Post your swim video

On your fly, you have a kick on the hand entry but none on the hand exit....which by the way should be the bigger of the two. Otherwise I think you have the skills to be a very fast flyer.

I swam this 50 fly at a meet today: youtube.com/watch Of the last three weeks I was sick for two and a half with an unusually nasty case of bronchitis and have only been in the pool once, which I'm hoping is the reason that I see scant evidence of the changes I've been trying to make to my stroke. Clearly the dive is embarrassing, and I need to develop a useful SDK. The time was ok but not great. Comments would be more than welcome, thanks!

Work needed on the dive, are you bending the knees to much on your kick? The arms are not entering cleanly, I would like to see the shoulders come out more on the recovery. When your hands exit you seem to be catching water. Was that 35/36 sec for the 50m?

Streamline, streamline, streamline. You know about your start but it looks like you don't hit a tight streamline off the start or the turn. On the turn your breakout was before the flags. I recommend that you just do some streamline drills where you push off the wall and try to go as far as you can using just the momentum from the push. Arm recovery looks a little forced. You want to have a nice relaxed recovery where your shoulders, elbows and hands settle into the water at the same time. Nice position on your breaths. Chin forward and you're keeping your shoulders down nicely. Work on eliminating any breaths inside the flags. Kick looks strong but I think you might be bending your knees too much, hard to see from the video.

Thanks George and Paul. Definitely the feet come too far out of the water, which is both too much knee bend and not enough hip bend. I've been working on a wider softer entry but it doesn't show. I did about a dozen practice dives during warmup and thought I had fixed the bent knee entry but... Streamlining and SDK, bad weaknesses for an aspiring flyer... :( P.S. George: I'll work on my wiggling...

Here's an excellent underwater video of butterfly, Lars Frolander video.google.com/videoplay

I like to see a lot more undulation, starting with the hands, then the head, then the shoulders, then hips, all the way to the feet. Get the complete body involved hands, arms, head, shoulders, body, hips, legs, feet, as shown here. video.google.com/videoplay

I like to see the shoulder action to be a little more like Phelps www.youtube.com/watch

Hmm. I wonder if Paul's comment that the recover seems forced is related to excessive splash on arm entry and the narrower entry position that I want - the splash is mostly sideways as the water stops the arms, with a more relaxed recovery it might be easier to stop the arms for a wider quieter entry? I know that one part of it is limited range of motion in my shoulders - in a full streamline position my arms are a little to the front instead of completely aligned with the body. I think the truth is when I try to go fast everything falls apart. I noticed that the kick timing is somewhat variable which I think accounts for the variance in undulation from one stroke to the next. Hopefully I just reverted to old form because I was out of the water for three weeks prior to this meet. I actually swam it a second time in the meet and concentrated more on form, but I was about .7 slower. Unfortunately I didn't get that one taped as my teammates were in the heats before and after me. If you look closely you will see that I have an asymmetric recovery, my right arm recovers relatively straight while my left arm bends. I don't know why but my left arm seems to want to recover palm down instead of palm back unless I'm really concentrating on it. Well, I've got three weeks before Canadian nationals to work on it... :eek:

OK, I finally uploaded something to YouTube. This is about a 35 second segment from the middle of my 500 free a couple weeks back. I figured the middle of the race would accentuate my stroke flaws the most. Anyway, the quality isn't great, but hopefully good enough to make out something. This is my first try uploading to YouTube. youtube.com/watch I went 5:00.88 in this race. I'm looking to be well under 5:00 next weekend in Austin!