SPL

RE: SPL

Former Member — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 06:10:59 GMT

I'd start by examining how you set-up your stroke. When your hand enters the water, how effective is your catch, from there your streamlining, kick, a pull pattern should be examined. Do some sets that allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of your training. If you spend three weeks trying to improve a certain aspect of your stroke, you should see a time drop, don't you think? If your training time gets better, I'd hope you'd see your time drop. Good Luck, Coach T.

RE: SPL

art_z — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 03:05:31 GMT

YEP!!! My thoughts: 1) Stroke drills!!! Get these from coach, other swimmers, videos. If you're not doing at least 25% of practice time on drills, go do them on your own. You can't over drill but they have to be done correctly great point, drills it seems are the forgotten stepchild of swimming these days. I try to incorporate at least 400 yards per work out of quality drilling. Slow down the intervals and practice the strokes you compete in.

RE: SPL

pwolf66 — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:55:36 GMT

YEP!!! My thoughts: 1) Stroke drills!!! Get these from coach, other swimmers, videos. If you're not doing at least 25% of practice time on drills, go do them on your own. You can't over drill but they have to be done correctly. 2) Work on streamline. IMO, this is the single easiest means of improving your stoke and time. 3) Work on kicking (without a board) on your stomach, side, and back. Free, fly, and back! 4) Integrate that into SDK! (steamlined dolphin kick) You have 15 meters before you have to actually start swimming in Bk, Fr, and Fly. But, SDK without maintaining speed is counter productive so work on kick first. If you are taking 17/23 stokes per 50m, your stoke isn't very efficient. For someone your height and wingspan, 14/18 is certainly not unreasonable and with lots of work it could be lower than that. I'm 6' tall with a 6' wingspan and definitely NOT a freestyler but I'm about 11/12 in a SCY pool. Hope that helps, Allen Thanks, Allen. 1) Completely agree. Don't do enough stroke drills in our practices. 2) Agree again. I'm still swimming too much uphill and need to get my head lower and my hips higher. 3) I've ditched the board and use a snorkel while kicking and that is really thrashing my legs and helping me get my hips higher. One thing I need to figure out (or get someone to help me with) is HOW to kick better. I know one way is to kick more but I'm also struggling to figure out how to kick BETTER. 4) There's a Monofin in my future. And I'm trying to hold my streamlines off the wall until I'm well past the flags. That is giving me good feedback on maintaining my speed. As for stroke efficiency, you might be right but right now I'm trading efficiency for turn over in my 50 sprints. I'm at 26.8 50m and 24.4 50y and want to get that down by at least another second in each. Appreciate the input and I'll work on putting your recommendations into action. Paul

RE: SPL

allenhighnote — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:22:44 GMT

Guess I need to actually CON-CEN-TRATE on emphasizing proper technique in practice instead of just trying to survive the set without :drown:. YEP!!! My thoughts: 1) Stroke drills!!! Get these from coach, other swimmers, videos. If you're not doing at least 25% of practice time on drills, go do them on your own. You can't over drill but they have to be done correctly. 2) Work on streamline. IMO, this is the single easiest means of improving your stoke and time. 3) Work on kicking (without a board) on your stomach, side, and back. Free, fly, and back! 4) Integrate that into SDK! (steamlined dolphin kick) You have 15 meters before you have to actually start swimming in Bk, Fr, and Fly. But, SDK without maintaining speed is counter productive so work on kick first. If you are taking 17/23 stokes per 50m, your stoke isn't very efficient. For someone your height and wingspan, 14/18 is certainly not unreasonable and with lots of work it could be lower than that. I'm 6' tall with a 6' wingspan and definitely NOT a freestyler but I'm about 11/12 in a SCY pool. If you are swimming without proper technique you are just making the matter worse. Sometimes we have to do things we don't want to do in the short term to gain something we do want for the long term. My suggestion would be to work privately with your coach or other knowledgeable swimmer than focus on keeping that technique in practice. Our LMSC (spma.net) has a video lending library that you can rent videos from. They are great for drills and technique. Contact Julie Heather. Hope that helps, Allen

RE: SPL

Former Member — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:53:25 GMT

Admittedly, I'm a novice at all this, but I found a great stroke reduction when I tried combining catch-up drill with a high-elbow (fingertip drag) drill; at the same time. I found a rythym and flow that kept me stretching long, rolling properly, and maintaining streamline for longer. For what its worth...

RE: SPL

swimshark — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 05:18:33 GMT

I'm going tomorrow and the coach might have me do the test. If not, maybe Sat morning. Alison

RE: SPL

pwolf66 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:22:40 GMT

Thanks, Alison!!!!

RE: SPL

swimshark — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:15:20 GMT

Paul, I know our team has a spl test. I will find out what it entails (I was told last weekend that I need to take it) and let you know. I know it's something you do fresh in the water. THen once you have the base, the trick is speeding up your rotation while not losing technique. Alison

RE: SPL

pwolf66 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 04:03:05 GMT

lookin good there!! :) I guess with sprinting you have a fine line to thread between SPL and your turn over rate. Do you do any VO2 type sets (10x25 on .30 and 4 x50 on 60) where you concentrate on maintaining a consistent stroke and breath count for all repeats? Yeah, we do those occasionally in practice. I'm just looking for ways to refine my stroke. Guess I need to actually CON-CEN-TRATE on emphasizing proper technique in practice instead of just trying to survive the set without :drown:. One thing I am going to do is sit down with my team's coach and plan some workouts. The only problem is that we have a fairly large team but not a lot of the team competes. So it's difficult to do aynthing out of the ordinary during a team workout. So anything really specialized will have to be swum solo during lap swim UGH. Paul

RE: SPL

art_z — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:45:10 GMT

1 down 2 back. Working towards making that only 2 back. Paul lookin good there!! :) I guess with sprinting you have a fine line to thread between SPL and your turn over rate. Do you do any VO2 type sets (10x25 on .30 and 4 x50 on 60) where you concentrate on maintaining a consistent stroke and breath count for all repeats?

RE: SPL

pwolf66 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:26:59 GMT

how much do you breathe in a 50 now? you might be able to drop some decent time with cutting down your breaths if they are excessive. 1 down 2 back. Working towards making that only 2 back. Paul

RE: SPL

art_z — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 03:13:40 GMT

how much do you breathe in a 50 now? you might be able to drop some decent time with cutting down your breaths if they are excessive.

RE: SPL

pwolf66 — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:56:09 GMT

Thanks. That's definately one drill that's already on my list.