Starts

I tried to find this topic unsuccessfully, forgive me if it has already been discussed. I recently finally started working on my dive starts, literally from a standpoint of never having done them before. I learned a lot watching my kids' coaches and videos, though. I have been diving into about 6 feet of water and find myself ending up about 5 inches from the bottom before dolphin kicking my way forward and up. When I watch videos of starts in the olympics, etc. these guys are diving into 13 feet of water or more, and seem to dive at least 5 feet (see this link of Phelps, around 45 second mark: YouTube - Michael Phelps freestyle multi angle camera ). In summer league, though, I see the older kids are diving into 5 feet with no problems. Do you guys start different ways depending on the water depth? Are your Masters meets in deep water usually? Am I going too deep when I dive, not so much from a safety standpoint but from a speed aspect? Last question, I remember my son's coach once telling the team to make the under water phase of their relay dives very brief. I couldn't tell if he was making a general statement on starts, or was that specific to relays. Any comments greatly appreciated.
Parents
  • First,if you are nearly hitting the bottom,don't practice starts there.You don't want to get hurt while learning. Optimum depth depends a bit on how you swim.If you are going to be aiming for 15M of SDK you want to be relatively deep,so that 5 feet would be deeper than most,but not unreasonable.For BR I'd aim for 3 1/2 to 4.If you are swimming sprint free and you are not much of an SDKer then as shallow as 2-3 ft would be good.I am assuming the coach who said make the underwater phase brief was talking about sprint free where that would make sense(unless your SDK is faster than your free.) Almost all Masters Meets start in at least 7 ft of depth.
Reply
  • First,if you are nearly hitting the bottom,don't practice starts there.You don't want to get hurt while learning. Optimum depth depends a bit on how you swim.If you are going to be aiming for 15M of SDK you want to be relatively deep,so that 5 feet would be deeper than most,but not unreasonable.For BR I'd aim for 3 1/2 to 4.If you are swimming sprint free and you are not much of an SDKer then as shallow as 2-3 ft would be good.I am assuming the coach who said make the underwater phase brief was talking about sprint free where that would make sense(unless your SDK is faster than your free.) Almost all Masters Meets start in at least 7 ft of depth.
Children
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