Myth #8: All swimming drills are good for you.
I am a great believer in doing drills. In fact, if most swimmers would spend a little more time doing drills and not worry so much about getting their hour or so of aerobic fitness in, they might come out ahead. The biggest problem with drills is that too often, they are being done without any real understanding of what they are supposedly teaching you. Unless you are planning to enter a drill race, there is not much point in doing a drill unless you understand what it is for. Coaches often go to great lengths to explain how to do a drill properly, but then forget to mention what the drill is for.
And sometimes the drills that are being recommended actually teach you the wrong thing. For example, if you have no kick and you are trying to get faster by learning how to increase your stroke rate, then a catch-up drill may be doing you a big disservice. Or if I ever see anyone who has been told to flick water with their hand/wrist out the back end of their stroke, I kindly ask them to hit the delete button. Or what does sliding your finger tips across the surface of the water (finger tip drill) teach you that helps you swim faster?
So all I ask is that you do drills nearly every time you jump in the water, even if for warmup. But that you understand what the drill is trying to teach you AND that the drill is designed for the technique you are trying to learn.
Gary Sr.
The Race Club
Parents
Former Member
Thanks Allen! Much appreciated. I plan to read that thread carefully, will let you know how I do with the drills.
In regards to breathing and butterfly... I got this interesting passage from the ASCA World Clinic notes compiled by Scottish Swimming. It's from Bob Bowman's speech.
Michael breaths every stroke on b/f because he finds this most comfortable and it is the most efficient way in which he can do butterfly. This is due to his long torso and that he cannot get a 90 degree knee bend for his downward kick (most effective angle) if he breaths every 2nd or 3rd stroke.
Beware justifying doing something like breathing off the walls or breathing every stroke in butterfly...
The reason why people are usually told to hold their breath in/out of the walls is because many people slow down significantly when they breath. They take their head out of the body line, whether that entails lifting the head , over rotating (whole face vs half face out of water), etc... and then they lose the momentum the had from the underwater pushoff. Breathing right before the turn tends to lead to flipping too close to the wall, so you pushoff at a lousy angle.
Sun Yang can breath right out of his turns partly because it's a long race, he needs all the oxygen he can get because the slight momentum trade (he's losing a lot less momentum that the average swimmer when he turns his head) is better than building up that extra lactic acid/ rushing those first 2 arms just to get a breath. And Michael Phelps (at least according to Bowman) has a biomechanical reason to breath every stroke.
(the above is mostly based on personal experience, particularly discussions with my coach. Please feel free to ask for clarification/disagree.)
On that note, I am having trouble understanding the concept of not breathing in breaststroke races, as advocated by fellow breaststroker Wayne McCauley (breastroker) on these forums... I'm familiar with his website but not with these forums, so I guess I"ll have to do some poking around to see if he's answered this already... if anyone knows where he (or anyone) went over this already I would be most appreciative if you could share the link here.
But basically every time I do a breaststroke insweep my torso rises out of the water anyways, which has my head attached to the end of it... and this angle is always steeper than what the body would look like midway through a butterfly pull. So how is that a person could have their head come out of the water and not breath during a breaststroke arm cycle? It might be helpful to find a video of someone swimming a lap of fast breaststroke who isn't breathing.
(I am asking this question as a person who has gone 29 seconds in the 50 yd breaststroke for 2 years straight and I'm trying every trick possible to get down to 28 or 27.)
Anyways, hope I didn't get too off topic/break forum rules. Thanks in advance for anything you guys find.
(because only the mediocre are always at their best- jean giraudoux)
Thanks Allen! Much appreciated. I plan to read that thread carefully, will let you know how I do with the drills.
In regards to breathing and butterfly... I got this interesting passage from the ASCA World Clinic notes compiled by Scottish Swimming. It's from Bob Bowman's speech.
Michael breaths every stroke on b/f because he finds this most comfortable and it is the most efficient way in which he can do butterfly. This is due to his long torso and that he cannot get a 90 degree knee bend for his downward kick (most effective angle) if he breaths every 2nd or 3rd stroke.
Beware justifying doing something like breathing off the walls or breathing every stroke in butterfly...
The reason why people are usually told to hold their breath in/out of the walls is because many people slow down significantly when they breath. They take their head out of the body line, whether that entails lifting the head , over rotating (whole face vs half face out of water), etc... and then they lose the momentum the had from the underwater pushoff. Breathing right before the turn tends to lead to flipping too close to the wall, so you pushoff at a lousy angle.
Sun Yang can breath right out of his turns partly because it's a long race, he needs all the oxygen he can get because the slight momentum trade (he's losing a lot less momentum that the average swimmer when he turns his head) is better than building up that extra lactic acid/ rushing those first 2 arms just to get a breath. And Michael Phelps (at least according to Bowman) has a biomechanical reason to breath every stroke.
(the above is mostly based on personal experience, particularly discussions with my coach. Please feel free to ask for clarification/disagree.)
On that note, I am having trouble understanding the concept of not breathing in breaststroke races, as advocated by fellow breaststroker Wayne McCauley (breastroker) on these forums... I'm familiar with his website but not with these forums, so I guess I"ll have to do some poking around to see if he's answered this already... if anyone knows where he (or anyone) went over this already I would be most appreciative if you could share the link here.
But basically every time I do a breaststroke insweep my torso rises out of the water anyways, which has my head attached to the end of it... and this angle is always steeper than what the body would look like midway through a butterfly pull. So how is that a person could have their head come out of the water and not breath during a breaststroke arm cycle? It might be helpful to find a video of someone swimming a lap of fast breaststroke who isn't breathing.
(I am asking this question as a person who has gone 29 seconds in the 50 yd breaststroke for 2 years straight and I'm trying every trick possible to get down to 28 or 27.)
Anyways, hope I didn't get too off topic/break forum rules. Thanks in advance for anything you guys find.
(because only the mediocre are always at their best- jean giraudoux)
