Awhile back I had tried to record myself swimming freestlye and ask around the net for commentary, but it was with a low-quality camera and only above-water footage. Not getting too much feedback at that time, I decided to buy a underwater HD camera and try to use that as a reference and improve my freestyle technique. Over about 40 days I have recorded ~16 sessions, and tried to gradually improve things. Here is what I have improved:
- No longer crossing over arms in middle (at least most of the time)
- Entry occurs when arms are more stretched forward, before my elbow was bent ~90 degrees for some entries
- Left pull is a bit more consistent, but still not a clean S curve like right arm (yes I'm right-handed)
- kick is a bit tighter and more controlled (though this probably still needs to be made even smaller, with less knee kick)
- neck angle when breathing is less extreme, before I was turning upwards much more than necessary
I still look straight down at the bottom when swimming much of the time, partially because if I look forward with a 45-degree angle I can't really see much anyway because my goggles get in the way, although I know doing this will make my breathing more natural, and possibly improve my posture overall.
I have been doing alot of catch-up with a pull bouy and that seems to have helped me control my upper body more. Also been doing alot of stretches to enable my foot to stretch to a greater degree, and doing a few laps with zoomers to help improve my overall kick form.
Anyway, the result of my recent training can be seen in the following video, where I edited together a few sessions together, and you can see my technique from a few different angles, both above and underwater.
YouTube- Jeff's Freestyle Technique 7/5/2010
I was concerned about doing too much endurance training with 'bad' form,but I think I am nearly ready to start doing less form work and a little more endurance training. However before that I really would like to get some critique from some masters swimming forum members.
If I were to point out my #1 problem at present, it is a lack of 'balance' in the water, though I am not sure exactly what that means or how to work on it. When I see videos of pro swimmers like Michael Phelps I am amazed by how their arms seem 'anchored' in front, whereas I have to struggle to even keep them straight. It takes a conscious effort to not cross over the middle, and even then I can't seem to keep my arms 'anchored' in front.
I do most of my training in a housing-development pool with no swimming friends, so any commentary would be very helpful.
Thanks very much!
Parents
Former Member
Again referring to thousands of push off and glide verses push off and kick trials, the push with flutter kick rarely ever produces a deceleration curve line that is better than the push and glide line, until you get to really slow velocities, not associated with regular swimming speeds.
Aha! As I and many others have long suspected, flutter kicking is not actually propulsive at regular swimming speeds! Toss those kick sets into the trash can! Well, probably not, but this would give serious weight to the argument that the kick is not used for propulsion but rather to maintain body position, or to set rhythm, or as a rotational anchor, or some combination. If its rhythm we should be training for maximum cadence rather than maximum power. If its as a rotational anchor we may be stuck with the need for a more powerful kick. In either case, you have apparently settled a debate that has been going on for decades! Now we can move on to debating what role the kick does play.
This is where I think we differ. When you speak about how one person could produce more or less propulsive force, what I think you leave out is during the stroke cycle as propulsive force is progressively being generated to its peak during a stroke cycle, what is also concurrently happening with the instantaneous velocity of swimmer? I believe I have already given you evidence to the answer of that question.
I think we are inferring force from velocity in different ways. Here's my line of reasoning, sorry if it is overly detailed and seems pedantic, that's just the way I reason when trying to be careful:
force = mass * acceleration or acceleration = force / mass
since mass is constant we can largely ignore it and just say that acceleration is directly proportional to force.
If you apply a constant force on a mass it will produce constant acceleration which will give you a sloped straight line on a graph of the velocity, with the slope being proportional to the force.
A positive force will produce a positive slope, i.e. increasing velocity, and a negative force will produce a negative slope, i.e. declining velocity. The minima and maxima of the velocity graph correspond to the points where the slope of the graph is zero, i.e. the force is zero. In our case the points where propulsive and drag forces are equal.
A minimum in the velocity graph therefore represents a shift from drag outweighing propulsion to propulsion outweighing drag.
A maximum represents a shift from propulsion outweighing drag to drag outweighing propulsion.
We can observe that the minimum occurs when the hand is below the shoulder which is the point where propulsion equals drag and that from there to the maximum, where the hand is finishing the pull, there is a steady increase up to the maximum.
The path is pretty close to a straight line in this segment, with just a little curvature at the ends, which tells us that the net force is close to constant in this phase. So, by my reasoning the steady upward rise from minimum to maximum in the graph represents a period of constant force rather than progressively rising force.
It seems to me that you are saying that force is proportional to velocity and therefore force is rising during this period, where I am asserting that force is proportional to acceleration and therefore relatively constant during this period.
Returning to my rambling, we reach the maximum as the hand finishes the pull and propulsive forces drop to whatever the kick provides, which is less than drag so, with drag predominating the slope of the line changes to downward.
With the absolute amounts of drag and propulsion in the front quadrant not yet determined it is hazardous to draw too many conclusions but I think we can safely say that we're slowing down all the way through the front quadrant (except for the little bump) and we're speeding up all the way through the rear underwater quadrant. So you absolutely do not want to cut short the back quadrant in order to get your hand back in the front quadrant as quickly as possible, which was what was asserted in one of the other threads.
If we were able to overlay the Aquanex force data we would be able to separate out propulsive force from drag force and see whether it is lack of propulsion, or a surplus of drag that leads to the deceleration in the front quadrant. My hypothesis is that there is not a lot of propulsion in most of the front quadrant.
Again referring to thousands of push off and glide verses push off and kick trials, the push with flutter kick rarely ever produces a deceleration curve line that is better than the push and glide line, until you get to really slow velocities, not associated with regular swimming speeds.
Aha! As I and many others have long suspected, flutter kicking is not actually propulsive at regular swimming speeds! Toss those kick sets into the trash can! Well, probably not, but this would give serious weight to the argument that the kick is not used for propulsion but rather to maintain body position, or to set rhythm, or as a rotational anchor, or some combination. If its rhythm we should be training for maximum cadence rather than maximum power. If its as a rotational anchor we may be stuck with the need for a more powerful kick. In either case, you have apparently settled a debate that has been going on for decades! Now we can move on to debating what role the kick does play.
This is where I think we differ. When you speak about how one person could produce more or less propulsive force, what I think you leave out is during the stroke cycle as propulsive force is progressively being generated to its peak during a stroke cycle, what is also concurrently happening with the instantaneous velocity of swimmer? I believe I have already given you evidence to the answer of that question.
I think we are inferring force from velocity in different ways. Here's my line of reasoning, sorry if it is overly detailed and seems pedantic, that's just the way I reason when trying to be careful:
force = mass * acceleration or acceleration = force / mass
since mass is constant we can largely ignore it and just say that acceleration is directly proportional to force.
If you apply a constant force on a mass it will produce constant acceleration which will give you a sloped straight line on a graph of the velocity, with the slope being proportional to the force.
A positive force will produce a positive slope, i.e. increasing velocity, and a negative force will produce a negative slope, i.e. declining velocity. The minima and maxima of the velocity graph correspond to the points where the slope of the graph is zero, i.e. the force is zero. In our case the points where propulsive and drag forces are equal.
A minimum in the velocity graph therefore represents a shift from drag outweighing propulsion to propulsion outweighing drag.
A maximum represents a shift from propulsion outweighing drag to drag outweighing propulsion.
We can observe that the minimum occurs when the hand is below the shoulder which is the point where propulsion equals drag and that from there to the maximum, where the hand is finishing the pull, there is a steady increase up to the maximum.
The path is pretty close to a straight line in this segment, with just a little curvature at the ends, which tells us that the net force is close to constant in this phase. So, by my reasoning the steady upward rise from minimum to maximum in the graph represents a period of constant force rather than progressively rising force.
It seems to me that you are saying that force is proportional to velocity and therefore force is rising during this period, where I am asserting that force is proportional to acceleration and therefore relatively constant during this period.
Returning to my rambling, we reach the maximum as the hand finishes the pull and propulsive forces drop to whatever the kick provides, which is less than drag so, with drag predominating the slope of the line changes to downward.
With the absolute amounts of drag and propulsion in the front quadrant not yet determined it is hazardous to draw too many conclusions but I think we can safely say that we're slowing down all the way through the front quadrant (except for the little bump) and we're speeding up all the way through the rear underwater quadrant. So you absolutely do not want to cut short the back quadrant in order to get your hand back in the front quadrant as quickly as possible, which was what was asserted in one of the other threads.
If we were able to overlay the Aquanex force data we would be able to separate out propulsive force from drag force and see whether it is lack of propulsion, or a surplus of drag that leads to the deceleration in the front quadrant. My hypothesis is that there is not a lot of propulsion in most of the front quadrant.
