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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Originally posted by gjy
I forgot about the number of people (two here?) that don't like doing drills which is also me.
I see there is an explanation of the one-arm fly drill here which I had been looking for. Not that I want to do it at this point - I wanted to know what was to be accomplished by it. Mostly I get here that it allows you to work on timing - other than that, the purposes seem kind of weak. I don't need to work on timing anymore - I've got it now - it's automatic. A couple weeks ago, I did finally give the one-arm drill a better try, for a full couple laps (but I erroneously, I guess, did not switch arms) and I couldn't even guess what its purpose was. I think there is a rule, isn't there, that you don't do a drill unless you know what you are trying to accomplish.
On the Phelps/Bowman fly video Bowman refers to one arm fly when talking about energy management, i.e. you can do more one arm fly than you can two arm fly.
One arm fly also allows you to slow the whole stroke down (as opposed to just adding a glide phase) which allows you to concentrate on various technique issues the same way many people advocate swimming at a slower pace in freestyle while you work on technique. Apparently Phelps swims a lot of one arm fly and feels it is important to maintaining and improving his technique.
Originally posted by gjy
I forgot about the number of people (two here?) that don't like doing drills which is also me.
I see there is an explanation of the one-arm fly drill here which I had been looking for. Not that I want to do it at this point - I wanted to know what was to be accomplished by it. Mostly I get here that it allows you to work on timing - other than that, the purposes seem kind of weak. I don't need to work on timing anymore - I've got it now - it's automatic. A couple weeks ago, I did finally give the one-arm drill a better try, for a full couple laps (but I erroneously, I guess, did not switch arms) and I couldn't even guess what its purpose was. I think there is a rule, isn't there, that you don't do a drill unless you know what you are trying to accomplish.
On the Phelps/Bowman fly video Bowman refers to one arm fly when talking about energy management, i.e. you can do more one arm fly than you can two arm fly.
One arm fly also allows you to slow the whole stroke down (as opposed to just adding a glide phase) which allows you to concentrate on various technique issues the same way many people advocate swimming at a slower pace in freestyle while you work on technique. Apparently Phelps swims a lot of one arm fly and feels it is important to maintaining and improving his technique.
