Underwater Swim Analysis
Just got this done last week and it is pretty cool so I thought I'd share. (So maybe you can learn from my mistakes!) The funny thing is, up until the day of the swim clinic, I pretty much had no body roll in my swim stroke so I'll be toning that down quite a bit....
0
Comments
Nice work! He did a great job of visually showing the high-forearm catch and how it's effective at pushing water toward the rear wall. I love this kind of side-by-side video analysis, exremely helpful.
If you don't mind, I noticed one thing that he didn't point out on the subject of body rolling. He didn't mention how it is connected to kick timing and how the timing of the main or downbeat kick plays into whether or not the hips roll. I noticed that your downbeat (main) kick is coming on the same side as your gliding arm. If you pause the video at :44 seconds in, you can see how the kicking leg has reached its maximum downward stroke just as the arm on the same side is extended in the glide.
In comparison, you can watch this:
http://www.goswim.tv/entries/2348/freestyle---timing-the-kick.html
Notice in the two places that the video is paused, you can clearly see that the downbeat kick is accompanying the opposite arm extension. Timing the kick to coincide with opposite arm extension prevents the hip rolling that is common in most people's strokes. Proper kick timing is often overlooked, and coaches frequently talk about hip rotation without discussing its connection to the kick, which is why I wanted to mention it here in case its helpful to you and others. I'd say about 95% of the athletes I see in swim coaching start out with improper kick timing.
Unfortunately, this is one of the aspects of swimming that is paid the least attention. Lots of coaches talk about what your hips should be doing, but honestly, how can you rotate one hip down when your corresponding leg is going up? Proper hip rotation and therefore proper core engagement and therefore proper power in the swim stroke are all connected to kick timing, and without it no amount of hip motio n is going to help. Improper kick timing usually causes this sort of over-rotation of the hips, and can really only be solved by correcting the kick timing.
Kick timing can also be diffficult to work on. Some people get it instinctively, but for some folks it takes a lot of work. Your timing is usually indelibly stamped in your brain-muscle connections and it takes hard work to re-wire that.
I will try to explain proper kick timing here and how I go about helping people achieve it.
It will help if, as people read this, they go back and watch that video with the proper timing as that gives a visual reference to the whole thing:
http://www.goswim.tv/entries/2348/freestyle---timing-the-kick.html
There are three main types of kicks that we use in the crawl stroke.
#1: Two-beat kick: One beat for each arm stroke. This is used primarily for distance swimming and is the most effective kick you can use with the least amount of effort. A good two-beat kick will keep your hips up for good body position, and will drive the correct core rotation to engage your major core muscle groups to power your stroke. In a two-beat kick, the downward extension of the kicking leg corresponds to driving the gliding arm into its full extension. I like to think of it as drawing an "X" across my body, stabilizing my hips and preventing them from over-rotation. If done right, you will feel this downbeat of the kick powering your arm into that glide. Re-watch the video and look at the pause-point where her leg is at full extension of the downstroke and the opposite arm is at full extension. Although the swimmer in the video is using a six-beat, not a two-beat kick, you can still see what I mean about the timing of the primary downbeat kick.
#2: Six-beat kick: Three beats for each arm stroke. You will still have the downbeat kick in exactly the same place as it was in the two-beat kick, which is to say powering the opposite arm into full extension. The other two beats come in between the downbeats. So it sounds a bit like a waltz, with a feeling of 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3. Again, the downbeat kick is the primary driver of the core rotation, and prevents over-rotation of the hips. The additional kicks are in there to provide power for swimming at faster speeds. As you pick up speed, the primary kick stays the same, but the secondary kicks pick up more and more power. Of course, with this power comes increased oxygen consumption, so by the time you reach a full-on six-beat kick, you're going to be sucking up more oxygen than you would want to for distance swimming. The swimmer in the video clip I posted is using a six-beat kick. Many distance swimmers use a modified six-beat kick with a heavy two-beat downstroke and very light secondary kicks.
#3: Kick like hell. This is what you do when you sprint. Unfortunately, all too many triathletes use this option for regular lap swimming, thus eating up their precious oxygen supply. If you are kicking more than 3 beats per arm stroke, you are kicking TOO MUCH. A video analysis will show you how many kicks you're getting in there. Many swimmers kick 4 beats per arm stroke (an 8-beat kick) which has the unfortunate side-effect of having the downbeat kick coincide with the opposite arm half the time (good) but with the same arm the other half of the time (bad). You can spot these swimmers a mile away by the drunken-sailor-like roll that they swim with. One hip consistently dips down while the other stays stable.
HOW TO CHANGE YOUR KICK TIMING:
When I work with swimmers on kick timing, I usually have them start with a pull-buoy. The reason is that if I don't, their regular kicking pattern will quickly re-establish itself. Also, it removes the need to have to kick hard to keep the hips up. I will also note that it helps to have some good basic body-positioning stuff down in order to work on kick timing (head down instead of up, front arm gliding instead of pushing down on the water, kick is efficient without too much knee bend or "bicycling" of the legs).
With a pull buoy, you can start to work on the timing of the downbeat kick. You can work on just one leg at a time. Get a good pulling rhythm going with your arms, and then try to insert just a left leg downbeat kick to coincide with the right arm's extension. Then work on the right leg-left arm combination. Then you can work on both. Then work on eliminating the pull buoy. When the two-beat rhythm clicks, it should feel like each downbeat kick is driving your opposite arm into the glide. Once you get a two-beat kick down, it's not as hard to add in the other 4 kicks to make up a six-beat kick.
I hope that is helpful, please let me know if you have any questions. It's much harder to try to describe this stuff in writing than it is to help people in person or with video. If someone wants to post a video of their own swimming here, I can point out more specifics. I also do more in-depth video coaching by email as part of my coaching services and can definitely do an EN discount if anyone is interested.
My email is tt.prough@yahoo.com
This is my favourite video showing how efficient and smooth the two beat kick can be:
9 strokes in 20s for 25m, so his swim golf score would be < 60. Godly. Note though that he's gliding a lot and really accelerating the pull towards the end of each stroke.
@Trent, sure! I am off to karate right now, but I will shoot you an email when I get back.