Fun, and Fast

Jonathan, Looking for an 60 min SCY freestyle workout suitable for a 50/100 sprinter. I'm a 23/52 SCY swimmer right now and am looking for some interesting and challenging workouts for the next week to do on my own while our pool is undergoing winterization. Any recommendations? Paul

Hey Paul, How's it going? It's funny, I know you, or I know of you from reading your blog. It's incredible how people can communicate without meeting, and converse based on similar interests. You've done quite well with your training, we could probably paint you green and the picture would match your avatar. LOL Good work, keep it going! As far as work-outs, there are quite a few in the previous pages, along with swimming related advice. Just take a look. Jonathan, Looking for an 60 min SCY freestyle workout suitable for a 50/100 sprinter. I'm a 23/52 SCY swimmer right now and am looking for some interesting and challenging workouts for the next week to do on my own while our pool is undergoing winterization. Any recommendations? Paul

The wireframe model is very interesting. Watch the side view (top model) and notice that the world's fastest freestyler doesn't have even a hint of EVF. (Sorry Tom: :thhbbb:) Another interesting aspect is the amount of lateral movement in the arms. Put it on continuous loop and note the fluidity of his shoulder roll, you can easily imagine his arms and shoulders "running", i.e. the hands landing and then vaulting forward to the next hand fall. Sometimes swimming at the beach I would go over a sandbar where my hands would dig into the sand on the bottom and it would be like having a perfect catch and I could really vault over the hand and really feel the shoulders and back getting into the roll/stride. It sort of felt like running with a big long powerful stride but on my hands. The total fluidity is mesmerizing. You get that same sense of fluid power as watching a big cat moving at speed across the savanna. Here's just one cycle of the wireframe: www.youtube.com/watch

Lindsay what you see and I see are apparently not the same thing. I see EVF. You must realize the video was shot from a very deep angle and really is not from an angle that gives a good view to interpret the wireframe drawings.

That was well written Lindsay, although it seems the bottom portion has a better view of what the forearm is actually doing. Thanks for sharing... www.youtube.com/watch Put it on continuous loop and note the fluidity of his shoulder roll, you can easily imagine his arms and shoulders "running", i.e. the hands landing and then vaulting forward to the next hand fall. Sometimes swimming at the beach I would go over a sandbar where my hands would dig into the sand on the bottom and it would be like having a perfect catch and I could really vault over the hand and really feel the shoulders and back getting into the roll/stride. It sort of felt like running with a big long powerful stride but on my hands. The total fluidity is mesmerizing. You get that same sense of fluid power as watching a big cat moving at speed across the savanna. Here's just one cycle of the wireframe: www.youtube.com/watch

Lindsay what you see and I see are apparently not the same thing. I see EVF. More likely we are using different definitions of EVF. When I look at the side view I don't see any "over the barrel" type position, drawing a line from the shoulder to the wrist the side projection of the arm is always a straight line, the elbow never gets significantly above this straight line. Contrast this to the pictures used to demonstrate EVF where the upper arm is extended forward and the forearm is angled significantly downward in an over the barrel position. The bend in the elbow can be seen in the view from above (view shown at the bottom in the video) but the elbow is bent to the side not in a vertical angle. There is absolutely nothing "vertical" about his forearm. This is why I prefer to use pictures rather than words to describe this stuff. Contrast the side view of Sullivan with the side views in the attached diagrams of EVF from Tom's site.

The lower view is a view from directly overhead, this shows you where things are in the horizontal plane and tells you nothing directly about vertical position. The fact that the lower view seems to contain more information about what his arms are doing is a good indication that the important stuff is happening horizontally rather than vertically. The objective in the pull is to position your forearm perpendicular to the direction of travel, which maximizes the area of the backward projection and therefore minimizes the slip when force is applied. Interesting either way, something to think about. I still see a significant high elbow catch, followed by a horizontal follow through.

although it seems the bottom portion has a better view of what the forearm is actually doing. One has to be clear on what is shown in the two views: The upper view is a view directly from the side, this shows you where things are in a vertical plane, i.e. vertically and in a forward backward direction. It doesn't tell you where thing are in the direction of the swimmer's right to left, the direction you are observing from. The lower view is a view from directly overhead, this shows you where things are in the horizontal plane and tells you nothing directly about vertical position. So if you want to see if the forearm is vertical, or where various body parts are relative to one another in a vertical direction you look in the upper view, the lower view isn't helpful at all. The fact that the lower view seems to contain more information about what his arms are doing is a good indication that the important stuff is happening horizontally rather than vertically. The simple fact is that the elbow is a hinge not a universal joint like the shoulder (well, not quite but close) and the only way to get your forearm to point downward is to rotate your upper arm at the shoulder joint. The rightmost view of the four diagrams from the freestyle evf diagrams I attached above is pretty much impossible for the human anatomy to achieve, and even trying to get there while swimming is going to destroy most people's shoulders. If one is not VERY aware of the effect of perspective when viewing pictures or videos of swimmers one could mistakenly think swimmers arms are in this position. Pictures of Hackett are the most common in this regard, but all these pictures and video are taken from strange angles that create the illusion of a vertical forearm, try to find proper directly from the side or directly in front views of Hackett and you will likely come up empty, at least I did. Such views would show that EVF is a perspective illusion, just as these views show that Thorpe doesn't use EVF either. Unless of course you stretch the definition of EVF to completely eliminate any meaning in the word vertical. It is like Jonty Skinner found, coaches love to talk about EVF and "over the barrel" but swimmers obey the limits of their physiology and don't actually swim that way. It's kind of like the days when coaches thought hands were like airplane wings and that swimming was all about sculling and, luckily, the swimmers ignored what turned out to be total nonsense, and continued to do what worked. The objective in the pull is to position your forearm perpendicular to the direction of travel, which maximizes the area of the backward projection and therefore minimizes the slip when force is applied. As Eamon so nicely illustrates a horizontal forearm (or diagonal, it doesn't matter) does the job every bit as well as a vertical forearm, and is actually achievable with human physiology which is a nice little bonus! I apologize for presenting this in a somewhat aggressive and argumentative tone but this really needs to be sorted out and put to bed. If I'm wrong, someone explain where I've gone wrong, I'm open to being wrong. But otherwise lets stop advising swimmers to do things they can't do and that will hurt their shoulders if they try to do. That fourth diagram is a crime against swimming! And this doesn't mean tech-paddles aren't a good thing, you just have to drop the misleading "vertical" out of the propaganda, they'll do what they are supposed to do if the arm is horizontal. It's unfortunate that there isn't a single word that describes what you really want swimmers to do but that is no excuse for using a inaccurate, misleading, and potentially injury-causing term. :mad: And sorry for the thread hijack. :o

LCM 400 paddles only 300 finz only 200 reverse IM 4x100 DPS on 2:00 (count strokes) 3x(6x50) sets on 1:15, 1:00, :45 200 easy 4x100 DPS on 2:00 4x50 with finz on 4:00 TOP SPEED 200 easy 12x50 kick on 1:30 5 easy 1 fast 4x100 DPS on 2:00

For those butterfly enthusiasts out there, this picture of Ian Crocker underwater is pretty revealing. Not only the bubbles from his pull, but his feet as well. 1169