Techniquin' my way to a better stroke

As I've mentioned before in this blog, my technique ain't the greatest in any of my strokes.  That being said, I think it's best in fly, then back, then probably breast, and finally free.  I know exactly what I need to work on in fly and back, don't care about breast, but would like to figure out my free.

This summer I'm by and large taking a break from fly work--I trained in it all last season, so while I'm training in it enough for IMs, I'm not putting the effort in to train for the 100 and 200 yet.  Don't get me wrong--I could go out right now and bust out what would probably not be a terrible 100 or 200, but I'm not putting the training in this summer that I will in the fall/spring in order to focus on those events.

Rather, this summer I'm focusing on back, and having just made the decision last week, free.  Here's what I'm working on for back--I'll hopefully have the technique locked down by the end of the summer:

• Head position.  I started working on this in the spring, and it has helped a bunch.  Due to how I ride in the water, when my head is in the neutral position, water washes over my face with every stroke.  Kinda a pain in the butt, and while my body is actually in the correct position, it doesn't ride that way in the water, so my speed goes goes down.  By tucking my chin in and tilting my head forward towards my chest, I mostly keep my face out of the water and it alters my body position.  I have seen time improvements since I started doing it, so I just hope it's the final answer for me in regards to head/body positioning.
• Out of water stroke.  This is something that the coaches have harped on in my stroke, although I've never been able to tell I'm doing it.  Naturally, in the recovery portion of the stroke, I apparently cross my arms over the center line as my arms enter the water above my head.  They are supposed to enter directly above the shoulders, not crossing over the center line of my head.  Given that I've always thought that's actually what I've been doing, this one is kinda awkward to work on.  Now, when I swim back, I'm focusing on deliberately swinging my arms wider on the recovery.  It feels really freaking awkward at this point, and feels like I'm not swinging my arms all the way up.  Haven't had a chance to get any feedback from the coaches yet, so I don't know if my recovery is in the correct position yet.
• Catch and pull.  This is something I've been working on since the spring, but haven't gotten any feedback on it since February or March.  At that point, I had a terrible catch on both sides, although my left catch was slightly better.  I'm strong enough that even with a terrible catch, I can still produce a good amount of power, but it's grossly inefficient.  I've been experimenting with hand position at the catch, trying a variety of positions and hoping to find the one that gives me the most power for the pull.  At the finish of the pull, as well, I'm very inefficient.  I didn't start working on this at all until this week.  I haven't talked to any of the coaches about this specific portion of the stroke, but I don't think I'm finishing the stroke all the way down past my hip.  I think I'm finishing right at my hip, so I'm robbing myself of that last push at the end of the stroke.  Sigh.  Lots of work to do, and until we have another underwater video session, I won't be able to see firsthand what sort of progress I'm making.

Just this week I decided to start working on my free technique, too.  I haven't totally ignored it in the past 9 months since I started swimming seriously again, but it's been idling with breast on the back burner.  As a whole, my free is disjointed.  My kick isn't where it should be, the recoveries aren't the greatest, and I'm still having issues off and on with dropping my right elbow on the pull.  About the only thing I have done right so far is that I rotate my entire body when I swim.  Whee.  I can hardly contain my excitement.  I've spent the last few days reading a fair amount about free technique, ranging from the minutiae of hand placement when it enters the water to full swim technique.  In highschool, Mike had me switch to straight arm swimming, and it worked for me then, but didn't do a thing for me last year.  So, I decided this week to work on completely revamping my race freestyle to hybrid/galloping freestyle.  For a great example of pretty much all the various styles of freestyle, here's the video of the men's 400 free relay from Beijing.  Eamon Sullivan leads off the Australians swimming straight arm.  Phelps swims galloping/hybrid.  Garret Weber-Gale and Cullen Jones swim your standard free.  The third French dude swims windmill.  Lezak, at the end, swims galloping/hybrid. So, with last night's practice being my first attempt at working on that technique, here's what I gotta work on over the next weeks and months.

• Kick.  Since galloping/hybrid free is such a lopsided stroke, you have to have a strong kick to balance it out and keep from sinking on the long stroke.  Due to the rhythym of the stroke, your body will move up and down each stroke cycle.  If you don't have the strong kick, you don't move up at that portion of the cycle.  If you don't move up, your mouth doesn't clear the water, and you lose a bunch of momentum and power efficiency.  In the video I linked to, look at Phelps' and Lezak's kick.  They have huge dynamo kicks, especially Lezak.  That's a big change for me.  When I swim free, I generally have a much smaller, tighter kick.  Galloping necessitates a much larger kick, or at least moving the plane of the kick up to right at the surface of the water.  I'm just flat out not used to kicking like that, so it's a big mindset change.
• Pull.  Under the water, this is a bit different than a more balanced stroke.  Here's a video showing an above and below water look at Phelps' free.  You've got a "strong" side and a "weak" side.  On the weak side, your breath side, you pretty much don't rotate much at all, but the recovery out of the water isn't any different than normal.  On strong side, the non breath side, you rotate a fair amount to the side, giving yourself a pretty deep catch on the pull, generating a lot of power.  In addition, you throw that hand forward on the recovery.  On top of that, you delay your arm out front before the catch, so you're kinda doing ketchup drill.  In effect, you're pulling at two different speeds and with two different techniques.  Oof.  I've got a pretty good breakout pull when I do swim free, so this is pretty much a continuous breakout pull on one side and a more or less regular stroke on the other side.  So far I feel very disjointed and uncoordinated while swimming like this, although Katie did say that when I did some 25 sprints like that that my free looked smoother than it normally does.
• Breathing.  For the rhythym of this stroke to work, you can only breathe to one side.  I've always tended to breathe more to the right than the left, but I have always breathed to both sides when racing.  However, I naturally turn on my left side and dig deeper than on my right side, so I've decided to go with what's more natural for my body and just breathe to the right when galloping.  That being said, it's going to be a hard habit to break, breathing to both sides.  I unconsciously did it a few times last night when trying to gallop, which completely destroys the rhythym and body motion.  I can't gallop to save my life when I'm not swimming fast, so I'll continue to swim regularly and breathe to both sides when not sprinting.  On the other hand, I won't necessarily need to breathe every time I pull on my right side, so I won't have to deal with a complete imbalance when sprinting.
• Recovery.  I touched upon this a bit in the pull section, but that was more about the underwater portion of the pull.  In the above the water recovery, I have to throw my strong side hand forward, so I'm going to have to learn to throw my left hand forward, as I don't currently throw it.  My stroke speed is almost fine on the right side, just need to speed it up a little bit.  On the other hand, I need to work on raising both elbows quite a bit at speed.  When I'm not swimming fast, I generally do a pretty good job of doing a high elbow recovery, although that pretty much goes out the window when I swim fast, as you can see in my rather disappointing 100 IM at Masters Nationals in April.  The high elbow is something I've been struggling with for years, so I'm not entirely sure how well I'll master it.  This, more than anything else with the new technique, is probably going to be the hardest part for me to grasp!

Galloping requires a LOT of concentration on my part in practice.  The stroke imbalance is bad enough on its own.  Then there's the big kick.  And the breathing to only one side.  And then the blasted recovery.

Argh!

I'll consider myself lucky if I can get this technique down by the time the first short course meet rolls around in October, and have it refined and to the point where I don't have to actively think about it by the time short course Nats roll around in April/May!