Dolphin Alternative

Hi L. S. SDK is not an easy skill to learn, keep at it and try different things with how you do it. I'm still working on it and will be for a long time to come. I really do believe that it is faster than SFK, but it is also a skill that I may never fully master or my 52-yr body won't do. These are my opinions, developed through study of the skills and work of others. Certainly subject to critique and discreditable, but here it goes! :blah: That said, I practice it on every turn and some days add exercises where that is my prime focus. I am not a master of this technique, but I have been studying it and trying to turn what my brain has grasped into body action and muscle memory...I've got a looong way to go! Try making your back and free turns deeper. This gets you away from your own wash coming into the turn, but also you can use your full lung buoyancy to assist you in keeping the SDK fast. Ande has talked about this before and his new video posted with the thread "How Far can you glide" really shows the value as he rises the depth is turned into horizontal speed and distance. I've also found that really getting my breakout right and combining that first arm pull with the last SDK kick is a blast (pun intended)! In addition to 25 sprints where my focus is the push off/SDK and breakout I do some kicking on my side. The focus here is trying to learn what's right for head/chest/hips/knees/ankles & feet. There definitely is a point of too much head shoulder movement when trying to produce propulsion w/ dolphin kick, in my opinion. I think this is a very different skill than the dolphin kick associated with swimming butterfly where there is a fair amount of vertical displacement of the head and shoulders. (I'm not a butterfly'r and my shoulders don't do that anymore.) I really like the work done by Raul Arrellano of the University of Grenada. From reading his papers, I prefer to call this underwater undulatory swimming or UUS. It is one and the same thing as SDK, but I wanted to make the conceptual break from dolphin or butterfly only because I find the body motions different. I am trying to have a faster UUS rate (SDK) based on Raul's work, aiming for 2 HZ or 2 kicks per second. This is much faster than my dolphin kick when I swim butterfly...or at least really different. With my butterfly there is a fair amount of vertical translation of my center of mass (core) and my dual kick is coordinated with the arms. With fast UUS, the head really doesn't move much in the Y or vertical. There is a great youtube video that shows this both in computer analysis and real time video of Natalie Coughlin. "Natalie Coughlin Dolphin Kick Analysis" YouTube - Natalie Coughlin Dolphin Kick analysis Much of what Raul has written can be found at: homepage.mac.com/.../index.html One of my favorites of his is "UNDERWATER UNDULATORY SWIMMING: KINEMATIC CHARACTERISTICS, VORTEX GENERATION AND APPLICATION DURING THE START, TURN AND SWIMMING STROKES" This is cowritten by Susana Pardillo and Arantxa Gavilan. This file is 2002ArellanoISBS.pdf I hope this helps more than confuses. If I've got it wrong...let the flames begin! :argue: Cheers, Popeye

Hi L. S. SDK is not an easy skill to learn, keep at it and try different things with how you do it. I'm still working on it and will be for a long time to come. I really do believe that it is faster than SFK, but it is also a skill that I may never fully master or my 52-yr body won't do. These are my opinions, developed through study of the skills and work of others. Certainly subject to critique and discreditable, but here it goes! :blah: That said, I practice it on every turn and some days add exercises where that is my prime focus. I am not a master of this technique, but I have been studying it and trying to turn what my brain has grasped into body action and muscle memory...I've got a looong way to go! Try making your back and free turns deeper. This gets you away from your own wash coming into the turn, but also you can use your full lung buoyancy to assist you in keeping the SDK fast. Ande has talked about this before and his new video posted with the thread "How Far can you glide" really shows the value as he rises the depth is turned into horizontal speed and distance. I've also found that really getting my breakout right and combining that first arm pull with the last SDK kick is a blast (pun intended)! In addition to 25 sprints where my focus is the push off/SDK and breakout I do some kicking on my side. The focus here is trying to learn what's right for head/chest/hips/knees/ankles & feet. There definitely is a point of too much head shoulder movement when trying to produce propulsion w/ dolphin kick, in my opinion. I think this is a very different skill than the dolphin kick associated with swimming butterfly where there is a fair amount of vertical displacement of the head and shoulders. (I'm not a butterfly'r and my shoulders don't do that anymore.) I really like the work done by Raul Arrellano of the University of Grenada. From reading his papers, I prefer to call this underwater undulatory swimming or UUS. It is one and the same thing as SDK, but I wanted to make the conceptual break from dolphin or butterfly only because I find the body motions different. I am trying to have a faster UUS rate (SDK) based on Raul's work, aiming for 2 HZ or 2 kicks per second. This is much faster than my dolphin kick when I swim butterfly...or at least really different. With my butterfly there is a fair amount of vertical translation of my center of mass (core) and my dual kick is coordinated with the arms. With fast UUS, the head really doesn't move much in the Y or vertical. There is a great youtube video that shows this both in computer analysis and real time video of Natalie Coughlin. "Natalie Coughlin Dolphin Kick Analysis" YouTube - Natalie Coughlin Dolphin Kick analysis Much of what Raul has written can be found at: homepage.mac.com/.../index.html One of my favorites of his is "UNDERWATER UNDULATORY SWIMMING: KINEMATIC CHARACTERISTICS, VORTEX GENERATION AND APPLICATION DURING THE START, TURN AND SWIMMING STROKES" This is cowritten by Susana Pardillo and Arantxa Gavilan. This file is 2002ArellanoISBS.pdf I hope this helps more than confuses. If I've got it wrong...let the flames begin! :argue: Cheers, Popeye