Hi, new to the board, back in the pool about 4 months.
Worked up to doing Mo Chambers workouts, but always substituting for fly in the IM's because I just never learned it.
I've always been a lousy kicker, but I bought a pair of Zoomers and quit using the board, which has helped a bunch. I do dolphins front and side and flutter on my back. I just started to dolphin kick off the flip (without the fins), which has really helped reduce stroke count (10 catchup; 13 -- 14 normally; 15 + is a failed lap). I'm 6'2" and dropped from 200+ when I started down to 190 - 195, which feels great.
Today I tried doing the fly legs in the IM's wearing the Zoomers, and I think there's some hope. Can a 44 year old lousy kicker learn to fly? Is it OK to learn with fins? Are there bad habits to watch out for when learning with or without the fins? Or should I forget about fly and just concentrate on the other three strokes?
I'm having a lot of fun swimming again, love the workouts and chat here, and am not afraid of looking like a complete dweeb.
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Former Member
Originally posted by BillS
Thanks for the advice. I'm up to a whopping 50 meters without drowning, which is a significant improvement over my earlier about 10-meters-then-drowning efforts, but the last 15 is largely sub-surface flailing and then I need to hang on the wall for about forever to recover.
I think there is a pretty broad concensus that it is better to only swim as far as you can with relatively good form, i.e. it is better to swim 25m of quality fly, recover, and repeat than to try to swim 50m and have some of it be bad form.
I have several butterfly videos, including the TI butterfly and breaststroke video, and my favorite is the Go Swim Butterfly with Misty Hyman. http://goswim.tv/ It outlines a number of focus points and common errors with a lot of good video. The TI video is good from the point of building a stroke up from scratch using a progression of drills, but it teaches one kick fly and if you are used to two kick fly and have a coach that teaches two kick fly it can be frustrating, and there is not enough good underwater video of whole stroke swimming for my taste.
Originally posted by BillS
Thanks for the advice. I'm up to a whopping 50 meters without drowning, which is a significant improvement over my earlier about 10-meters-then-drowning efforts, but the last 15 is largely sub-surface flailing and then I need to hang on the wall for about forever to recover.
I think there is a pretty broad concensus that it is better to only swim as far as you can with relatively good form, i.e. it is better to swim 25m of quality fly, recover, and repeat than to try to swim 50m and have some of it be bad form.
I have several butterfly videos, including the TI butterfly and breaststroke video, and my favorite is the Go Swim Butterfly with Misty Hyman. http://goswim.tv/ It outlines a number of focus points and common errors with a lot of good video. The TI video is good from the point of building a stroke up from scratch using a progression of drills, but it teaches one kick fly and if you are used to two kick fly and have a coach that teaches two kick fly it can be frustrating, and there is not enough good underwater video of whole stroke swimming for my taste.
