Lately I've not been making friends.
I am hitting people during fly. Sometimes it is from another lane since I recover my right arm over the lane line, and sometimes it is a lane mate. I have a 76" reach so I am roughly as wide as a lane.
I try to look and f I see someone I can sometimes do an alligator arm recovery, but this does not always work. People come up fast and you can't always get out of the way.
Is there a trick to this, or is hitting part of the deal?
Sometimes I'll lead so I can at least do a 25 without an issue, but anything over a 25 and I am now paranoid.
I try to do fly when I have an opportunity to do it without collision, but focus on quality when when I do. You don't have to do gobs of fly to be decent at it as long as you have a good technique. I train almost exclusively freestyle but can do a passable 100 or 200 fly because I swam it a lot as a chlld and have some residual technique- as long as you're not learning it I really think you can minimize swimming it in practice. :2cents:
I don't think anyone here is questioning quantity of fly for masters. I myself swim it once a week. What I would like to know is how to swim this *perfect" or high quality fly with six others in a lane. I really can't swim perfect fly solo, so just curious as to how to go about it with additional obstacles. And often our coaches will have us start the set over if stroke is broken, so that's not always an option.
I wasn't referring to just masters.
What you have probably gathered by now (probably even before this post) is that you can't do a "perfect" fly with 6 in a lane in short course unless your coach approves of pauses and extra kicks, which shouldn't happen multiple times per lap in a race.
Do one-arm fly when necessary, but it shouldn't be too often because it is easier than two-arm fly. I disagree with the poster who said it is a hard habit to break in a race, I've never had the slightest bit of trouble with this. (One-handed turns, on the other hand...!)
I tried to be polite swimming fly with 6 aggressive swimmers in my lane. Unfortunately, I ended up swimming one arm fly for most of the sets. Instead, I adopted the aggressive style and it works well for us flyers as a group.
If someone could explain to me how I need to swim friendly, perfect stroke fly, I'd love to learn. When executing a less aggressive stoke my coaches complained that I cut my stroke short, my kick was too weak, my turn over was too slow (I was pausing too long after hand entry), and my head was too high during the breath (I was attempting to sight for the flyers coming the other way.) Plus, my heart rate really drops when I switch to one arm and that kind of training does NOT help me during my 200 fly races. Many thanks!
The only time I swim with less experienced swimmers (like at masters meet warm ups), I pretty much avoid full stroke fly completely until the sprint lane is open.
I do a one-arm stroke all the time to avoid hitting lane mates. I know this is something that would have elicited a bark from the coach in my younger days. Maybe that's why I enjoy doing it so much now! And I agree with Chris, I don't find myself wanting to take a one arm stroke in a race.
If I'm not barked at I noodle.
I try to do fly when I have an opportunity to do it without collision, but focus on quality when when I do. You don't have to do gobs of fly to be decent at it as long as you have a good technique. I train almost exclusively freestyle but can do a passable 100 or 200 fly because I swam it a lot as a chlld and have some residual technique- as long as you're not learning it I really think you can minimize swimming it in practice. :2cents:
I don't think anyone here is questioning quantity of fly for masters. I myself swim it once a week. What I would like to know is how to swim this *perfect" or high quality fly with six others in a lane. I really can't swim perfect fly solo, so just curious as to how to go about it with additional obstacles. And often our coaches will have us start the set over if stroke is broken, so that's not always an option.
I wasn't referring to just masters.
What you have probably gathered by now (probably even before this post) is that you can't do a "perfect" fly with 6 in a lane in short course unless your coach approves of pauses and extra kicks, which shouldn't happen multiple times per lap in a race.
I still have yet to figure out perfect fly even with no one in my lane. :)
When our coach does a fly set, our lane usually does something like 12 x 25m on 35 secs.
With 4 or 5 in the lane it can work with the best guys leading and SDKing under the last swimmers when starting the next 25m.
Nobody ends up swimming fly against on-coming flyers.
Squeeze the interval if you want something tougher (or do more).
Never ever swim fly when anyone else is going the other way. Just don't. Coaches are extremely dumb about designing workouts around this principle.
That's it. "Jazz Hands" (I gotta say, probably the best name out here) got it right. Since I don't work out with a team I usually find a lane to myself and then I can swim fly. Adjusting the stroke to oncoming traffic just screws up your form and rhythm. What's the point? If you don't have a lane, don't swim fly. As to the aggressive/confident swimmers who are willing to hit people to get their space, I understand the impulse, but isn't this something we learn to grow out of, say, after we are 12 years old?
