Just curious, does anyone use swimming devices during practice? Besides the standard kick board or pull buoy and paddles? When I work out with the Senior group on my USS team we always warm up with the snorkle. Usually consists of 8x100's on 1:20 then we follow up warm up with a set with snorkle.
I just started using the snorkle a month ago and find it somewhat difficult to use, although I am getting used to it. I have to fight the urge to want to turn my head and breath and doing flip turns can be a challenge especially if I am winded. There have been a few times I have had to stop due to choking on water. That being said, the snorkle does work on on proper head position in the water. Another device we use is the tempo trainer. I really like this device because it works on the arm speed and gets the muscle turnover burned into memory when swimming without tempo trainer.
Greg
Former Member
I love the snorkle especially for warm up,warm down,and kicking. It helps with head position and I also find my shoulders hurt less when I use it. It is the only tool I use(except I had a coach who said starting blocks were tools and should be used regularly.)
Here is the head position mentioned again, although the first post said "proper head position".
The more I study freestyle swimming, i.e. front crawl, my conclusion is the "proper" thing for the head to do is to move with the side to side turning body, allowing an equal look at the two lane lines if one is swimming over the bottom of the pool line. I especially like Emmett's description of the chin's being firmly linked to the belly button. One can do this without inhaling on both sides and still keep an eye on the competition on both sides with underwater vision in these days of clear goggles.
Count me in as a big lover of fistgloves. Whenever I seem to be having stroke problems, they fix it quickly. They are also great for taking the pressure off my right A/C joint, which has some osteoarthritis.
Give them a try.
-LBJ
I use a few different types of paddles. Different paddles give different sensations, I like the different sensation to wake up my hands. A variety of different feels to get better feel of the water.
I also do some fist drills, the finger drills with one finger, 2,3 etc. The OK drill and some sculling. All so that my hands will learn hpow to grab some water.
As for fist gloves (and fist drills) I used to do a fair bit of them and use it in my classes. However with a lot of time I found that the gloves actually made me push down MORE with my extended arm. The intended purpose is that pushing down with your arm to hold your head up doesn't work with the fistgloves. I find that true to an extent, but the response seems to be that I just tend to push down EVEN more.
So I still use some fist drills in the context of what I do, just not as much as I used to.
