About lowering stroke count.

Originally posted by fireguard This must be related to my stroke timing. When my left hand enters the water, my right hand is still in front of my shoulder. While when my right hand enters, my left hand is almost between my chest and waist. I always tried to change this strange timing, I couldn't. Somehow the kicking timing is also very asymmetric. Anyone has similar experience? I think you were taught front quadrant swimming, which is commonly used by distance swimmers. It consumes less energy because your strokes are slightly slower, so you should be able to get a slightly lower stroke count. The only thing I could think of is that you are pausing slightly longer with your right arm in front than with your left arm in front. It you were right handed, that would make sense.

Swiminton Re: breathing: Here's what I've told, taught, and attempt--the "ideal" in freestyle is to have your recovery hand guide your head back into the water after getting your breath. Or as another coach put it, you should never see your hand when breathing. You've got to start this in warmup or as a drill. Your breath should be a part of your body rotation with your head still, in a relaxed and neutral position. When the elbow is high and your hand is nearing your shoulder, that's your indication to put your face back in the water. Catching the breath: "Ideally" the water line should follow from the corner of the eye to the corner of the mouth, or as another coach told me, "if you can see above the top of the lane marker, your'e turning your head too much". It takes awhile to get the motion down, yet being aware is half the battle.

I like the bit about never seeing your hand when you breathe. It seems that it would be quite awkward to remain in the breathing position as your hand passes your face/shoulder area but I am sure that many people are doing just that. I guess you never know how wrong the wrong way is until you see the right way.

330 Man: Well Laure Manadou--Olympic gold medalist and generally all around fast person--breathes practically under her armpit when her elbow is high in the air. Now she a young, inshape athlete with alot of talent, yet somewhere in the past I wrote Geochuck, I thought she could drop some significant time if she straightened her breathing out.

Originally posted by patrick Swiminton Re: breathing: Here's what I've told, taught, and attempt--the "ideal" in freestyle is to have your recovery hand guide your head back into the water after getting your breath. Or as another coach put it, you should never see your hand when breathing. You've got to start this in warmup or as a drill. This is an interesting idea. I kept thinking how I do it. I think I am using the non-recovery arm guiding me. When my left hand reaches the furtherest point in water, my body is rotated to the right at the max point. At that point, I barely need to rotate my head to catch a breath. I don't think about what my recovery arm is doing. I am going to try guiding myself with the recovery arm next time and see how it feels. About breathing into the armpit, it's funny you mentioned it. That was how I was taught by people the pool a year ago. At some point I learned it was not correct.

well in the 70's it was an accepted method for breathing, especially distance. After morning practice I would have a stubble burn often on my right shoulder--I must have had a better pattern to my left because it wasn't on my left shoulder--and I had a coach that inisisted on breathing every three strokes.

I love Lauri M's stroke from the top but looking again yes a few problems I have started to dissect and will email a few pics of stroke breakdown after I have time to go into detail any one who wants the breakdown pics email me at swim_downhill@yahoo.ca George

Originally posted by Matt S If you want to see the explanation of and argument for stroke length, go to www.totalimmersion.net And bring your VISA card...

Originally posted by fireguard Thank you guys for your help. I think my body position is pretty fine. I went to a coach several weeks ago and she said that. I guess I need better conditioning and kick. Also I found a very interesting thing yesterday. I used to breath to my right side and always feel not very comfortable. So yesterday I tried to breath to my left side,. It was awkward at the beginning, but once I got used to it, it was pretty smooth. I think ithis is very strange. Maybe my choosing to breath to my right side was wrong. This must be related to my stroke timing. When my left hand enters the water, my right hand is still in front of my shoulder. While when my right hand enters, my left hand is almost between my chest and waist. I always tried to change this strange timing, I couldn't. Somehow the kicking timing is also very asymmetric. Anyone has similar experience? Don't worry about the asymmetric kicking. Plenty of successful swimmers do that. Check out some video of Peter Vanderkaay at swimfastest.net to see it in the 200 free. As to what side you should breathe on, generally you'll be smoother in races if you breathe to the side of your more coordinated arm. It won't make that big of a difference, since such swimmers as Ian Thorpe breathe to their "wrong" side half the time, but it's a good idea. Your arm timing indicates a significant lope that, as you said, fits much better with breathing to your left. If you breathe to your right with that kind of stroke, you will be basically stopping dead in the water every time you breathe. Many swimmers can lope either way, but you have to get in the proper rhythm in order to not be breathing backwards. Your hands are entering the water in a rhythm like this: "Plop plop ... plop plop ... plop plop." The way you describe your stroke, the first plop in each pair is the right hand, followed by the left hand, followed by a longer pause before the right hand enters again. You should always be sneaking your breath in the shorter pause in your stroke cycle, which means breathing to your left. You could learn to breathe on your right more smoothly if you reversed your arm timing. Swimming like this would probably be awkward at high speed, but it's something you can do to relax on an easy set.