Breastroker wrote:
> by doing drills to speed up the limbs, the pull and kick can be made
> faster, decreasing the time component. More POWER is the result!
This was in the context of breaststroke, but I'm sure it applies to other strokes as well. What drills are there to work on RPMs? When I try to speed up my turnover (especially free, but back and *** to a lesser extent, we'll forget about fly since I can't even swim that slowly) my stroke mechanics fall apart.
I'm a skinny guy (well, my arms are), so given my strength I don't think my pull is going to get much faster. That means I have to recover faster, right?
Thx,
Skip
Former Member
If you have the equipment available, swimming 25's on a surgical tubing tow will train the speed/coordination aspect of your stroke. It won't make you stronger, but it trains the muscles to move quicker without losing good form. Its a surprisingly big obstacle to learn how to just move a little quicker.
Otherwise I'd agree with LindsayNB above. Turnover/speed has to come from the core- body rotation and kick sort of drives arm speed, so its easier to concentrate on those components and allow your arms to follow.
as he said in that post, power is strength times distance divided by time. distance is a fixed constant. you feel that you've capped your strength. it seems to me that the only other things that affect time are reflexes and form. you're looking for some golden drill that will magically improve those rpms and thereby improve your overall power, but i think the emphasis shouldn't be on particular drills so much as studying form and working to emulate the best while at the same time while swimming being ever vigilant and mindful of your effort to improve your reflexes. it's a matter of research out of the water and self-discipline during in-water practice.
in terms of improving form through drills, the breaststroke with a butterfly kick has already been discussed, but you could also try swimming ***-***-fly-fly, wherein you swim two full cycles of breaststroke and then convert to two full cycles of butterfly. butterfly evolved out of breaststroke, and nowadays breaststroke is increasingly borrowing more and more from butterfly. you may also want to increase the amount of glide drills that you do, because an inefficient glide will mean less distance traveled and, therefore, more arm cycles. if your arms are already weak, then the increase in arm-strokes will severely slow you down at an exponential rate as your arms begin to tell your body that they've had it.
--Sean
I find that accelerating to a very fast pace can be useful to speed turnover and keep your stroke together.
By starting at a modest speed, when your stroke is good, it is easier to maintain technique as you speed up compared to going full blast from the push.
Push off the wall at medium speed, and steadily increase your pace over the length of the pool until you reach high speed at the wall. Might need to adjust depending on short or long course.
I know backstrokers often use the spin drill - which I cannot do well. This drill spins your arms at a very high and exagerrated turnover. Hard to do for more than 10 yards.
When I try to speed up my turnover (especially free, but back and *** to a lesser extent, we'll forget about fly since I can't even swim that slowly) my stroke mechanics fall apart.
I'm a skinny guy (well, my arms are), so given my strength I don't think my pull is going to get much faster. That means I have to recover faster, right?
In my experience it doesn't work well to speed up just one part of my stroke because if I do it isn't synchronized with the rest of my stroke. A faster recovery won't help if you don't pick up the tempo of your roll. Depending on your current style you may be able to switch to a different, higher tempo stroke style, for example reduce the time your leading arm is extended before the catch to produce a more symmetric kayaking style. The Race club videos talk about three styles of freestyle, hip driven, shoulder driven, and body driven which are used at different tempos. Check out their youtube videos.
In general I have found it works better to concentrate on picking up the speed of my body rotation than speeding up my arms. Picking up my kick tempo will also tend to pick up the tempo of the rest of my stroke. It is actually kind of hard to explain, and to do, I've been experimenting with tempo a lot lately, especially with butterfly, all I can really say is that when I get it right it is when I work on increasing the overall tempo and NOT on pulling "harder".
