Due to the increased swim training volume, I figured it would be beneficial to drop a little cash ($70) and have a swim coach take a look at my swim stroke and recommend some improvements. I was referred to Kirsten Grigor by a friend and we met at Wilson on a Sunday (3/18) and shared the far (extra-wide by diving boards) lane in the 25-yard orientation.
She had me swim a few lengths and took some notes on what she saw. She also got in the pool and swam to the side and front of me to get a better idea of what I was doing. From there, we discussed her findings and she suggested drills to address each of the concerns. We worked together through each of the drills to make sure I was doing Most made sense but some were difficult to consistently implement immediately. Like anything, it takes some work. The main things I need to work on are the mild crossover in my stroke, extending the length of my stroke, relaxing my recovery, and improving my "catch" or "scull." I spent some of the post-analysis time incorporating the lessons and trying to get used to the new techniques.
Wanting to work again while the lessons were fresh in my mind, I went back on Monday (3/19) to practice. Arriving at Wilson at 1:00pm, the pool was basically empty-a great time to visit! I didn't write down the drills Kirsten gave me but in comparing my memory to her write up (below), it looks like I was able to cover everything. I did a very brief 100m time trial at a medium pace and I cut 10 seconds off my lap time. Talk about immediate results! I'll continue to incorporate the drills into my workouts and hopefully I'll get to the point that I look natural in the "Fast" lanes.
Kirsten's Write Up:
Summary
Overall you have a very good stroke. You have good high body
position in the water and a good underwater pull. You bilaterally breathe which
is especially important for open water swimming. The things you can work on
are: not crossing over, loosening your
recovery (and your stroke in general), increase efficiency by relaxing your
fingers, working on extending catch at the top of your pull and finishing
passed your hips, increasing rotation, not breathing “backwards”, loosening
your ankles on your kick, and not breathing into your flip turn. The two
areas where you should focus most of your attention first are not crossing over
and relaxing your recovery.
General points
Efficiency: A
good stroke is an efficient stroke. Any movement should be moving you in a
straight path forward. Think about swimming through a tube: reach directly out
in front to catch the water, move it passed your body and push it directly
behind you. Keep your legs in line with your body and rotating around an
imaginary centerline – no lateral movement. Enter fingers first (not thumb) and
breathe “forward”.
Speed: One
important thing to note is when it comes to speed in swimming, you should think
of speed as power and efficiency. Do not try to “muscle” through your fast swim.
That approach tends to cause a tight stroke, which is far less efficient than a
fluid stroke with powerful and efficient underwater pull. So, from now on when
you swim fast think powerful underwater pull with smooth and fluid recovery and
relaxed body position.
Crossover
You have a slight
crossover in your stroke (your hands cross the center line of your body). This
is the first thing you should work on. We did wide entry drill to correct this issue. Think about entering with
your hands towards the far corners of your lane. Generally for people who tend
to crossover, if you feel as though you’re entering very wide, you’re probably
about where you want to be. Enter and extend your hand forward which will also
increase your rotation and set you up for a good catch (more to come on this).
Tight Recovery
Your over-water recovery is tight. Think about your
over-water recovery as your split second chance to relax before your have to
start another powerful underwater pull. You want to get your hand from finish
to entry as quickly and easily as possible. The drill we worked on to achieve
this is fingertip drag drill. At the
end of your stroke, gently drag your fingertips along the surface of the water.
Be sure you are rotating enough so that your fingers are just skimming the
water in a straight line from finish to entry (along your side) and your elbow
should be nice and high. If you feel tension in your trapezius, try increasing
your rotation slightly – there should be no tension anywhere on the recovery.
Be sure to enter with your fingertips first (not thumbs) so you are set up to
immediately catch water and start your next underwater pull. Be careful you do
not go back to crossing over. You may want to do fingertip drag in combination
with wide entry drill to be sure you maintain both techniques. In order to do
this, start by doing about a 100 or so of wide entry then add the fingertip
drag drill. Generally you want to focus on one thing at a time but this is a
case where, once you get a good feel of each drill, you can combine them to
reinforce both habits.
Tight hands
When you first swam, I noticed you had your fingers tightly
squeezed together with your thumb out at about 90 degrees from your fingers.
You want your hands to be relaxed with a bit of space (~1/8 of inch) between each
finger. This maximizes your pulling surface area and, by not squeezing your
fingers, you’re conserving some energy (a small amount but every bit goes
towards a more efficient stroke!). You seemed to correct this pretty easily once
I pointed it out. Just check in periodically to make sure your hands are
relaxed but not spread too far. By focusing on relaxed hands, smooth entry and
strong catch, you’ll also notice you start to pull less air bubbles through the
water – a sign of an efficient pull (since you’re only pulling water, not air).
Short Finish
Be sure to finish your stroke completely passed your hips.
This maximizes each pull and puts you in a good position to start your
over-water recovery. The drill we worked on for this was finish drill. With each stroke, focus on completely extending your
arm to finish passed your hips. Then flip the water off the tips of your
fingers. Another way to check that you are finishing each stroke fully is to brush your thumb on the outside of your
thigh. The only thing to watch out for with that is, be sure you are not
extending your thumb away from your hand to brush – with your rotation, your
entire hand should be close enough to your hip for your thumb to brush. It is
especially important to focus on a strong finish as you get more tired toward
the end of a workout as the finish tends to be one of the first things to go!
Catch
I think one of the most important parts of the underwater
pull is the catch at the top of the stroke. You can extend this reach and catch
more. The extension comes from more rotation (see section below) the catch can
be achieved by getting the feel of skulling. By reaching out and catching water
at the top of your stroke, you are maximizing the length of your underwater
pull as well as catching a lot of water to start moving passed your body. The
drill we worked on was skull drill.
With minimal kick, extend your arms out in front of you with your face a little
bit in the water or a little bit out of the water (whichever is most
comfortable). Sweep your hands in and out in a small quick motion over and over
again. This is very similar to treading water (NOT little breast stroke
pulls). You caught onto this drill pretty quickly. Just remember it is a VERY
slow drill. This is a great drill to do with some swimming – it really gives
you the feel in your swim of what you’re trying to accomplish. Do about 10
yards of skull, then switch to swim. You should feel the extra power in your
catch. Repeat for a few more 25s
Rotation:
Your body position is good (high in the water) but it’s a
bit tight. This goes along with your tight recovery and as you worked on
loosening your recovery, it also made the rest of your body more relaxed too.
So I think the body position will work itself out with the recovery. The one
thing you can work on when it comes to body position is increasing your
rotation. You should focus on getting more rotation from your hips. Your core
controls this movement and it’s your core that helps your hips snap from one
side to the other. We used a pull buoy
to get the feel of engaging your core. With your ankles squeezed together (or
squeeze towards each other if they don’t actually touch) do pull and rotate
until you get the sense you are going to “fall over”. At that point, engage
your core and rotate back to the other side. Make sure you don’t fish tail – if
you find your legs going side to side instead of rotating directly behind your
body, don’t rotate quite so far. As we worked on this, I noticed you have great
rotation onto your ride side (right side towards bottom of pool). Try to
increase rotation onto left side (left hip/side towards bottom of pool).
“Backwards”
Breathing
Remember all motion should be sending you forward. You also
want to breathe slightly forward. Right now, you breathe slightly backwards
which pulls your body from side-to-side. When you take a breath, think about
just letting your head rotate with your body. You should be looking directly to
the side and even slightly forward. If you were swimming on a clock, you would
want to look between 2 and 3 on the right side and 9 and 10 when you breathe to
the left.
Flip Turn
Try to eliminate your breath into the flip turn. When you
pick your head up to breath, it makes your legs drop. Then you have to get your
legs back up and over your head. Work towards taking a breath to the side, then
another stroke before flipping.
Kick
The key to a good kick is loose ankles. Your feet should be
like flippers: loose ankle, then snap the water off the end of your toes.
Additional Points:
Underwater pull:
We talked about pulling straight along the bottom of the pool or doing a “key
hole” motion with your hand. It is sort of both and depends upon if you are
talking in relation to the pool (straight along the pool bottom) or in relation
to your body (slight sweep out, in, and out again).
Paddles: Remove
the wrist strap from your paddles. The wrist straps hold the paddles
artificially in place and when you remove the strap, they become a self-correcting
tool. If there is any wobble in the paddle, it means you’re not pulling
directly against the water. If you find you are pushing
with the tips of your fingers, try to focus on pushing with the joint where
your fingers meet your palm.
Body position and
head position: body position is not something that is easily taught. The
thing that I find helps body position the most (especially for people who don’t
naturally have good body position) is rotation. Rotation helps with keeping the
legs afloat. Rotation and body position come from core, not from head position.
Your head should be comfortably down and slightly forward – think open airway.
This also sets you up for good head position when you breath as you just let
your head rotate with your body and there is not any extra movement in your
neck.
Conclusion:
Your stroke is very good. The issues are mainly small tweaks
and you seemed to pick up all of the drills relatively easily. If you have any
questions about what I outlined above or as you start working on things, please
let me know. Also, let me know how your races go.
Thanks and good luck! 
No comments:
Post a Comment