"What do YOU need to do to have a major swimming breakthrough?"

Anyone working on one? I have actually had a breakthrough recently in my backstroke. It has always been poor -- just good enough to have a decent 200y IM (2:10) when I was younger -- but I could never figure out how to carry my hips and shoulders or how to relax my head. Background: My focus event this year is the 100 IM. (I set a goal of breaking 1:10, which seemed far-fetched 6 months ago.) I was sitting wth some older swimmers (they had 20 years + on me) who also happened to be IMers and also talked about hating backstroke. We were lamenting feeling disoriented and how when someone told us to get our hips up we'd always be thinking, "They are up!" It was a fun conversation, but it got me to thinking afterwards. I decided I did not want to have an awful backstroke for the rest of my swimming life. I looked up backstroke drills, and asked about drills here. My body position was so bad that I sank and/or hardly moved while trying to learn these drills. I was going :20+ on a 25 and :45 on a 50. Paying attention to my stroke made me feel slower than ever. Then one day about 2 months ago, I decided to do the same drill set for back as I do with fly and ***: 50 kick/50 pull/50 pull/full stroke. I noticed 2 things -- when I just kicked (relaxed), my hips floated up, and when I just pulled, with buoy, my legs fishtailed like mad. I kept at this drill set, going extra slow until I could pull and keep my legs straight. What worked was imagining my pull starting at the opposite hip (throw left hip up on right arm recovery). It was still not pretty, but I was keeping the legs straight, even during full stroke. After about a month of this, my backstroke felt much faster all of a sudden. So much faster, in fact, that I had so much momentum going into my flip that I cracked my heels on the gutter. I was so happy with the speed I was getting that I hardly felt the pain. It felt much faster, but the times were only about a second better per 25. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. The day after I got my issue of Swimmer and read the backstroke tips, actually. When I got to my backstroke, it felt different. My head did not want to rise up and look at my feet like it always had. It was relaxed. I did not have to try so hard to rotate my hips or float. It just happened. I had my breakthrough. I am now repeating 17-18 on my 25s and going under 40 in my 50s, which is about where it was in HS (still plenty of room for improvement, too!). At a meet last week, I went 1:12 in my first 100 IM since 1982. I feel like I can go a lot faster as my conditioning improves -- especially now that I am not resigned to a terrible backstroke split. The 1:10 should be easy, and I think I can go way under in time. Now if I can just have a breakthrough in breaststroke!

Anyone working on one? I have actually had a breakthrough recently in my backstroke. It has always been poor -- just good enough to have a decent 200y IM (2:10) when I was younger -- but I could never figure out how to carry my hips and shoulders or how to relax my head. Background: My focus event this year is the 100 IM. (I set a goal of breaking 1:10, which seemed far-fetched 6 months ago.) I was sitting wth some older swimmers (they had 20 years + on me) who also happened to be IMers and also talked about hating backstroke. We were lamenting feeling disoriented and how when someone told us to get our hips up we'd always be thinking, "They are up!" It was a fun conversation, but it got me to thinking afterwards. I decided I did not want to have an awful backstroke for the rest of my swimming life. I looked up backstroke drills, and asked about drills here. My body position was so bad that I sank and/or hardly moved while trying to learn these drills. I was going :20+ on a 25 and :45 on a 50. Paying attention to my stroke made me feel slower than ever. Then one day about 2 months ago, I decided to do the same drill set for back as I do with fly and ***: 50 kick/50 pull/50 pull/full stroke. I noticed 2 things -- when I just kicked (relaxed), my hips floated up, and when I just pulled, with buoy, my legs fishtailed like mad. I kept at this drill set, going extra slow until I could pull and keep my legs straight. What worked was imagining my pull starting at the opposite hip (throw left hip up on right arm recovery). It was still not pretty, but I was keeping the legs straight, even during full stroke. After about a month of this, my backstroke felt much faster all of a sudden. So much faster, in fact, that I had so much momentum going into my flip that I cracked my heels on the gutter. I was so happy with the speed I was getting that I hardly felt the pain. It felt much faster, but the times were only about a second better per 25. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago. The day after I got my issue of Swimmer and read the backstroke tips, actually. When I got to my backstroke, it felt different. My head did not want to rise up and look at my feet like it always had. It was relaxed. I did not have to try so hard to rotate my hips or float. It just happened. I had my breakthrough. I am now repeating 17-18 on my 25s and going under 40 in my 50s, which is about where it was in HS (still plenty of room for improvement, too!). At a meet last week, I went 1:12 in my first 100 IM since 1982. I feel like I can go a lot faster as my conditioning improves -- especially now that I am not resigned to a terrible backstroke split. The 1:10 should be easy, and I think I can go way under in time. Now if I can just have a breakthrough in breaststroke!