improvement in time in the past half a year was basically undone.
I also counted strokes in the process, and found out that my spl for 50 m increased by 5 to 6, which perfectly explained my increase in time.
What's the problem here?
The coach is always right, except when they aren't. Why does she think this style is better? Who is elite who swims this way? Whose form should you emulate? I can't say I am expert in the most current thinking in freestyle, but I am not clear an early entry is faster. Perhaps you were over extending and not entering cleanly and this is a drill to correct that. Find out your coach's rationale.
Purely speculation, but perhaps the coach is trying to get you to "spear" the water more so that you can get your forearm vertical (i.e., early vertical forearm or EVF). If you are reaching out too far your arm can end up flat in the water making this difficult. Obviously there's a happy medium, though. Your hand shouldn't be entering the water by your head.
Yes, my coach noted that my pec was entering first and my arm was flat because I was trying to reach as far as possible in attempt to lengthen my stroke.
It is the end of November now and I have joined the master training for 7 sessions in the past month, all of them are technique sessions (I'm not yet qualified to join the other sessions as they require interval on 2'0" or less), and also joined the local open water group and swim on weekends. The coach has identified some of my problems, like the one mentioned in this thread, and the legs being wide open, etc., which I can take note of and put my concentration there when I swim.
However, I've just done a timed 1.5 km in the pool today, but I've only got very little improvement since I started training, which is 32'6" -> 31'42" for 1.5 km, despite better pool temperature (26°C last month and 22°C this month without wetsuit). I'm actually expecting at least a minute improvement if I can remove these dead spots in my swimming, but I'm disappointed now. Although I feel better than before (the muscle fatigue problem mentioned in the other thread has since gone after these stroke corrections) it does not translate into speed improvement.
I timed 1500 m today but sadly it was much slower than two weeks ago:
11/30: 31'42"
12/14: 34'20"
They were on the same time of day, same day of week, and the same pool, roughly the same number of people in the pool, the only difference is the water temperature (22C -> 17C).
Maybe I should order a professional swim smooth video analysis with the coach at my club running swim smooth, and work on the all the techniques during the winter when the long pool is closed for annual maintenance.
