Made a big change, would appreciate feedback

Here is a good illustration I found helpful for me: imagine a laser mounted on top your swim cap beaming light axially (strait forward) from your head when in neutral position (eyes looking at bottom of pool). Ideally, the laser dot will land on the approaching wall + marking throughout the swim. When you further rotate head to breathe, as well as when you rotate to recover/pull, the dot shouldn’t move, stays at same spot on wall as you approach it, until you turn. To maximize efficiency, the only twisting in the spine for freestyle occurs in the neck, for neutral head position and for breathing. Also imagine yourself solid craft gliding through water while in constant axial rotation to one side then the other. The rotating thoracic and lumbar spine remains almost fixed, so the hips and shoulders maintain a similar plane of rotation. The only difference is subtle, for transfer of energy perhaps from shoulder to hips in your case (shoulder driven stroke vs hip driven). Swimming is opposite in this regards to running, where the shoulders counterbalance the hips. Props for stepping up and using video to improve, it is a fantastic tool.

Thanks Steve. I taped myself yesterday to see the progress I made which I included here. After watching the video it felt like I made more progress in the water than I actually see in the video, but I think I am *getting* how to work towards rolling my head less and I feel like I'm snaking less. Ive been doing the drill with the snorkel that Calvin suggested and it's been very helpful especially to illustrate how my uneven pull is affecting me along with my breathing. Especially when the snorkel removes the breathing issue and I notice my pulls being so different. www.youtube.com/watch Here is a good illustration I found helpful for me: imagine a laser mounted on top your swim cap beaming light axially (strait forward) from your head when in neutral position (eyes looking at bottom of pool). Ideally, the laser dot will land on the approaching wall + marking throughout the swim. When you further rotate head to breathe, as well as when you rotate to recover/pull, the dot shouldn’t move, stays at same spot on wall as you approach it, until you turn. To maximize efficiency, the only twisting in the spine for freestyle occurs in the neck, for neutral head position and for breathing. Also imagine yourself solid craft gliding through water while in constant axial rotation to one side then the other. The rotating thoracic and lumbar spine remains almost fixed, so the hips and shoulders maintain a similar plane of rotation. The only difference is subtle, for transfer of energy perhaps from shoulder to hips in your case (shoulder driven stroke vs hip driven). Swimming is opposite in this regards to running, where the shoulders counterbalance the hips. Props for stepping up and using video to improve, it is a fantastic tool.

A question for you: I'm not sure what I am doing wrong on engaging the hips. As my mind is trying to process it, I'm trying to stay still so I don't snake, but engaging the hips means (to me) I twist them more? Paul hit on your hips being a bit loose. You rotate your torso as you begin your stroke and thrust your hand forward. I'm probably doing a poor job describing it. Don't think about twisting, most about reaching. If you reach forward, of if you are standing on dry land (redundant, I know) and reach up, you can reach further if you stretch your whole body, and not just from teh shoulder to your fingertips. In the water, that stretch becomes a little bit of a rotation. I've not tried this, but I generally get a lot out of Gary Hall's videos. I'd give this a watch. Notice how the body remains inline, and the torso through the shoulders rotate around that axis. www.youtube.com/watch

@Kari - thanks Kari, I'm going to draw a pull diagram and that might help me visualise what I need to try and achieve based on your notes @67 King thank you. I definitely notice the difference when I breathe every 4 and every 2, because the stability every 4 is vastly different. Interestingly enough, I tried back stroke and butterfly for the first time and was markedly quicker than freestyle telling me that breathing to the side is really hampering me. A question for you: I'm not sure what I am doing wrong on engaging the hips. As my mind is trying to process it, I'm trying to stay still so I don't snake, but engaging the hips means (to me) I twist them more? @Paul - thank you. Your advice is really helpful. I am sure I look forward because I swim in an environment where if you're not looking in front of you, one will get a foot in the face. It's a bad habit that developed from trying to watch out. I think on my pull I am taking the advice wrong to keep the elbow high and push back and its somehow become muddled. I was trying to keep elbow high and not bend from elbow to fingertips, but it's obviously not being executed properly. DSG - Thanks for the video. A couple of questions followed by comments: Is there a reason why your pulling pattern is so far outside your body? Your pull begins, especially with your left arm, with an outward push which, because you are flat in the water, causes your shoulders (upper torso) to move "right" and your hips (lower torso) to move left - this causes the snaking. It would be interesting to see how this looks when you do not breathe. Are you keeping your head position (during breathing and when not breathing) the way it is on purpose? The orientation of your head relative to your spine and chest is not good alignment. Alignment should be almost like when you walk down the street, so would you walk down the street with your head in this position and your chin so high? Your chin position reminds me of when I have to lift my head to see through the lower section of my glasses instead of the upper part. Are you keeping your hips loose on purpose? Do you have any hip movement limitations? It looks like your right hip does not like to rotate "upward", but this could be because you breathe to the right coupled with lateral torso movement. I think what is happening is this: when you breathe, you are still jutting your chin forward AND lifting your chin at the same time. This results in a counteraction which forces your hips upward and breaks any connection with your legs. IMO, your chin position and movement during your breathing should be the primary focus. Your chin (relative to your chest) should stay neutral at all times - like you are walking down the street - looking straight ahead. When breathing, the movement should be similar to looking sideways to make eye contact with someone your same height who is ~ 2 feet behind you and ~ 2 feet to your right. Conversely, what you are doing right now is looking at that same person, but there is a wall between the two of you and you are trying to move your upper body sideways to see around the wall. This is a pretty convoluted way to explain it - sorry. :) In the end, as Steve mentioned, you want all movement to be rotational around a fixed axis. Currently though, that axis is NOT stable - it is moving side-to-side as well as up and down mostly because of what your head is doing. Snorkel will help - coupled with drills where you focus entirely on shoulder-hip rotation without your axis moving around. Sorry - very long post. paul

Hi David. Just seeing your video and you're not doing bad at all. Minor tweaks and you'll be doing well. I love that you're asking for feedback. Here's what I'm seeing just in this video... Your left hand enters well and you seem to have good forward reach on this side. When you pull back on this side, though you look like your hand is pushing back at an angle away from your body which may be causing you to veer towards the right. Try keeping your hand closer in line with your body, much like treads on a tank can only go around their track, and push that water back behind you. Your right hand appears to enter a tad too far to the right. It looks like it's entering at about the 2 o'clock point instead of about 1 o'clock. You also might want to reach out in front of you more on this side as well - really stretch it out ahead of you.

Couple of things. Looks to me like you are not driving from your hips and engaging your core. Your upper body is not rotating as much as it should. That impacts your breathing as you have to roll your head over more. But you should find that your shoulder rubs against the back of your jaw on your non-breathing side. Looks also like you are looking up a little bit too much. Try taking a tennis ball and holding it between your chin and sternum. That will keep your head down. You'll need a snorkel to breathe. Someone, I think Dolphin, makes a ball with dimples for that purpose, but I could never rotate my head without losing it. When your head is positioned like that, you'll see your elbow come out of the water, as you'll be looking about 3/4 rearward when you breathe. I know someone mentioned stroke efficiency/Distance Per Stroke. That is the best instant feedback you can have. Always count. My DPS has improved drastically, over 50%, since I started a bit under 2 years ago. I think you'll find if you start driving from the hips, and keeping your head down, your DPS will improve pretty dramatically. Not an expert, hope if I miss something those more experienced than me will correct me, but those are things I think I see.

DSG - Thanks for the video. A couple of questions followed by comments: Is there a reason why your pulling pattern is so far outside your body? Your pull begins, especially with your left arm, with an outward push which, because you are flat in the water, causes your shoulders (upper torso) to move "right" and your hips (lower torso) to move left - this causes the snaking. It would be interesting to see how this looks when you do not breathe. Are you keeping your head position (during breathing and when not breathing) the way it is on purpose? The orientation of your head relative to your spine and chest is not good alignment. Alignment should be almost like when you walk down the street, so would you walk down the street with your head in this position and your chin so high? Your chin position reminds me of when I have to lift my head to see through the lower section of my glasses instead of the upper part. Are you keeping your hips loose on purpose? Do you have any hip movement limitations? It looks like your right hip does not like to rotate "upward", but this could be because you breathe to the right coupled with lateral torso movement. I think what is happening is this: when you breathe, you are still jutting your chin forward AND lifting your chin at the same time. This results in a counteraction which forces your hips upward and breaks any connection with your legs. IMO, your chin position and movement during your breathing should be the primary focus. Your chin (relative to your chest) should stay neutral at all times - like you are walking down the street - looking straight ahead. When breathing, the movement should be similar to looking sideways to make eye contact with someone your same height who is ~ 2 feet behind you and ~ 2 feet to your right. Conversely, what you are doing right now is looking at that same person, but there is a wall between the two of you and you are trying to move your upper body sideways to see around the wall. This is a pretty convoluted way to explain it - sorry. :) In the end, as Steve mentioned, you want all movement to be rotational around a fixed axis. Currently though, that axis is NOT stable - it is moving side-to-side as well as up and down mostly because of what your head is doing. Snorkel will help - coupled with drills where you focus entirely on shoulder-hip rotation without your axis moving around. Sorry - very long post. paul

You're getting lots of great advice on this thread! You may want to consider the type of approach you need to take in order to implement positive changes into your stroke. If you take on too much all at once, you may not benefit as much as focusing on one specific area at a time. Trying to simply incorporate all of the changes into your fullstroke will be very difficult since there are a variety of different elements you need to think about. A better approach would be to deconstruct your stroke... and then build it back up via progressional drills that isolate specific areas of the stroke and take aim at specific weaknesses. Work on developing workouts that include a combination of progressional drills, kicking sets and fullstroke so that you can isolate movements and then experience how to incorporate those movements into your fullstroke. If you're struggling with this, you may want to work with a stroke technique coach to give you a better perspective and help you with structuring your workouts and achieving all the changes you need to make to your stroke. Good luck!