pre-OS swim instruction, 1on 1
I'm looking to get some help on my stroke this off season.
Since we don't 'worry' about the swim during the OS, that gives me about Nov to April (Jan OS) to work on technique before I add any volume or intensity to get ready for races.
I have 2 very good choices. One is a friend of a friend that helped him go from 'very good' to 'stellar'. He was so happy with her that he married her. Seriously. The other is the local tri-resource-mecca in the area, thesportfactory.com/site/coachingop...swim.shtml.
I'm not expecting miracles but I have to think that I can swim a little bit faster (usually a 1:50-2:00/100).
do you guys have any tips on what to ask a swim coach? or what to look for in a swim coach?
how do I know that I'm not getting ripped off? 
FWIW, would like to swim 1:15 at IMFL (assuming registration works out). Swam 1:22 (?) at IMAtlantis '08 (that's really Lake Placid).
Thanks for the feedback in advance.
Chris
Comments
Chris, I know one in EN house. Joking. I don't think we live close. But anyway, you are looking for someone who has experience caching in developmental programs, USA Swimming and ASCA Level 2 preferred as they are stroke technicians/ specialist. If you cannot find that, anybody that works with novice competitve swimmers should do. The person should have fundamental knowledge in stroke construction.
I would stay away from lifegurads posing as coaches as well USAT Level 1 tri coaches offering swimming coaching unless they seriously swam in college. Some former competitve swimmers can be an excellent resource but can also harm a beginner unless they have not lost touch with the time when they were mastering technique.
I think your goal is very reasonable. With solid structure, should be able to achieve it. There is going to be some hard swimming and hard swimming is not recovery work as some may lead you to believe. Ask Michael Phelps. You will be swimming hard at some point to get faster.
It's like I have this mental block or lack of confidence that I can swim harder for anything more than a 200.
Feel free to throw any tips or links that might help to me.
Thanks
What Aleks said. I really believe the best swimming coaches are the ones that have had the figure out how to explain things to little kids.
p.s. I had an amazing swimming epiphany with one such coach and a drill involving a noodle.
Chris, I do not nearly enough about your swimming nor I have a way of seeing you from above, below and side. Hard to assess over the forum. I am glad to help in any way I can. I also don't like giving general suggestions shooting off the hip.
I would highly recommend first TI drlls combined with DPS swimming, kick conditioning, basically I would go back to drills for stroke construction, include pull and kick sets. That is very general swim work but restarts process of rebuilding one's endurance.
After that Chris, your stroke should be in a condition to start some hard swimming to the tune where you are able to hold the stroke, first short and fast than long and fast. Drills go to about 10% of total work and no longer have to be at the beginning of the workout, rather use them as a recovery between subsets. Maintain focus executing correct even when tired now, that is the next level.
We can go more. These are only some random ideas. Best done in concert with coach you select. I have nobody to refer you to sadly.
Swim program can be very simple, say 3x week, one short fast, one medium threshold and one long endurance. That is it, no rocket science.
I went for the first eval. Good first impression for what I'm getting and will be doing. The underwater camera was on the fritz so had to fall back on TP's (coach) eyes and experience and ability to relay that to me. I do have some above water (endless pool) vid from her iphone if anyone cares to see it. The underwater shots will be a go next time. I can't figure out how to post the vid here. I guess, if you want to take a look, I can email it to you or something. I'd be open to feedback.
Really liked how she prescribed technique focused workouts are short and sweet. She had heard of EN and was respectful of it, unlike some pro's out there
Gonna keep this thread updated cuz I never thought I'd be interested in putting and time/$/effort into improving what I thought was impossible.
Goal: IMFL swim under 1:15.
One visual that helped me with rotation was focusing on the recovering shoulder....as the hand is entering the water, the opposite shoulder should be getting air. That was cool.
Simple to you guys, not to me!
Chris,
Very cool, would be good to follow your progress. You could always post videos to YouTube, etc and link to them from here.
Fixed the kinks....
http://youtu.be/RoBLft8NxN4 back shot
cool, this could come in handy. I'll make sure to post the next set, also.
I see you entering the water at a 11 and 1 o'clock position. I suggest enter the water at a 10 and 2 o'clock position. This will also help you swim straight too.
You breath on a 4 count , that is good as long as you can breath Bi-lateral and or a 3 count. The 4 count you are doing is ok just as long as you can do the others and notice you pull harder on the right when you breath. That's ok too as long as you notice this and can switch up on your stroke count to balance out your pulling muscles.
From the rear , your still breathing from 1 side, arms to close for my liking try the 10 n 2 position with a higher elbow. If you swim in a pool. Do a lap that is one way , always look to the same side. On your way back keep looking to the same side as you did on the way up.
Your kick is up and down , notice when you breath your legs drop and SOMEtimes come to the surface. This means your lifting your head out to much a slight change of turning your head , like smelling your arm pit, would benefit you as well. You kick seems strong if you can keep that up for an IM/HIM good for you , if you were kicking for the camera being in this pool getting tested, I think a kick that would reflect something like flicking shit off your shoe would be better.
That is my 2 cent.
Have to say, the Endless Pool makes it very hard to tell what your hands are doing under the water, but based on what I can see above the water, I can make some guesses. If I was your coach, I would say that your "big ticket" items to work on are:
1) You need to glide. From what I can tell, your front hand is not reaching full extension from the shoulder (or anywhere near it) and you have no glide phase to your stroke. You're doing the classic "windmill" stroke that most of us learn as kids, which means that your left arm is essentially opposite of your right arm at all points in your stroke. Without a glide, you're like a cross-country skier who is all kick and no glide, it's just stroke-stroke-stroke-stroke with no return on your energy investment.
For an idea of what a good glide looks like, check out the slow-mo of the stroke in this video:
http://www.goswim.tv/entries/5387/freestyle---reaching-your-limits.html
See how the gliding arm hangs out in front while the other arm is doing the work? In the open water, you won't get that much glide (due to chop), but this is a great distance-style stroke to be working towards.
2) You are pressing down on the water at some point in your stroke, especially when you're breathing. This causes your chest to rise and your feet to sink. When your feet are perpetually sinking, you have to overkick to keep them on the surface of the water. Good distance swimmers don't kick half as much as you're doing here. Mastering the glide (above) will help keep you from doing this as you will not need to "swim up on" the water when you're gliding more. But on top of that, you need to work on following your glide up with a "catch" of the water, then when you've caught what I call a "ball of water", you are going to throw it straight at your feet. You can't do that if you're pressing down on the water. When you're pressing down, that ball of water you want to move toward your feet is going down instead of back. Newton's third law tells us that if you're pressing water down, you're going to go up. If you're pressing water behind you, you're going to go forward.
3) You're over-rotating your hips. Instead of thinking "rotate", just think "reach". In no sport will you see someone developing power by moving their hips at exactly the same angle as their torso. Picture a golfer, a baseball batter, a quarterback, a boxer. They are all developing power (to bat, throw, hit) by twisting their torso relative to their hips. If Tiger Woods moved his hips all the way around to where his torso was pointing, he would have no power whatsoever. By rotating your hips with your torso, you are giving away all your power.
To find the power from your hips by reaching, do this drill on dry land: Stand facing a wall. Now reach your right arm over your head like you're trying to touch a high shelf. Now imagine that the shelf is just a few inches higher. Reach higher with your hand, stretching your arm up and out of your shoulder socket, reach as high as you can go. That's what your stroke should feel like at the extension of your glide, your arm reaching all the way out. Watch that glide video again and watch how the swimmer's arm reaches all the way out towards the front. I tell my swimmers to imagine their favorite Starbucks drink of choice sitting at the end of the lane (or your favorite beer). Now REACH for it with every stroke. You will reach out of your hips instead of rolling your hips around.
Taking the roll out of your hips will reduce some of the drag you are experiencing by moving them side to side. While parasitic drag is bad (this drag is created by the surfaces of your body, and can be lessened by streamlining, just like on your bike), induced drag is worse - this is the drag created by little vortices you're creating when your hips wiggle from side to side. Think of it as little anchors that you're tying to your body. As a coach, the goal would be to help you get rid of your anchors (drag that you're creating) and increase your propulsion (that "ball of water" that you're moving behind you.
There are lots of smaller issues to work on (we all have those), but by streamlining, gliding, pushing back and not down on the water, not overkicking, and not over-rotating your hips, you should be able to bring that 2:00/100 down considerably.
Chris, I will add my thoughts here in a day or two. Packing to go to work now, the real job.
Two things stood out as I glanced over the video:
1. Head position looked really good during non breathing stroke cycle, like that low position.
2. Agree with the above post, did not read through it entirely, there should be an arm extension upon entry that is taking place as your upper body rotates with hips and a slight shoulder rotation aids it as well. Maybe the endless pool forcing you to cut extension short, never swam those so don't know. Before you initiate tha catch, the "glide phase" ensures you position your body to anchor the pull. Bottom line, looks like you are cutting your stroke short in front.
More details to come.
@ David & Robin & AT
effort was solid n steady, def faster than what I would hold in a race. first time in an endless pool and it was a little weird. maybe they don't make a current as slow as I am
good points, and absorbed. several of these are points that are being addressed with the swim coach's focus over the next month, so you're spot on.
thanks for the feedback and I look forward to posting the follow up vid in a few weeks, and that vid should be with a much better underwater camera.
Her website is generally informative too. http://www.aquaticedge.org/
See what you think. Hope this helps.
---Ann.
Chris, I got around to watch your videos a bit. I did not read the critique above so if this has been said, disregard it.
Front video reveals:
1. You are slowing down your right arm recovery/entry cycle when breathing.
Possible cause: blowing air out late in the cycle with head in position for inhale, so you slow it down to finish exhale and complete inhale.
Correction: practice inhale/complete exhale underwater at the wall, focus on it after when swimming, breath every 3/5/7 with continued exhale under water until lungs empty, than head/body rotation to inhale. If breathing every 2 strokes, exhale will be more forcefull.
2. Near straight arm recovery.
You are a perfect candidate for a lot of finger tip drag drilling. Your finger tips should always point toward the bottom of pool during recovery.
Back video:
1. Breath intake/ body rotation inducing opening of your kick out of the rythm and shadow of your body.
Usual cause is swimmer trying to balance rotation and not "fall over on back fear".
Keep the kick continuous and compact, within the shadow, keep it soft. I believe that triathletes should have a soft continuous kick, no 2 beat.......
Kick on the side is your friend, than 6 kick slides with switching, TI drills help a lot here.
Hope this helps.
Aleks
appreciate the feedback from all!
@Paul, without getting too technical and pulling out Maglischo's Swimming Fastest, a general answer to some of your thoughts is this.
Regarding the glide in Chris's case above, he is cutting the front of the stroke short, catching as soon as the arm enters the water.
What happens normally is that body is still rotating from the core as the arm pokes the hole in the water, arm than travel very slightly under water as the rotation of core finishes and shoulder finishes forward and inner movement toward your cheek. That is a full extension. It is than that the catch begins. No more and no less glide than that.
You have to have a well synchronized kick for propper freestyle and this is where the lack of it will show.
I generally believe, based on little experience, lots of books reading and researching the subject, consulting coaches I work with, late commers to swimming (adult triathletes) will have under developed kick. To compensate for that, the athlete will naturally have a higher stroke rate and stronger front (in swimming literature recognized as front bias) compared to a long time swimmer, fish type, that has done 2000m+ sub sets of kicking per practice for the last 10+ years.
Because of that, I do not advocate for long glide or faking and kicking yourself into a slow stroke rate/ low stroke count per length. For majority of us non swimmers it is a sure way to become even slower. So, no long gliding, but sure, front quadrant swimming and you know what I mean by that.
In short, I agree with your view on OWS and gliding, but I also think that a non swimming background triathlete should follow the same in the pool. Work on refining technique, start from eliminating drag, work on efficient propulsion production and do not underestimate and neglect the kick. Once you have all of that nailed, the gliding and the stroke count will fall in place where they need to be for you personally.
I hope I did not go too wide on the subject, if you wish to know more, we can start another thread. Just need to make sure it is ok to do that as I am not an EN coach. I don't want to say something that is to the contrary of the team's philosophy. You can email me also for more if you wish. I am always happy to share everything I know. And don't take everything I say as absolute. In swimming and coaching, nothing is firm, that is to the best of my knowledge, but am always willing to learn and look into other coaches views on the subject.
I am only a developmental coach after all. Yep, I cleared ASCA Level 3, but am long ways from knowing the water world.
Everyone's stroke is going to be slightly different, and the best amount of glide will vary not only by swimmer but by distance and water conditions. However, I disagree that gliding is detrimental or that it's not of use in open water swimming. Watching some of the elites like Fran Crippen (now deceased, but one of the best OW swimmers), you can see that while his arm recovery is accelerated and his turnover is quite speedy, he still has a formidable glide. There's some underwater footage of him in this video:
As for the "overgliders" on swimtypes.com, the videos that they show are all of people with far worse problems than their glide. 3 of the 4 are dropping their elbows at the extension of the gliding arm, making their glide non-existant. You can't really get a good glide in that position, so over-gliding is out of the question. One of the swimmers has such an extensive cross-over that his entire back end is wiggling around the pool. In short, glide isn't really any of these people''s number one problem.
There definitely can be a dead spot if a swimmer holds the glide out too long, but in my experience coaching lap swimmers and triathletes, there's very few people that have that problem. Undergliding (windmill stroke), crossing over, inefficient kick, poor kick timing, poor body position, lack of catch, poor hand entry and a dozen other problems are much higher on my list of culprits for swimming inefficiency.
One way to play with the optimal amount of glide for your own personal stroke is to swim at a pool with some kind of pattern on the bottom (my favorite has tiles that make up the black lines). Watch your rate of speed throughout your stroke cycle. If you have a dead spot, you will often see a pause in your forward progress (in the case of the pool with tiles, the tiles will be sliding by at a given rate but will suddenly slow). Eliminating that pause will give you the best glide without losing propulsion.
3 weeks in. 3-4 swims per week.
you wanted someone who would treat me like a swimming newbie, a swimming toddler.... don't laugh
my workouts, no less and no more, have been like this...
with fins, small baby kicks, drill 25 then free 25 focusing on what the drill was teaching,
3x 50 of arms by the side, facing down, kicking the length while rolling from left to right to left, etc, working on the roll, getting the shoulder out of the water, rhythm, breathe.
3x 50 of L arm by side, 1 arm swimming, focusing on the scull of the pull, and getting the other shoulder out of the water when the R arm is reaching under water.
3x 50 of R arm by side, same as above.
3x 50 of free for 3 smooth strokes then stay on the side for 10 kicks, then 3 smooth strokes, then on the side for 10 kicks, repeat to the end.
6x 25 smooth free counting stokes, without fins
don't laugh. as far as I'm concerned this is the perfect time for me to be humble, step back, and trust this process for the next 4 months.
at first, even the 'easiest' of drills seemed awkward and disconnected. and now, dadgummit, I'm starting to think there's a feel developing! a glide, a pull that I glide over, stuff like that. not every length or every stroke, but, it's happening now more than its not! Have 0 feedback on speed right now (don't care yet, but I do feel a little faster) and I'm a long ways from building 2.4 miles of it, but I'm excited for where I'm at right now.
will try to get the next session, with underwater video later next week.
That's what I am talking about. Who cares about the clock. it should feel odd, that is a good sign. You will know fo sure when you are becoming slippery, there is no doubt about that. You will know during the kick as well as single arm stroke. Keep it up.
I think there's always value in doing kick sets, especially because I'm convinced that the ankle/shin/achilles strength and flexibility you gain is worth it for running and the prevention of running injuries.
But even beside that, I think a good kick is part of the foundation of swimming. Most of the really great swimmers I know are good kickers, and this includes people who came to it late in life. Even in a wetsuit, a good kick (not necessarily a sprinting style, but a good steady distance-style kick) sets the stage for an efficient use of the core muscles in the swim.
I could not agree more with Robin. It is never too late and it is essential. It is a fact that every stroke construction begins with teaching and developing an effective kick. If you carefully examine material written in technique development, novice swimmers spend most of their time kicking in various positions and do no or very little full stroke swimming until we arrive at the "front" work.
And yes to ankles, especially in triathletes from a running background. Toes are often pointed down = boat anchors
So, here's another one of those examples of not getting it. I've read over and over about this, watched youtubes of the best, talked to many elite tri swimmers in the area and here's where I ended up. ''Why do you want me to do lengths of the pool kicking? I'm doing the tri's, not swim meets.'' Her response ''Trust me, it's all connected''.
@ Rich - she told me up front that this isn't for propulsion. I specifically asked.