Everyone who watched coverage of the World Championships this year no doubt noticed Michael Phelps new distinct lope in his freestyle. I know a lot of other swimmers do this too, and their freaking fast, so this morning I asked my coach about it. She looked at me quizzically and said it's a very bad habit to have and if you don't do it naturally just forget about it.
But, Phelps didn't have this very obvious lope up to now, and he just broke 5 world records with it. So it doesn't seem like it can be that bad. I'm not to prove my coach wrong, I'm just curious.
So if anybody knows anything, please share. Why does it make some fast and for others it could be considered a bad habit? What's the trick to learning it? If it is a bad habit, why did Phelps bother to pronounce it?
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Former Member
This is an interesting topic. Personally, I think that if your stroke doesn't cause you pain(like shouler issues) and you are efficient with it, then continue to use it, regardless if it looks pretty or if others think it wrong.
Now with that said, I do think we all should continue to look for ways to improve our strokes. Regardless of how fast we are or how our stroke looks to others, we can always find little(sometimes big) ways to improve what we got.
This is an interesting topic. Personally, I think that if your stroke doesn't cause you pain(like shouler issues) and you are efficient with it, then continue to use it, regardless if it looks pretty or if others think it wrong.
Now with that said, I do think we all should continue to look for ways to improve our strokes. Regardless of how fast we are or how our stroke looks to others, we can always find little(sometimes big) ways to improve what we got.
