What count qualifies efficient hand lead body dolphin and *** kick in a 25m pool?

Ray, I'll count tomorrow when I work out in a 25 meter pool, and give you my numbers, both with fins and without. What's important is YOUR numbers and improving them. Body dolphin is a skill that improves gradually over a fairly long period of time. When I was first learning it, I was still improving months into the process. If you are interested in a drill progression I used to learn body dolphin and integrate it into butterfly and *** stroke, here it is: Short Axis Progression: 15 x 25s 1. Head lead Body Dolphin with fins. Slow down your pulsing cycle and try to complete the 25 in the lowest number of pulses. 2. Head lead Body Dolphin without fins. Try to use the same motion and make it feel like when you had the fins on. Obviously, you will use more pulses to cover the length. Count your pulses. 3. Head lead Body Dolphin without fins. Try to use fewer pulses than on (2). 4. Hand lead Body Dolphin with fins. Same idea as (1). 5. Hand lead Body Dolphin without fins. Same as (2). 6. Hand lead Body Dolphin without fins. Same as (3). 7. Slide to the corners with fins. Do a cycle or two each of: Slide to the corners and breath every other pulse, Slide to the corners every pulse while breathing every other pulse, and Slide to the corners and breath every pulse. Keep your neck alignment neutral; don’t look up to breath 8. Slide to the corners without fins. Half a length slide to the corners and breathe every other pulse. Half a length slide to the corners every pulse, breathe every other pulse. Try to make it feel like when you had the fins on. 9. Slide to the corners without fins. Half a length slide to the corners every pulse, breathe every other pulse. Half a length slide to the corners and breathe every pulse. Try to make it feel like when you had the fins on. 10. Body Dolphin breaststroke with fins. Really emphasize body wave breaststroke with proper arm pull and recovery. Work on timing. 11. Body Dolphin breaststroke without fins. Same Body Dolphin, same timing as (10). 12. Full stroke breaststroke. Maintain your Body Dolphin but with normal breaststroke kick. 13. Double pulse Fly with fins. Do two hand lead Body Dolphins, and one full stroke butterfly. Repeat for length of the pool. Try to keep your stroke relaxed and slide your body over your anchored hands. Use your body and let your arms come along for the ride instead of leading the stroke. 14. Double pulse Fly without fins. Same as (13) without the fins. 15. Single pulse Fly without fins. Do one hand lead Body Dolphin and one full stroke butterfly, or if you prefer, just do a 25 fly. As with (13) & (14) stay relaxed; swim the stroke with your Body Dolphin and let your arms tag along rather than leading the stroke. 1 x 50 without fins: come off the wall in a normal breaststroke pull out, and do two strokes of ***. Then do two strokes of fly, two ***, two fly…into the wall. Come off the wall into a normal butterfly breakout (do two or more Body Dolphins underwater before surfacing), two strokes fly, two strokes ***, two strokes fly, two strokes ***…into the wall. Try to make you fly feel like your *** by adding a glide after each arm recovery. Try to make your *** feel like your fly by using body undulation as in (12). If you are not a natural breaststroke kicker, you may want to add a 25 breaststroke kick, with a kick board if you prefer, to check in on your kicking mechanics. This is part of a longer article on warming up with drills at: www.totalimmersion.net/.../drillforwarming.html Matt

Ray, Here some numbers from today at noon. These are 25 meter lengths. 5 x 25m with short blade fins 1. Head lead body dolphin (15) 2. Hand lead doby dolphin (10) 3. Slide to the corners (10) 4. Body dolphin *** stroke (8): counting a full *** stroke pull out off of the wall as 1. 5. Fly (7) 1 x 25m *** stroke kick with a board (16) 5 x25m without fins 1. Head lead body dolphin (20) 2. Hand lead body dolphin (15) 3. Slide to the corners (15) 4. *** stroke (9): counting a full pull out as 1. 5. Fly (8) Notes: - These are very long and stretched out, with noticable glide, to lower the number of pulses. - I do not have a strong *** kick, and a real *** stroker should do much better. Please also note this is another example of using drills to warm up and to set up good stroke mechanics for the rest of the workout. Matt

Matt, thank you so much for your info. Ok, the problem here is¡K say a girl of 139cm tall, in a 25m pool, NO PUSH OFF which means just lie down from the end of the pool head lead body dolphin 15 (with Finis center mounted snorkel) hand lead body dolphin 22 (with Finis center mounted snorkel) slide to the corner 28 (with Finis center mounted snorkel) just fly 14 (no snorkel) note: 1. at easy pace, one after one, no noticeable gliding 2. no splash above the water, a few bubble around her feet during feet movement 3. a pair of fin is on her feet, the count is roughly the same no matter they are Zoomer Blue, PDF, Speedo flex, or TYR split. So you could see a master like you the count is less you count the way from head lead to just fly, however, someone here is more you count the way from head lead to just fly!!! AND furthermore hand lead body dolphin 30, 21sec, with PDF fin, (no snorkel) hand lead body dolphin 38, 31sec, bare feet, (no snorkel) note: 1. all out 2. whatever with fins or not, splash above the water occasionally, but bubbles bubbles bubbles all the way coming after her path around her feet. I could HARDLY see her feet movement. I have also shown her all body dolphin video clips I could get from All Four Strokes Made Easy by TI, DVDs by Richard Quick, DVDs by Dave Marsh, GoSwim by Glenn. The girls here can pop their hips above the water after pulsing, but then the hips just go down into the water instead of staying just BELOW or AT the surface as we could see from the DVDs above. Those elite swimmers just keep their axis (hips) so steady, popping out, just below the surface, popping¡K¡K, below¡K¡K. Efficient and beautiful like you did. May I say that you only pulse your chest or upper back just below the surface to keep your hips high at the surface after popping? If so, could you please advise me how could you pulse your chest or your upper back just below the surface yet you could gain the power going FORWARD without overkicking? By the way, the harder they kick, it seems the deeper their upper backs go. Pls help us here. Thank you. p.s. Our girls usually do stretches with Rack www.zoomers.net/rack.htm on a daily basis. Their calves have roughly 2cm to touch the Rack.