Watch me swim?

well done. Looks like you brought your kick into the race nicely.

First and most important what did your coach say about your swim? And congratulations on a nice swim. If any of my comments differ from what your coach is teaching, my apologies. 1) It looks like you are carrying your head a bit high, if you look at the elite swimmers today, the head position is lower during the stroke, breathing (you want your mouth out of the water not your eyes) and off the wall (check out Phelps’ head off the walls). This will help your streamline and get you swimming downhill. 2) It looks like you are stroking with your arms only, not much core. 3) It looks like you could extend a bit further on your reach, and work on the catch, EVF. 4) And it looks like you are finishing short on your stroke, especially the left arm. Please don’t take these as criticisms of your swimming, just observations of a fellow swimmer.

Thanks Rob--great videos!

Check out USA Nationals video. http://swimnetwork.com/ Day 1 Womens 500 – starts at 16:25 Compare your head position on the turns, stroke and breathing to theirs. You will see they keep them down more. Look at their extension and catch and how they are using the core body to extend the stroke and add power. Day 1 Mens 500 – starts at 36:30 Look at Vanderkaay’s head position on his turns (buried under his streamline) when he breathes (low and in the trough) and on the underwater shots look at how he catches. Day 2 Mens 200 – 1:18:40 B-finals The kid in lane 8 is an example of carrying his head too high while breathing. And while he gets away with it here, it makes him work harder than the rest of the field. Day 2 Mens 200 – 1:23:36 A-finals There’s a good shot of Phelps’ head position off the second turn.

Morgan, Thanks for posting the video! That was great fun to watch and you looked really great in the water!! Very exciting race! :woot::applaud: I personally feel you lost that race on the start (plopped in with no SDK or leg movement of any kind while streamlining off the start - you then had to catch back up after the start) and turns (pushing off the walls after the flip.) All your streamlines could really tighten up as well (off the dive it looked to be at about 50%!). A good goal would be to get out past the flags on your turns. I think you were just making it to the flags. I know doing SDKs off walls in a 200 is hard, but I would recommend starting with taking even just 2 or 3. Gotta work on this in practice. On the actual swim part, I felt you were as fast as the 1st place finisher. I really couldn't see exactly what your breathing pattern was as it was hard to see on the video. Looked like you were on the laneline a bit off some of the turns. I always try and remind myself to swim down the middle (hard to do when you practice on the right side all the time during workouts!) Your kick looked pretty good but I'd continue to work on it. There were a few points in the race where it died down; however, I know it's hard to keep it going on a 200! Anyhoo. Let the experts on this board give their recommendations. Just my :2cents: Super swimming!

I'll leave the technical stuff to the others but I think another 5 yards and you win that race...think you can dig any deeper on the last 50?

It looked to me like a big part was the turns. The third turn for example, you go in even and come out a half body length behind.

Rob has covered it well, head position, finish etc. I do notice also your head is high when you push off on the turns. You must come off the walls in a more streamlined position, head down. Impressed Morgan www.strose.edu/.../view_profile.asp

thanks for all the comments! That girl beat me on the 500 too...that was a depressing race...I might post it later...though it was very humbling. The wall far from the blocks was a bulkhead and I hated it. I missed a lot of my turns and had a hard time on all of them at that end. I felt really slow--not necessarily slow--but not smooth, and very heavy yesterday in the pool. I think our training in general this past week was such high intensity swimming and then we had an afternoon off, a day of two hard practices, a day off, and then the day before the meet we did a two hour practice that we only did 1,800yards of garbage swimming in. Then the meet. None of us did great times and most of us mentioned feeling similarly sluggish. I definatly do want to get my kick off the walls back up..I'm not really sure what happened to it, I normally have very strong walls, and yesterday I just couldnt get into it. Today we have the day off again, but I am going to go to the pool tonight and do some light swimming just to loosen up and get back into it and I will work on some of the more technical things, and work on my walls a bit more. Thanks again!

You are an awesome swimmer. You were hanging onto 18 strokes for a long time but toward the end your glide to the wall was getting a bit long. This lasted a few laps and maybe you were falling back a bit on these glides before you switched to 19. I just think it was a solid swim. Well done. What did Coach say? Were your splits even?