Fish tailing - Preventive Drill?

Michael, Quit pulling the legs of people who post questions to this forum. "Kick harder"?!! You gotta be kidding me; that's dinosaur, YMCA learn-to-swim, Red Cross circa 1970 thinking. Let's see, I'm allegedly fishtailing which is affecting my balance and streamlining technique and making me less efficient. This typically starts from the torso--pulling or recovery technique--before it works its way down to the legs where you can notice it, especially in freestyle which is an arm and torso dominated stroke. So, I can (1) take a close look at my front end technique and find out why I am imbalanced and try to fix it there. Carl's recommendation would be a good example of this approach. OR (2) use the brain-dead, address the symptoms not the cause approach, and OBTW through one of the most fatiguing and oxygen-debt costly solutions imaginable. Let's be clear. Kicking is hard work. Your big thigh muscles use a lot of oxygen and in the flutter kick return a lot less forward thrust for that expenditure. You can justify this in shorter sprints because you can afford to burn the O2 for that last little burst of speed. But never, Never, NEVER burn O2 excessively in your kick to fix a balance issue. No one, not even Grant Hackett, can afford that. OK, I apologize for turning you into a tackling dummy. I did not mean to attack you personally. My real target is the "work harder to avoid thinking" mindset. Matt

Michael, Quit pulling the legs of people who post questions to this forum. "Kick harder"?!! You gotta be kidding me; that's dinosaur, YMCA learn-to-swim, Red Cross circa 1970 thinking. Let's see, I'm allegedly fishtailing which is affecting my balance and streamlining technique and making me less efficient. This typically starts from the torso--pulling or recovery technique--before it works its way down to the legs where you can notice it, especially in freestyle which is an arm and torso dominated stroke. So, I can (1) take a close look at my front end technique and find out why I am imbalanced and try to fix it there. Carl's recommendation would be a good example of this approach. OR (2) use the brain-dead, address the symptoms not the cause approach, and OBTW through one of the most fatiguing and oxygen-debt costly solutions imaginable. Let's be clear. Kicking is hard work. Your big thigh muscles use a lot of oxygen and in the flutter kick return a lot less forward thrust for that expenditure. You can justify this in shorter sprints because you can afford to burn the O2 for that last little burst of speed. But never, Never, NEVER burn O2 excessively in your kick to fix a balance issue. No one, not even Grant Hackett, can afford that. OK, I apologize for turning you into a tackling dummy. I did not mean to attack you personally. My real target is the "work harder to avoid thinking" mindset. Matt