What do YOU need to do to have a major swimming breakthrough?"

Originally posted by hooked-on-swimming Talking about break-throughs, I HAVE to share my today's experience with everyone, 'cause I have never been happier with my results since I started swimming.Anyways, today all of a sudden I was swimming like I did not for a long time.I cut my number of strokes from 15 to 14 per 25 m. free which I could not do comfortably for about at least 3 months, my butterfly FINALLY came together , felt awesome and I flew(well, for me) vs. two days ago. My body kinda woke up all of a sudden and it felt like I was a totally different person!!!I have no idea what that has to do with, maybe because I finally decided to stop killing myself and took a day off yesterday after about 9 straight days of work-outs(I know, that is crazy, but I love swimming, I should really give myself more rest, though :-))). So it could have been a mini-taper for me.Or there is another thing I thought about which is weird and I highly doubt it: today the water was extremely warm compared to the usual temperature.Could that have had any effect on my muscles, maybe some relaxing factor, but just like I said I do not think so ... Well, I just hope that I simply improved and that tomorrow I will still see 14 strokes per 25m and a graceful butterfly...It can't run away from me now, can it?lol I think I wrote about the above break-through I had like a month ago and I could not even think that I would have another so soon.I got down my stroke count per 25m to 12(warm-up)-14(200m free pace) now.I am so happy.I am sure the times improved but I am not rushing to check, I think I will wait till that becomes second nature so that I do not mess up that feeling by trying to go faster and hence not paying attention to the technique.What I think helped me this time was the following: 1)I started very intense stretching (I want to be able to do the splits, I used to do them at 15 last); 2)I worked on the coordination of my hip rotation and the kick, that I decided to do when I sawthe underwater video of Klete Keller, his hip rotation is amazing.So I engraved Keller's way of swimming in my head and was trying to simulate it...I think it is working. Just 3 months ago I could not cover 25 m. with less than 15 strokes

Originally posted by hooked-on-swimming Talking about break-throughs, I HAVE to share my today's experience with everyone, 'cause I have never been happier with my results since I started swimming.Anyways, today all of a sudden I was swimming like I did not for a long time.I cut my number of strokes from 15 to 14 per 25 m. free which I could not do comfortably for about at least 3 months, my butterfly FINALLY came together , felt awesome and I flew(well, for me) vs. two days ago. My body kinda woke up all of a sudden and it felt like I was a totally different person!!!I have no idea what that has to do with, maybe because I finally decided to stop killing myself and took a day off yesterday after about 9 straight days of work-outs(I know, that is crazy, but I love swimming, I should really give myself more rest, though :-))). So it could have been a mini-taper for me.Or there is another thing I thought about which is weird and I highly doubt it: today the water was extremely warm compared to the usual temperature.Could that have had any effect on my muscles, maybe some relaxing factor, but just like I said I do not think so ... Well, I just hope that I simply improved and that tomorrow I will still see 14 strokes per 25m and a graceful butterfly...It can't run away from me now, can it?lol I think I wrote about the above break-through I had like a month ago and I could not even think that I would have another so soon.I got down my stroke count per 25m to 12(warm-up)-14(200m free pace) now.I am so happy.I am sure the times improved but I am not rushing to check, I think I will wait till that becomes second nature so that I do not mess up that feeling by trying to go faster and hence not paying attention to the technique.What I think helped me this time was the following: 1)I started very intense stretching (I want to be able to do the splits, I used to do them at 15 last); 2)I worked on the coordination of my hip rotation and the kick, that I decided to do when I sawthe underwater video of Klete Keller, his hip rotation is amazing.So I engraved Keller's way of swimming in my head and was trying to simulate it...I think it is working. Just 3 months ago I could not cover 25 m. with less than 15 strokes