Please critique

My advice for you for your son’s swimming. Leave the coaching to his coach and don’t try to give him advice from others. It will only serve to confuse. As for your stroke, I’d focus more on the catch and early vertical forearm and the press.

For you, finger tip drill, finger tip drill, finger tip drill.

For your 8 year old son: It would be easier to critique the stroke at race speed. I like how he has the idea of rotating and catch. He does drop his elbow before he goes into the catch though and he rotates slow, there is no snap in his hips. I don't like the catch up style stroke, especially for the 25 free. He would get so much more power in his pull if he initiated the catch as his recovery hand came out of the water and used the momentum of his swinging recovery arm to snap his hips and pull through. It's the same concept as a basball swing, try swinging hard but moving your hips slow. You have to snap thoes hips quick. And for the love of god, in a race you need to have a red ass to get to the other end of the pool. At 8 years old, there is alot of psychology involed. Kids really have to focus and put their mind to it to go fast. I think your son is physically capable of going a 23 right now becasue he stroke is not that bad.

Your hands enter to close to your head and you end up pushing against the water to get them out in front of you to start the catch. You also seem to have enough torso rotation but it does not seem to have a positive effect on your stroke. It looks you are pulling your arms out of the water by pulling your elbows over your back and then moving them forward. Try practicing a finger-tip drag, where you have high elbows and you fingertips drag underneath your elbow. Very high elbows, never going inside you torso.

I've attached some images that show some of the things you can work on. In addition to the low elbows in the early part of your pull and the crossover, it looks like your hips are dropping as you extend and start your pull. The angles aren't ideal for figuring out the cause of your crossover but entering too close to your head is a good bet, the elbow looks quite bent on entry.

Thanks everyone. Little update, today I pretty much swam freestyle with the fingertip drill the whole time. I tried to make sure my elbows were wider (i.e. outside my torso) while doing it. I'll have to get someone to take video again to see how it looked. One thing I also paid attention to was not crossing over on my extension, and boy could I feel the difference. My catch was much much better; it's hard to keep a high elbow when your extended arm crosses the midline. Lindsay, I will most definitely get a couple jammers, I agree. I had previously noticed the difference with my son on days we worked out with and without his jammers, a difference of about 2-3 seconds on the 25. I think it's really important in swimming/stroke development to feel the speed and efficiency. I'm probably not getting the feedback from my parachutes when I do stumble across proper technique.

The attached frame illustrates the problem, with your right arm more than your left arm you pull your elbow backwards until it is over your body and bent at 90 degrees and then bring it straight forward over your body. Note how high over the water your hand is. The fingertip drag drill will keep your hand just above the water, reducing the rotation and keeping the momentum of the hand straight forward, which, combined with reaching further forward, will stop it from swinging into a crossover. Also, look at your legs in this image, they are way too far apart with too much bend at the waste and knees. This will probably be toned down somewhat when your rotation is reduced, but you could try to consciously use a small quick kick. Yeah, I see what you mean on the kick. I wonder if rotation primarily at the waist level while keeping my legs more vertical would work better for me. I know there are different schools of thought on this. The other thing with my kick, as I've mentioned before, is that I am totally lost on timing. I can do a two beat, where I basically downkick left rotate left, downkick right rotate right. But anything else feels awkward, to the extent that sometimes I feel like the lack of coordination between arms and legs affects my ability to keep the elbows high and catch water. Do you think I'm overrotating, or is it just a matter of the recovery technique? You can see the degree of rotation in the underwater video. Perhaps doing the fingertip drill will lead me to the correct rotational degree as well.

Your hands enter to close to your head and you end up pushing against the water to get them out in front of you to start the catch. You also seem to have enough torso rotation but it does not seem to have a positive effect on your stroke. It looks you are pulling your arms out of the water by pulling your elbows over your back and then moving them forward. Try practicing a finger-tip drag, where you have high elbows and you fingertips drag underneath your elbow. Very high elbows, never going inside you torso. Do you mean my recovery is not wide enough, i.e. my elbows should be out away from my body more? My advice for you for your son’s swimming. Leave the coaching to his coach and don’t try to give him advice from others. It will only serve to confuse. Unfortunately the neighborhood swimming season is over and he doesn't have a coach now. I'm hoping to find someone good to give him personal lessons. During the past swim season they really didn't do much (if at all) stroke instruction, it was mostly "swim hard, stroke faster". My son made the biggest time improvements when I worked with him on keeping his hips up and feeling the water resisting his forearm on the pull. When he tries to maximize his stroke rate his time gets worse. We have a good time swimming laps together, and right now we are both trying to improve. But I agree that he needs better instruction.

The attached frame illustrates the problem, with your right arm more than your left arm you pull your elbow backwards until it is over your body and bent at 90 degrees and then bring it straight forward over your body. Turuky, hmm, i know i am late to the game, but it seems to me that a major problem is breathing. in the pic that Lindsay has attached to this critique, I think he is just catching you taking a breath. I think you and your son over-rotate your bodies when you breathe so that you can catch a little more air before going in. to top it off, you and your son are unilateral breathers. that's why your right arm slings back so far. practice bilateral breathing, and stop using breathing as a vacation. start thinking of breathing as something you slyly slip between strokes without creating an adverse effect on the timing and form of those strokes. as for other issues, your son definitely pulls too far outside, but it seems that you are pulling straight down. you both should be pulling down your vertical mid-line. Yes, you need fingertip drill work and a further reach, and yes you also need to work on putting more push into your pull and using your hand and forearm as an oar to effect such. as for kicking, i think you, and your son particularly, put too much of the burden of your kicks on the knee to toe action and not enough on the hip to knee motion. in other words, you guys need to use more of your legs when you kick. (please note, though, that doesn't mean that you should dig deep with your kicks, as kicks that dig deeper than your body depth will do nothing but slow you down.) last, i agree with copeland that if your son is currently being coached on a swim team that you should be sure to work with the coach and not in competition with his efforts. mixed messages to your child will not improve his stroke. it will just split into two strokes that he demonstrates at different times depending on the audience. --Sean

The attached frame illustrates the problem, with your right arm more than your left arm you pull your elbow backwards until it is over your body and bent at 90 degrees and then bring it straight forward over your body. Note how high over the water your hand is. The fingertip drag drill will keep your hand just above the water, reducing the rotation and keeping the momentum of the hand straight forward, which, combined with reaching further forward, will stop it from swinging into a crossover. Also, look at your legs in this image, they are way too far apart with too much bend at the waste and knees. This will probably be toned down somewhat when your rotation is reduced, but you could try to consciously use a small quick kick.