The first loss of a master is memory, the second...I forgot. I probably have already asked this question, but here goes:
Does anyone bring their arm straight down and out after the grab? I am talking no sculling, no lateral movement, just bringing the arm straight parallel with the line maintaining the elbow high position. This would be to avoid crossing the midline with your forearm. Even though I breathe on the left, I still rotate fully to the right (a learned and trained and voluntary movement), but even so my right forearm tends to the middle, while my left arm has less pull and is erractic. When I learned the crawl it was from watching Tarzan movies, later when I was 16 and in a USA high school they taught the S shaped movement or the straight down and back. In those days the breathing was to one side. Last question: aside from timing both methods, what are your preferences on the long dolphin versus "less dolphin" emerging sooner method of starts and turns on a 50 meter short course freestyle race? Thanks, billy fanstone
Former Member
Does anyone bring their arm straight down and out after the grab? I am talking no sculling, no lateral movement, just bringing the arm straight parallel with the line maintaining the elbow high position. Not me. Absolutely not.
To tell you the truth, I never care about crossing the line or not. I just care about swimming straight at the best possible distance per stroke.
Here have a look www.swimmingcyclingrunning.com/Videos/HackettBrilliant.mpeg Thanks for bringing this one again George. Again I must have spent 10 minutes playing it in loop.
It appears on this clip that the hand is traveling backward. Hackett needs very few lateral sculling, probably as a result of a massive acceleration of the hand.
Listen. I once had a swim conference where the speaker was Calgary swim club head coach. You know those lat pulldowns done on a fix bars, chin ups? In great shape I could probably do 50. You know how many Mark Tueskberry could do in '92? Unlimitted non stop. Only limitted by the time available.
Cause that's basically what Hackett does, a "one arm" lat pulldown followed by a "one arm" dip. In between the two the hand does a little s (passage of the elbow).
Ok, so maybe I got this problem in my head, more because my coach told me I was crossing the middle with my forearm. The same thing happened when I read that swimming fast short distances (50?) some of the elite didn't complete the cycle, recovering from waist line. In practice I usually try to memorize a certain movement to make it last into the real race. It does seem that if you cross your arm you aren't pushing much water back as opposed to straight down. However in straight down you are pushing some water "down" versus "backwards", although keeping your elbow high eliminates much of this. I guess there are different ways of swimming the free style. There is Hacket, then you got Popov doing a complete cycle, then you have Janet Evans doing it all wrong! The other day in a series of tempo (?) 50s I tried to vary my style and eventually the fastest was the "swim as fast as you can, don't give a damn about style", as compared to reaching out, completing a full cycle. Maybe the difference is that the fast guys can complete a full cycle fast and us slower guys have to take short cuts...take care, billy fanstone
When I raced the 100 My arms turned over as fast as they had to. When the other swimmers were slow I did did a slower turnover. When they were fast like Clarke Scholes it became frantic...
My coach who doesn't have a TV much less a computer, says I spend too much time on the internet, and not enough in the pool. George, you are up early! What is your GMT? Now they call it UTC, or Universal Time Coordinated. I am 3 hours west of London, so it is now close to 11 in the morning. Anyway, I do study a lot on the Net, and download some videos and watch them and then try to apply them in the pool. The front quadrant hands position was something I did deliberately and eventually it got into my normal swimming. The 45° hand entry and then the stretch and the grab I got from reading and watching videos. I still have friends who hit the water way forward as it used to be. It is hard to break a style you have over decades. Even some of the pros enter the water a little ahead of what would be good form, but then they are fast and that is what works for them. Bjorn Borg had a wrong grip on his racket but since his coach saw this when he was already 12 years old he didn't correct it and Borg won all his championships with the wrong grip. warm regards from central Brazil, billy fanstone
7 am here now we have 7 hrs I believe GMT. I have been up since 6 am which is coffee time for me. We switch to daylight saving time this weekend. and then about November 6th I will be in Mexico for about 5 or 6 months and that is 2 hrs earlier. Have a look here a bad swimmer www.usms.org/.../showthread.php
Thanks for bringing this one again George. Again I must have spent 10 minutes playing it in loop.
It appears on this clip that the hand is traveling backward. Hackett needs very few lateral sculling, probably as a result of a massive acceleration of the hand.
Listen. I once had a swim conference where the speaker was Calgary swim club head coach. You know those lat pulldowns done on a fix bars, chin ups? In great shape I could probably do 50. You know how many Mark Tueskberry could do in '92? Unlimitted non stop. Only limitted by the time available.
Cause that's basically what Hackett does, a "one arm" lat pulldown followed by a "one arm" dip. In between the two the hand does a little s (passage of the elbow).
Solar Energy:
I watched this one. Two questions. Can we do lat pulldowns with shoulder problems? And Hackett seems to be pushing his hands past his hips rather than using the early exit/front quadrant swimming. Or am I just looking at it wrong?
The latest is....that some coaches are not preaching old school methods as far as finishing the stroke. The hand stops pushing back after it gets thru to one's mid-section.
It (the hand) simply follows thru from mid stroke to the exit. It appears to be pushing and finishing but it's not...so they say.
Emphasis is placed on throwing one's hands forward during the recovery to develop momentum in the stroke. We have a very fast 100 freestyler (45 seconds) who's stroke looks more akin to a gallop rather than the typical "paddling".
He pulls staight back...his hand varies in its angle throughout the pull...like a propeller blade...and he rotates the torso during the entire stroke phase.
