Made a big change, would appreciate feedback

dsg10715, Thanks for the extensive post. Maintaining good stroke technique can be a challenge for very talented swimmers when no one (aka "coach") is watching. Your situation is much harder - much of what you see on Youtube is geared towards swimmers with more experience and understanding. It is great that you want your 3,000 yds/day to mean something. Some brief comments on your post: a) With kicking, I am curious how many kicks you do in a 25 yard kick. I have a pretty good kick and use 65-70 downward kicks per 25. If you are alot higher than that, it could be due to poor ankle flexibility or, as Flystorm mentioned, too much knee bend. b) You mention that you focus on bilateral breathing with rotating from the hips and not the shoulder. For my swimmers and me personally, I focus more on shoulder rotation than hip rotation. Trying to rotate your hips without rotating your shoulders could lead to some very odd arm movements which may explain the issue. When swimmers snake, it is usually because the hips are too high and there is not enough shoulder rotation. c) If you find kicking with fins to be very hard, it sounds like you are bending your knees too much. d) Bow and arrow drill is virtually impossible if you are not rotating your shoulders. May explain why you find it hard to do. e) Don't understand the "brick" comment in your paddle paragraph. f) Your final paragraph is the challenge for so many swimmers - how to generate power. Power is generated by the body rotating from side to side. Instead of thinking that freestyle is swum on your stomach, think about as rotating (or rocking) from side to side. Just like a baseball pitcher, a football quarterback, or a boxer, the power in their delivery comes from rotational power. Think of your body creating tension by twisting around your spine with your arms and legs counter-balancing each other. You create the tension and then release the tension by rotation to the other side. Skating a great comparison for swimming - except that the ice provides a solid foundation to push against. When you are skating, your arms and legs go in opposite directions which creates tension through your torso. As they change positions, I am sure you can feel the power when you change sides. You are gliding on one skate, while the other leg is "cocked" and ready to go forward. Swimming is exactly the same movement - just different planes. Will be interested to hear your feedback. Good Luck. paul Just to confirm, when you are skating for power, do your shoulder movement forward and back as much as your hips? Seems like it to me. Swimming is the same way.

Good for you for joining a team and getting a great workout out of it. It's so hard to train on your own and try to make tweaks as you go as well. Two suggestions for kicking... 1. kicking from your hips, as opposed to you knees, is where you'll get more power. Next time you kick, really think about your muscle groups as you're doing it and focus on driving from your hips. You'll know it when you feel it... there will be a difference. Work do develop these muscles. 2. There's an interesting drill to get you to feel if your stroke is off on one side or the other - again, it'll bring attention to a weakness you can work on. Put a paddle on your left hand, then a fin on your right foot and swim. You will feel if they're not in sync. Do the same for the other side. You'll probably feel it most when you go to breathe. From there, you can work to either work on your kick or your stroke to make it more balanced on each side. Good luck!

A lot to read through here but be sure you are NOT sculling with the arm out front during bow and arrow drill. Not sure if someone already mentioned that previously. You drive your legs, tighten your core, and keep good body alignment and head position to keep from sinking. As you pointed out, if you are sinking, the first culprit is probably your legs. I think at the very least if you try that drill you should use a center mount snorkel to ensure proper head position. Fins would be a huge help on that drill as well to help you stabilize things and learn the drill properly. When I coached people who had never done it before, that’s why started with all the equipment (fins and snorkel, sometimes paddles as well) and then gradually dropped pieces as the swimmer became more proficient. I think that you have so many things you can do to get better that you can go in any direction. I only recommended B&A drill as one way you can see how strong your legs are in relation to your body position, and how good your body position is in relation to your stroke.

DSG10715, Quickly, counting your kicks is when kicking with a board - not when you are swimming. Should be relatively easy to count when you have a kickboard or even a snorkel. The Finis tick tock is one of the toys I think is worthwhile. Everything else in your post suggests three things: a) you head is too high in the water, you are bending your knees too much when you kick, and your pulling pattern is way off. Describe the pulling pattern you are trying to emulate, ok? of course, video will be really helpful too. - when it comes. Paul

Whew! You're working on a lot! Once you get a video posted here, a few folks can chime in on the things to work on first so you don't get overwhelmed. It sounds like you might be able to make some strides with kicking, though, then work on the other things. Just for an example, I try to work on one thing for 4-6 weeks, focusing on tweaking that one thing (right now it's still turns/underwaters) until it becomes habit, then I change focus to something else. Over the course of the last 5 years, I've changed my stroke and times considerably and also have lowered the times I've had injuries. Windrath's comment about three things it sounds like you're doing seems spot on and a great place to start working. I love that you're pushing to make changes and are open to ides. Keep us in the loop! Kari

Thanks Windrath and Flystorm. This is all very helpful stuff. Will continue to try and integrate it. One question I have on Bow and Arrow: I have been trying it without any gear and only sculling with one hand while the other is elbow high position. When I am on my right side with left elbow high I manage to survive, when I flip to my left side with right elbow high I almost drown and have to kick extra extra hard to even stay afloat. I thought about this during my swim today and tried applying what I *think* the lesson was which was that my kick when on my left side was weaker than the other and contributing to my snaking and tried to make the three kicks on that side extra ferocious. It seemed to level off the snaking a bit, but like all experiments I need to apply it multiple times to try and figure it out. What is my problem here and how should I go about addressing it? @Flystorm: 1. Will keep at it. Right now in the morning when I wake up a sore bum and thigh is the only indication that I am indeed trying to kick well. I don't *think* I am bending my knees beyond the movement when it flicks down. 2. Will try this drill. Sounds like a good one. Will report back after I try it. @Windrath: a) I will have to figure out a way to count this. I have so much going on in my head right now when I'm swimming I don't know if I can count kicks. I am trying to do three on one side, three on the other. But I will try and report back. b) The bilateral breathing I am having a lot of trouble with. I snake a LOT less when I breathe every three strokes and change breathing direction, but the extra stroke really starves me of oxygen and I feel like I'm gasping more to get through a lap. That could be my fitness, probably is. On the other hand, I do feel like I fight less when I breathe bilaterally or entirely on my non-dominant side. I'm not sure what to deduce from this yet, but I know it's telling me something. c) it might be...the difficulty I think I feel is that the power from my hips needed to generate propulsion doesn't feel like its there and when I have to move the fins it works less. This could be a false deduction, but I do remark when I put the fins on to really work it I do achieve the propulsion in where I can move in a much straighter line but I tire out really quickly and start snaking even with the fins, I think. d) I posed the question above as to how to analyse it, regarding this. I do rotate my shoulders for sure...it's just one side is vastly different power wise than the other and I'm not sure how to think about what this means. Regarding the rotation, I've been trying to visualise the tick tock toy from Finis, which I didn't buy but wondered why it was so important that someone spent money to create something like it, to rotate my hips in conjunction with my pull to try and achieve the skating analogy which you put so well. e) I've just been trying to visualise my finger to elbow region as being a brick that can't bend f) Indeed - this is a real challenge. Currently - and I could be thinking about it wrong - I'm comfortable with the notion that propulsion is enhanced by a slight rocking/rotisserie and try to visualise trying to swim through a very small hoop with one arm on each stroke so that I'm always trying to make myself as long and strong as possible. I could be thinking about it wrong but the challenge I think I am facing is that when I started trying to kick six beats instead of the two beat scissor, I threw a monkey wrench into the drag portion of that philosophy and don't have the mustard to generate enough power to control the propulsion of slipping and sliding...so I'm grappling to make it. Again, this is my own deduction of self coaching which I acknowledge is a dangerous slippery slope. In conclusion, I cannot wait till I get my Hero next week and cajole my daughter to tape me. I think the pictures won't lie and will expose many flaws in the deductions I am presenting here about my form. Dave dsg10715, Thanks for the extensive post. Maintaining good stroke technique can be a challenge for very talented swimmers when no one (aka "coach") is watching. Your situation is much harder - much of what you see on Youtube is geared towards swimmers with more experience and understanding. It is great that you want your 3,000 yds/day to mean something. Some brief comments on your post: a) With kicking, I am curious how many kicks you do in a 25 yard kick. I have a pretty good kick and use 65-70 downward kicks per 25. If you are alot higher than that, it could be due to poor ankle flexibility or, as Flystorm mentioned, too much knee bend. b) You mention that you focus on bilateral breathing with rotating from the hips and not the shoulder. For my swimmers and me personally, I focus more on shoulder rotation than hip rotation. Trying to rotate your hips without rotating your shoulders could lead to some very odd arm movements which may explain the issue. When swimmers snake, it is usually because the hips are too high and there is not enough shoulder rotation. c) If you find kicking with fins to be very hard, it sounds like you are bending your knees too much. d) Bow and arrow drill is virtually impossible if you are not rotating your shoulders. May explain why you find it hard to do. e) Don't understand the "brick" comment in your paddle paragraph. f) Your final paragraph is the challenge for so many swimmers - how to generate power. Power is generated by the body rotating from side to side. Instead of thinking that freestyle is swum on your stomach, think about as rotating (or rocking) from side to side. Just like a baseball pitcher, a football quarterback, or a boxer, the power in their delivery comes from rotational power. Think of your body creating tension by twisting around your spine with your arms and legs counter-balancing each other. You create the tension and then release the tension by rotation to the other side. Skating a great comparison for swimming - except that the ice provides a solid foundation to push against. When you are skating, your arms and legs go in opposite directions which creates tension through your torso. As they change positions, I am sure you can feel the power when you change sides. You are gliding on one skate, while the other leg is "cocked" and ready to go forward. Swimming is exactly the same movement - just different planes. Will be interested to hear your feedback. Good Luck. paul Just to confirm, when you are skating for power, do your shoulder movement forward and back as much as your hips? Seems like it to me. Swimming is the same way.

DSG10715, Definitely in agreement with Kari (aka Flystorm) that you are working on a lot of things. Swimming is definitely one of the activities that falls into the "10,000" repetitions realm. The nice thing about a 3,000 yard practice is that it can be broken down into 4-5 segments - each one focused on one thing: Warm-up, then kick set, breathing set, a pulling set w/ pull buoy working on hip rotation, maybe a stroke drill set, and finally a set to put it all together. A couple more comments to inundate you with ideas: a) People make swimming harder than it has to be by trying to swim on top of the water instead of swimming through it. Examples: lifting your head to breathe instead of turning to the side or looking forward instead of down. The water will support a swimmer if they relax and stay balanced. When swimming through the water, very little of your body should be above the surface. I posted this video on Vimeo a while back. www.youtube.com/watch. See if you can do it. If you cannot, the chances are your lower back, glutes, and hamstrings are not engaged and your legs are much lower in the water when you swim which makes you more like an iceberg than a speed boat. :) You can practice good body position by doing the "superman" yoga position on dry land. b) When you kick, there will be some knee bend, but not more than 10-15 degrees (roughly) - it is like kicking a soccer ball. If your hips are breaking like when riding a bike, that is very bad. And, of course, keeping your toes pointed and turned in a little bit is very helpful. c) Based on your description of your pull, I suspect it is causing alot of snaking.Reaching as far forward as possible can mess up rotation and power if done incorrectly. "Hinging" at the elbow and pulling can also really mess things up if done at the wrong point in the stroke. If your daughter can use your cell phone to do a video (above water), that will get us started. Does NOT have to be udnerwater to see some of the things. Good Luck. paul

Thanks Paul, I will count them on a kick board. Will order the toy, too. a) I probably look up ahead of me too much. Will work on it. b) they shouldn't be straight without ever bending though, right? they need to bend a little to try and achieve the whip effect? c) I try to reach forward as far as I can, then hinge my elbow and pull back towards my thigh in conjunction with rotating. I find a problem when I rotate left as in my left side rotating towards the bottom; inasmuch as I feel like I don't get rotated till the last second of the pull whereas when my right side is facing the bottom I seem to get a better "elastic band effect" in that the rotation and the pull seems to work in tandem a bit better. Then again, this is all how it *feels* to me and I don't feel like I am bending my legs too much but it's entirely possible I am. DSG10715, Quickly, counting your kicks is when kicking with a board - not when you are swimming. Should be relatively easy to count when you have a kickboard or even a snorkel. The Finis tick tock is one of the toys I think is worthwhile. Everything else in your post suggests three things: a) you head is too high in the water, you are bending your knees too much when you kick, and your pulling pattern is way off. Describe the pulling pattern you are trying to emulate, ok? of course, video will be really helpful too. - when it comes. Paul

26-28 Long course meters? Short course meters? Or short course yards?

Hi Calvin, 50 meters Olympic. Damn. Wish I was 26-28! I am usually low 30s :P But I have short arms!