Please critique

If you look at your son's left arm extension and pull you will see that he moves his hand outward and then back inward again and then starts his catch moving his hand outward again. Notice that as he starts his catch his hand is in a thumb up orientation as shown in the attached image. The thumbs up position makes it very easy to drop the elbow, and you can see just a hint of a dropped elbow already. For a high elbow catch you want the thumb rotated toward a downward position. To see the effect of this rotation just extend your arm above your head with the palm facing inward and bring your hand down to shoulder level without thinking about the elbow position and you will get a "dropped elbow" position. Do the same thing with your palm rotated to the outside (most of the way, maybe 45 degrees from facing directly outward) and your elbow will naturally move to a high elbow position as you lower your hand. In the second image notice how wide his hand position is, it would be better if instead of moving the hand way out he pulled straight back along a straight line back under the shoulder. Also, you both need to get some jammers, how can your learn to glide through the water wearing parachute-like shorts?

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. There is a good chance that the fingertip drill will fix things, one thing at a time, master the finger tip drill (with a longer reach before entry) and then take another look to figure out what to work on next. For the kick I would just use a small relaxed quick six beat kick for now. No use worrying about the integration with the front end if you are in the process of changing the front end. You could even work on the front end using a pull buoy if the kick is a distraction.

You know, technical analysis is useful, but I'm not sure how much it would help to tell your son to improve this or that, because children are growing and they change. What is best? At this age, help them to improve the "feel" for the water, don't tell them what they need to fix, show them a video of a top swimmer that seems to emulate their natural tendencies. For your son, possibly KLIM or SULLIVAN, but showing Phelps could be useful as well, show them underwater video, and ask them to try and swim like that... Show your son the video of him swimming, and then show under-water of the best in the business. Let them learn. Even the best in the world have variations in their stroke patterns, from Klim to Popov, pick what works best for you. If you absolutely feel the need to make verbal corrections, then use tactile words like, flow, heavy water, light water, pressure, catch the ball, hold the ball, push the ball. (in that order for freestyle) All these words help to develop kinesthetic awareness, which in my opinion, is the most important factor at that age.

Changes take time and swimming does self correct if you keep it simple. A little bilateral breathing, a little catchup stroke, lots of streamline push offs, some kicking on the back arms extended above the head , or at your side sculling. Don't drop your elbows keep you elbows high during recovery, clean exits, clean entries, don't cross over during the pull phase, proper finish, don't cup your hands. Don't press your thumb on yourpointer finger causes tension,don't force your fingers together causes tension, use your big muscles in your back not just the tricpeps and biceps. Next lesson tomorrow. Things do just fall into place??

I'm posting more views from that same day (8/21). I had videotaped more views but didn't want to overwhelm people with too many. So here is a view approaching the camera and one from the side. I'll put up my "improved" stroke tomorrow. www.youtube.com/watch www.youtube.com/watch What I did to eliminate the crossover was mentally imagine myself raising my hand straight up to ask a question (while rotated), almost like "oh oh Mr. Kattah". I also imagined that a line drawn along the lateral aspect of my right arm to my right leg and from my left arm to left leg would be pretty straight. Prior to that I was thinking too much in terms of hiding my arms in front of my head, trying to be too streamlined. I'll try to get new video tomorrow. Obviously every problem won't be solved right away, but I hope the recovery arm and crossover problems will be better.

The thumbnails are actually generated by the message boards whenever you attach an image to a post. I generally download the videos from youtube as a .mp4 file and open it in quicktime which makes it easy to view the video frame by frame. You can export frames from quicktime but I usually just do a window capture - in Windows just press Alt + Print Screen and then paste the image from the clipboard into an image viewer, IrfanView is free and good for simple editing. I'll start playing around with it. Thanks!

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. I like how you thumbnail the pictures from the video. Is the process difficult. I'd like to learn. Thanks, Coach T.

yep. you definitely breathe only to the left side. that creates a certain unevenness in your stroke technique. you need to start breathing once every three strokes instead of once every two. right now, you do one stroke without breathing (your right) and one side with breathing (your left). that's a two stroke pattern. if you switch to an odd-numbered rhythm, like three strokes, then you would be forced to learn to breath on the other side every other set of three strokes. you would go right side without breathing, left side without breathing, right side with breathing, left side without breathing, right side without breathing, left side with breathing. it will feel a lot like re-learning how to walk, and you will have to stick with it despite the obvious difficulty in relearning something you thought you had down. however, if you put yourself through the paces of relearning breathing to become an alternating breather, you will find that your stroke will naturally even out. --Sean

I like how you thumbnail the pictures from the video. Is the process difficult. I'd like to learn. Thanks, Coach T. The thumbnails are actually generated by the message boards whenever you attach an image to a post. I generally download the videos from youtube as a .mp4 file and open it in quicktime which makes it easy to view the video frame by frame. You can export frames from quicktime but I usually just do a window capture - in Windows just press Alt + Print Screen and then paste the image from the clipboard into an image viewer, IrfanView is free and good for simple editing.

I'll have to get someone to take video again to see how it looked. When you do, try to get some side shots. The underwater from the front view is good, from above water would also be good. I find the above water from behind to be one of the less helpful views, although in this case it showed problems with your kick I guess. Having both front and side shots makes it much easier to get a good idea of what is happening in three dimensions. An underwater side view is particularly good for evaluating arm position during the pull. By the way, what approach did you find effective in eliminating your crossover? Extending further or conscious control or ?