We had an underwater video session on Saturday, the second one I've gone to on the team--the first was about a month ago. Since the first session, I've worked a lot on my technique, at least the stuff that the coaches had critiqued the first time. One of the big differences was that I swam at a pretty loafing practice pace the first time around, while this time I swam at a decently fast pace.
Fly: The biggest critique I got the first time around was that I paused a bit at full extension and drove my head and chest too far down in the water (not that my head was moving up and down, just that I was pushing my whole upper body too far down). This time around, swimming at a speed closer to race speed, that wasn't a problem. However, it turns out that I bring my hands too close together at full extension, and am splashing a lot of water as I do so, causing unnecessary drag and resultingly not giving myself enough room for the underwater portion of the pull, so it is a pretty narrow pull, rather than the full keyhole I should be outlining. In addition, my kick wasn't as strong as it could have been.
Back: Similarly to fly, my hands enter the water at the 12:00 position, rather than at 1:00 and 11:00 where they're supposed to enter. There were two main critiques from the first video session, that my hands were cocked at about a 45 degree angle when pulling through the water and that I paused at the end of the pull before lifting them out of the water. Neither of those were an issue this time. Also similar to fly, my kick wasn't as strong as it should have been. Oh, one other issue--when I started my breakout stroke just before broaching the water, I lifted my head slightly, breaking the plane of my body, which although just about half a second before I hit the surface, still produces a fair amount of drag.
Breast: Ugh, the coaches tore this one apart the first go-around. The main critique was that I was REALLY diving my upper body down at full extension, so I had a pretty pronounced up and down motion in the water, rather than shooting forward with each stroke. As an aside, that was an overcorrection on my part, since Mike (my coach up through highschool) always told me that I wasn't driving my chest down far enough at extension, so I guess I corrected that issue...and went to the opposite extreme. Anyhoo, while I still press a bit too far down, I have more of a forward than up and down motion now, so it's within the tolerance limits now. My kick is pretty narrow on the outward sweep of my feet, though. I've got some small issues with hand placement during the pull, but the kick is the main issue.
Free: This was also all ripped up from the first video session. I'd been dropping my elbows, pausing on my strokes (at least that particular issue was a result of loafing), and overrotating my body from side to side. This time around, I didn't have a problem with the dropped elbows (in fact, I think this is the first time in my entire swimming career that I've had good underwater pull mechanics in free!), the too long strokes, or the overrotation. However, when my left hand enters the water, I'm doing something funky with it, so it enters with a lot of bubbles, causing extra drag. Not entirely sure what I'm doing with my hand, so I'll have to play around with it to see what I'm actually doing wrong.
Overall, while this one brought up some new issues to work on, I think this was a very productive video session, and I'm heartened by how many of the issues from the first session a month ago have been resolved!
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