stroke help

Without getting into technique, I would say the number one thing to work on is streamline. Arms need to be tight on top of each other, head tucked between the shoulders. Also your breakouts (transition period between underwater and surface swimming). Your head pops up every time which just kills what speed you had left out of the turns. Turns are very slow, you need to work on snapping your shoulders and hips around. That is at least 1/4 second per turn that you can shave off. Nice arms. Head position is a little high, also looks like your lifting your head a little to late, try to start to lift your head as your hands start to press down during your pull. Paul

You are an awesome swimmer........ Your fly looks awesome and very technically sound. BUT!!!!!!! You need to practice turns!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's weird to me that you got as good as you got without the turn skills developing along the way. Keep up the hard work.

You have a great smooth, flowing butterfly! You should ask your coach about your turn, it looks to me like you are twisting around, staying on your stomach the whole time, from above water the turn usually looks more like falling directly back from the wall and you push off the wall pretty much on your side instead of fully on your front. Ditto on the turn. Critique is regarding the second video (relay), since you were cruising on the first one. Maybe think of executing the turn more on your side and not trying to turn on your stomach. Also, seems you should try and get more underwater dolphin kicks off the wall and start, seems like your head is coming up too early. Swimming technique looks pretty good. :bouncing:

I'll second the critique of the turns.You are twisting and that is REALLY slowing you down.In an open turn you want to reach the wall with your arms slightly bent,curl into as tight a ball as fast as you can,throw your head back as you push off with your hands(rolling to the side as you do so) and push off.DON'T grab the gutter.You didn't ask about breaststroke but here is my:2cents:anyway.On the first turn you did an OK pullout but when you came up you lifted your head to breath.You had your head up too much from then on which meant you look as if you are swimming uphill.Your head should be in neutral position at all times.At first you are bringing your hands out of the water.Thats OK if it is a natural part of your stroke,but it doesn't appear to be and adds to your swimming uphill.You didn't do a pullout on the second turn.That maybe a fatigue/oxygen/easing off issue,but it was definitely slower.I couldn't be sure from that angle,but it looked like you might have been kicking out at the start of the kick,which will rob your kick of power.Also,especially the second length it appeared you were bringing your hands too far back.They should stay in front of your shoulders.That said you had good timing in your breaststroke.I thought your fly was awesome.

Fly not bad, need work on your dives and turns. Head not in streamline during the dive and all turns. Backstroke not enugh shoulder roll, the shoulders of the recovery arm should not be in the water. Breaststroke I will leave to the breaststrokers but no glide. Crawl dropping elbows on entry. I like to start with the easy stuff to correct. The problems above are easy to fix.

You have a great smooth, flowing butterfly! You should ask your coach about your turn, it looks to me like you are twisting around, staying on your stomach the whole time, from above water the turn usually looks more like falling directly back from the wall and you push off the wall pretty much on your side instead of fully on your front. See: www.youtube.com/watch or www.youtube.com/watch

In the free relay were you the first swimmer? First swimmer is fish tailing not streamlined. www.youtube.com/.../penguinwarlord1

In the free relay were you the first swimmer? First swimmer is fish tailing not streamlined. www.youtube.com/.../penguinwarlord1 yeah thats me. thanks for all the quick replies. I was never shown proper IM turns ( i've seen the rollover turns but i have no idea how to do them smooth enough to do them in competition), and i seem to have forgotten my good ones since i was out for 3 months with a broken ankle. that meet was 4 weeks back in the water. For the IM turns i'm always focused on the air, When someone is up ahead of me or right next to me i just hit the wall and the second i hit my goal is to get off that wall as fast as i can! Yes that is me leading the 200 free relay. Also any of you have tips on when to surface on streamlines? because during practice i can cover half the pool in a hard 100 set and pop up over a body length ahead of the other swimmers, but i don't do it at meets because i never know when I've slowed down enough to warrant it. I'm surprised you guys have so much feedback in such a small amount of time, I'll work on those on monday when get back in the pool next.

Without getting into technique, I would say the number one thing to work on is streamline. Arms need to be tight on top of each other, head tucked between the shoulders. Also your breakouts (transition period between underwater and surface swimming). Your head pops up every time which just kills what speed you had left out of the turns. Turns are very slow, you need to work on snapping your shoulders and hips around. That is at least 1/4 second per turn that you can shave off. Nice arms. Head position is a little high, also looks like your lifting your head a little to late, try to start to lift your head as your hands start to press down during your pull. Paul Ive never ehard the head comment. Never thoguht about that. I'll try to get a vid of me doing fly from the side, run a video of say Michael Phelps next to it at same speed and see how early it comes up. i just thought that that observation was unique. Also is i t just me or do you all have to cut your breaststroke pullouts nearly in half during the IM because of lack of breath. I tried pushing it to my full pullout things started going black and purple, and static, i had to surface and my entire race was screwed up after that.

Also I just kinda re-learned my open turns and did every turn like a 50. I had my 200 IM timed by a friend via stopwatch in a 25 yard pool. 2:13 was my time. I'm Thinking I should go out a lot faster on my fly, I go 28,27's on that stretch usually but i can do 25's if i picked it up to like a 90% effort level? what would you guys recommend. You've all been very helpful Swim the first 50 of the 200 IM the same way you would the first 50 of a 100 fly.