I have 2 questions for the group. 1) has anyone ever experienced fatigue/tightness of one stroking arm, while the other side seems to be relaxed/loose? My left arm seems to get tight and my upper back muscles seem to tighten from time to time when I swim freestyle...not all the time but enough to make me wonder why.
Any thoughts/suggestions?
2) This has been a topic of debate with a friend of mine and myself. He believes that a person should slip their hand back into the water fairly soon as the recovering hand passes the head and drive it to the catch position through the water.
I use to be a believer in this until the last year or so, when I finally realized that it is more difficult to stay relaxed. I am starting to think the recovering arm should enter farther down the pool.
What do you all think? Soon as it passes the head or farther out over the water?
Thanks,
John
I have the opposite problem, I breathe to my right and my right shoulder gets sore, especially after a weights session.
We were doing mostly drills today and working on entry. One drill had us take your stroke arm and pause for 3 sec when your elbow was straight up, with an entry between your head and full extention.
Otherwise, one of my coaches has been after me on making my stroke more efficient. It turns out that I was moving my head way too much to the left, even though I don't breath that direction. As you rotate your shoulders, your head should stay down (looking straight down), except to breathe of course.
A strong kick AND a strong core (especially abs) will help with this. I took 6+ months of somewhat easy swimming to focus on improving my core, and now my kick has improved significantly. When you swim, you should try to pull your stomach as tight as possible (the coach said pretend like you can pull your stomach through to your butt).
I know all this is quite a bit. Try to pick one piece to focus on at a time, then after you improve at that, add in something else. Of course if you have a coach or someone to observe and give feedback, that would be great.
I have the opposite problem, I breathe to my right and my right shoulder gets sore, especially after a weights session.
We were doing mostly drills today and working on entry. One drill had us take your stroke arm and pause for 3 sec when your elbow was straight up, with an entry between your head and full extention.
Otherwise, one of my coaches has been after me on making my stroke more efficient. It turns out that I was moving my head way too much to the left, even though I don't breath that direction. As you rotate your shoulders, your head should stay down (looking straight down), except to breathe of course.
A strong kick AND a strong core (especially abs) will help with this. I took 6+ months of somewhat easy swimming to focus on improving my core, and now my kick has improved significantly. When you swim, you should try to pull your stomach as tight as possible (the coach said pretend like you can pull your stomach through to your butt).
I know all this is quite a bit. Try to pick one piece to focus on at a time, then after you improve at that, add in something else. Of course if you have a coach or someone to observe and give feedback, that would be great.
