Katie took a number of videos during the lesson so I could see what she's talking about. On a side note, this is sooooooo much more helpful than having a coach just yell at me to change something, since a lot of this stuff looks worse than it feels for me. Anyhoo, here are the videos and my analysis of 'em.
25 fly, every other breathing pattern
This first video is me swimming a 25 fly breathing every other stroke. I wasn't swimming at race pace, so my technique might be slightly different at speed. Hmm, I'll have to have Katie film it at both speeds next time so I can compare. Anyways, there are three things of note in the video.
1) My kick tempo changes from breath strokes to no-breath strokes. On no-breath strokes, the kick follows my body motion and snaps at the right spots. On breath strokes, however, the kick timing changes. This was a revelation to me. I've never consciously thought about my kick on fly, since it is just an extension of my body motion. I was surprised when Katie pointed out that the tempo changes from stroke to stroke. At this point, I'm not even sure how I'd go about fixing the issue so that I have a constant kick tempo.
2) I've got a different head/upper body position at full extension on breath strokes than I do on no-breath strokes. This was something I was aware of, but wasn't aware of just how different the positions are. When I don't breathe, my chest and head press down with just the right motion and depth for my stroke. When I do breathe, however, the pressing down motion is jerkier and I don't push down as far.
3) I *think* I press my head and chest down too early. For the past 8 months or so since I started swimming more fly, my upper arms have pushed a lot of water on the recovery of the pull. Part of it is because I naturally ride lower in the water (while I've got a fair amount of padding, I'm pretty heavy for my height and a good amount of it is muscle; while I'm naturally bouyant in the water when just floating or treading water, I've always ridden low in the water while swimming, even back on Tritons when I was ~50 pounds lighter and had 4% body fat) and my shoulders aren't flexible enough for me to rotate them far enough back to swing my arms higher out of the water. The other part, and this is where Katie and I are just guessing, since we couldn't devote much time to playing around with it, is that we think I might be pressing my chest/head down too early in the stroke. I start pushing down when my arms are approximately directly out to the sides. By pushing down too early, and with the aforementioned limited range of motion in my shoulders, I might be pushing my upper body, and thus my upper arms, down while the arms still have 50% of their range of motion to go through. That would explain why my upper arms are dragging through the water while my lower arms are doing just fine. We're not sure if I actually am pushing my head/chest down too early in fact, or if it's just a shoulder mobility/rotation issue. We'll look at it more in depth in future lessons.
Fly, breathing every stroke
Here I breathe every stroke. You can definitely see the difference in the kick tempo from stroke to stroke. The big kick at the end is the same, but the other kick (it appears that I have a two beat kick) is stilted and looks pretty weak. In addition, it's pretty clear that I'm not pressing my chest/head near as far down on these strokes. Again, my arms are pushing the water. All that being said, as a whole, I don't think it looks terrible when I breathe every stroke. I'll probably never have a "pretty" fly, but it's functional and works for the most part.
Fly, no breathing
This time, no breaths. Marked difference in kick tempo from the previous video. Still dragging those arms. I think my overall body motion looks better in this video, but still have the aforementioned issues. Sigh. If I could figure out what I need to do to fix the arm dragging, I have a feeling that would probably mitigate the other issues. Lots of work to do on my butterfly over the next few months...
Breast, normal pull
This is my breaststroke with my normal pull. As far as I can remember, I've never really changed my breast technique over the years like I've changed my technique in the other strokes. So, to the best of my knowledge, I've been swimming more or less this exact stroke for ~15 years (the only change I've made in recent years is trying to get my hands to pop out of the water on the recovery). Two main things of note in this video:
1) My kick is out of sync with my pull. It's not in this video, but Katie had me do the accordian drill (hands linked together and you swim breast pulling your hands in and pushing them out in time with your kick), and I only had one stroke in the entire 25 where the pull and kick were actually in sync. Other than that one drill, we didn't work any on my kick timing. On the plus side, my kick isn't terribly weak, which means it is actually much better than I thought going into this lesson! :-D
2) Since the video is taken from the side, rather than head-on, you can't really see it, but when I push my hands forward, they create a wall of water that I then have to push my upper body through. Not exactly the most efficient way to swim breaststroke. I have a pretty powerful pull, but it's just so inefficient (heck, that describes my entire breaststroke) that I squander most of that power on just trying to overcome said inefficiencies rather than moving forward. Anyhoo, my pull action involves sweeping my hands out and under my shoulders, bringing my hands nearly together under my chest, then pushing them forward, breaching the water in the process. It's the push and pop of my hands that creates the wall of water.
Breast, new pull
Kinda hard to see in this video, what with the side shot and all, but Katie had me pretty drastically change my pull. Didn't work on my kick, so that's still screwed up, but the pull is quite a bit different. She had me attempt to do the Rebecca Soni pull. For those who aren't familiar with her pull, it doesn't follow the normal breaststroke pull pattern. The pull I described in the previous video is the normal pull that every coach I've had has had me do (not that I do it as well as they've taught me...). Soni's pull, on the other hand, is more of a scull than a full pull. She sweeps her hands out as I do, but the turns it into an inward scull in front of her shoulders instead of pulling them back underneath her shoulders. From there, she doesn't bring her hands together under her chest, but shoots them forward from in front of her shoulders, narrowing the gap between them as she extends. That's what she does. I'm not quite at the Soni level yet. I don't have the scull down yet, but I was able to grasp shooting my hands forward from my shoulders rather than the center of my chest pretty quickly. From the side, it's hard to see, but while the pop of my hands still produces a wall of water, that wall of water is off to the sides of my chest, so I'm not pushing my entire upper body through the wall. I feel terribly uncoordinated swimming with this pull, since it goes against everything I've done for the last 15 years in the pool, but even though I've got a long way to go to even come close to perfecting it, it does feel faster and more efficient!
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Looks like the next lesson is going to be next week, Tuesday or Thursday. This first lesson was phenomenal (especially with the addition of the camcorder, hands down the most useful swimming related item I've bought) and I can't wait to see what we'll work on next time!
Breast, normal pull
This is my breaststroke with my normal pull. As far as I can remember, I've never really changed my breast technique over the years like I've changed my technique in the other strokes. So, to the best of my knowledge, I've been swimming more or less this exact stroke for ~15 years (the only change I've made in recent years is trying to get my hands to pop out of the water on the recovery). Two main things of note in this video:
1) My kick is out of sync with my pull. It's not in this video, but Katie had me do the accordian drill (hands linked together and you swim breast pulling your hands in and pushing them out in time with your kick), and I only had one stroke in the entire 25 where the pull and kick were actually in sync. Other than that one drill, we didn't work any on my kick timing. On the plus side, my kick isn't terribly weak, which means it is actually much better than I thought going into this lesson! :-D
2) Since the video is taken from the side, rather than head-on, you can't really see it, but when I push my hands forward, they create a wall of water that I then have to push my upper body through. Not exactly the most efficient way to swim breaststroke. I have a pretty powerful pull, but it's just so inefficient (heck, that describes my entire breaststroke) that I squander most of that power on just trying to overcome said inefficiencies rather than moving forward. Anyhoo, my pull action involves sweeping my hands out and under my shoulders, bringing my hands nearly together under my chest, then pushing them forward, breaching the water in the process. It's the push and pop of my hands that creates the wall of water.
Breast, new pull
Kinda hard to see in this video, what with the side shot and all, but Katie had me pretty drastically change my pull. Didn't work on my kick, so that's still screwed up, but the pull is quite a bit different. She had me attempt to do the Rebecca Soni pull. For those who aren't familiar with her pull, it doesn't follow the normal breaststroke pull pattern. The pull I described in the previous video is the normal pull that every coach I've had has had me do (not that I do it as well as they've taught me...). Soni's pull, on the other hand, is more of a scull than a full pull. She sweeps her hands out as I do, but the turns it into an inward scull in front of her shoulders instead of pulling them back underneath her shoulders. From there, she doesn't bring her hands together under her chest, but shoots them forward from in front of her shoulders, narrowing the gap between them as she extends. That's what she does. I'm not quite at the Soni level yet. I don't have the scull down yet, but I was able to grasp shooting my hands forward from my shoulders rather than the center of my chest pretty quickly. From the side, it's hard to see, but while the pop of my hands still produces a wall of water, that wall of water is off to the sides of my chest, so I'm not pushing my entire upper body through the wall. I feel terribly uncoordinated swimming with this pull, since it goes against everything I've done for the last 15 years in the pool, but even though I've got a long way to go to even come close to perfecting it, it does feel faster and more efficient!
*************************************************
Looks like the next lesson is going to be next week, Tuesday or Thursday. This first lesson was phenomenal (especially with the addition of the camcorder, hands down the most useful swimming related item I've bought) and I can't wait to see what we'll work on next time!
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