Freestyle technique

Not much difference from a 50 to a 200 how you swim it. It is just pacing.. . All races are arm shoulder driven. I really have to laugh when people say hip driven. It tells me you believe the story that some people tell. The lower part of the body ads only a minor part to swimming.

The lower part of the body ads only a minor part to swimming. See - to each his own ... this makes me laugh :D I would not want to swim without my kick, since it's my engine. You can try both - but I am not sure you can be good at both. I am guessing your hip driven stroke is close to catch up and your turnover is too low for a sprint ? Try to get your turnover up - in the hip driven stroke, many swimmers allow the kick to slow down the turnover. Work on shortening the kick a little bit (vertical kicks) / work with a tempo trainer / and do kick swim or swim to kick sprints (10yards kick sprint right into 15 yards swim sprint and reverse)

The lower part of the body ads only a minor part to swimming. See - to each his own ... this makes me laugh :D I would not want to swim without my kick, since it's my engine. You and me both.

Chris Vaanderkay mentioned he's starting to focus on sprinting now using more of a shoulder driven style than the hip version he uses in distance. So there ya have it I guess.

Kick is essential but is not as propulsive as the upperbody action. Kick all you want but it is the upper body and arms that do most of the work and will make us faster.

Hip driven front crawl swimming is a concept I never really understood. I guess it's just a way of thinking.. I donno. I guess it's a matter of taste. For me, it has always been shoulder driven. The hips are just between the shoulders and the legs. They follow but don't drive anything. I do not think about hips, and don't feel any need to think about them. However, I know very respectable swim coaches who strongly believe in this hip thing so.... I respect this. I can understand why thinking hip driven has a detrimental impact on your performances over really short distances. It probably takes some of the important focus away from the upper body (working muscles) down to the hips (:confused:)... nahhh really. No matter how hard I try, I can not understand this concept.

Hip driven or shoulder driven? Shoulder driven is said to be more of sprinters stroke. Think of it as a different gear. Hip driven is how they said Ian Thorpe swam. More of a middle distance style where a long extended arm ans some hip rotation would make him stealthier in the water. When he sprinted though...it was all out shoulders. These videos explain it much better. www.theraceclub.net/Videos

I think of it this way - when I swim hip driven (which is my natural stroke), I max out my kick and allow my arms to follow the "beat" of the kick. When I do try any type of straight arm or shoulder driven sprints, I focus on the arms and turnover, and just allow the legs to follow the arms. Now it does help to have a strong kick to swim that way. The arms are responsible for 80% of the propulsion (at least that is what I read) - but I would not want to go into a race without that 20%. In terms of pure time, in a max 50 based on best swim time, I am probably 5-6% slower just pulling and 20-25% slower just kicking.

I don't think "hip driven" swimming exists. At best, it's an illusion. Shoulders rotate because of the pulling force. Tension through the torso makes the hips rotate with the shoulders. If someone is wobbly in the middle you can maybe get them to tighten up by telling them to focus on driving with the hips, but the power is still coming from up front. Personally, I use a focus point of fast and tight rotation at the hips when I sprint. I want to keep the amplitude of the rotation down, and eliminate any up-down or left-right motion. Thinking about the hips seems to work better than thinking about the shoulders.

If one shoulder rotates up the other shoulder rotates down the rest of the body will or can follow suit or may not. I don't know about hip driven freestyle. I never think of it that way. I have tried it, though. So is it hip driven or shoulder driven??? Most importantly, in regards to a previous post, the importance of having a strong kick is not even debatable. It is a fact in modern swimming.