Evaluate my technique?

Bubble -- I'm not the best at judging stroke technique. But in my opinion, I think your stroke looks pretty good. The only comment I'd make is that, to me, your hips seem to be just a bit too low (too far under the surface), as do your feet/kick. if you look at other videos, or swimmers with good technique...usually their butts are closer to, and in many cases breaking the surface of the water. Same with your kick. In your case it's a few inches below the water. Usually, that is caused by the swimmer's head being up too far...i.e. looking ahead instead of more at the bottom of the pool. But again...you don't seem to be doing that. The feet/legs can pull the hip down. So, I don't exactly know what the answer is...if that in fact is a problem. I will say that for me...to keep my hips/legs/feet up (i.e. better body alignment), I think about trying to feel the surface of the water as I kick. If I'm not feeling it, that tells me my feet and legs are too low. Hope that helps. Dan

Couldn’t see anything from front view and thought the stroke looked too good for the times reported, then I looked at the side view. It shows that the hips are too low. Try to get a little less arch in lower back (or maybe not), try to get the behind breaking the surface. the breathing also looks darn good for intermediate. Once you remove that low hip and knee drag, your times should quickly improve

Thanks Dan. I agree that my legs seem to be low. Funny, I was looking at an earlier video of myself and my legs were higher but my outstretched arm position was lower. Maybe a seesaw effect? When the pool opens back up I will see if I can even it out. Maybe lack of core strength?

Thank you Steve. I think my breathing is a bit slow and I can’t seems to get my face back in the water as fast as I’d like. I’ve been working on it though so I appreciate your comment. Pool is closed now for the foreseeable future. Will pay more attention to my back half when I can get back. Maybe will try some land core work for the time being. Ugh.

Looks great. It must have taken lots of dedication to get where you are today. I do have one question - are you consciously trying to swim downhill? If not, check out the video below. This will bring your feet right to the surface! www.youtube.com/watch

Hello Bubble, I Hope this message finds you well! My name is Joey Pedraza, I swam for Team USA a few years back and now I am a swim Coach. I believe I can provide assistance with your personal goals. If you are still interested in a break down of your video, please feel free to reach back to me. Id love to help you! Cheers, Stay Safe Joey

My 2 cents. When you breathe on the left side, it seems that the front (right) arm starts catching a little too early. As the left arm is finishing the pull, the body is travelling at the highest speed. Dropping forearm too early during this phase may decrease your streamlined profile. If your feet can be a little more flexing, it might help increase propulsion substantially. If you can lift the lower part of your body a little higher towards the water surface, so that the entire body is more horizontal, I believe that there will be some improvement in overall time. And I think the connection between hip rotation (driven by kick) can connect to shoulder and arm can be more strengthened. Probably help increase your stroke length.

Overall good technique but 2 recommendations- 1) your hands seem to stay at the sides of your body and your arms stay pretty straight as you pull through the water. I was taught and also coached age groupers to push down the center line of your body. It requires you to bend your arm almost in an “L” position. You get more power that way. 2) as someone else pointed out, your head is pretty low in the water. Again, I was taught to try and keep the water line breaking at the top of my forehead keeping a portion of the head out of the water vs. all under water.

A few things I noticed: 1) you're pulling with the arm almost straight, you need to practice the catch with a high elbow 2) your underwater stroke is at constant speed, it should be slow catch and then accelerate towards the back. 3) you're finishing the stroke too early, hand should exit below the butt 4) the hand is a bit turned to the side towards the end, instead of pushing the water you're cutting through it look for videos with catch-up drills using a snorkel, here's one, the interesting part starts at 2:00 or so www.youtube.com/watch happy swimming!