How not to swim

It has been a little over a year since I had a video of my swim. So I took the swimfit people up on their video session last night.

While my swimming has improved tremendously over last year in July, when I took my first adult swim lessons with TI in Chicago, I still have a looooonng way to go to swim like Michael Phelps :)

The first thing that we noticed on my first run, was that I am making circles with my stroke, a big no no. You see this means that I am pushing down on entry and pulling up on exit. You want to make motions in a linear fashion like climbing a ladder, with all of your effort going to pulling you forward.

You could see bubbles coming off on my hands on my entry which indicated that I was pushing down. I see now how using paddles can be effective in helping to correct this. George told me that once I start to pull until I exit on my stroke, my finger tips should be pointed at the bottom of the pool.

Also my flexibility came up again, only this time in connection with my upper body inhibiting my ability to stroke properly.

In addition, I need to keep my hands consistently wide on my catch and stroke, plus I of course need to be overall more balanced in the water, and keep my legs together with shorter scissor kicks to improve my streamlining.

Oh yeah, I am keeping my head to low which is driving my feet down as well.

The fix - kicking with my arms at my side (with or without fins) and rotating side to side, breathing without stroking.

Time my hip rotation a bit sooner with my stroke

Catch up drill or some form of front quadrant swim drill

lots and lots of slow deliberate stroking with my elbows high in the water

Stretch, stretch and then stretch some more.

Hopefully a year from now I will be able to look back and see the same improvement that I have seen since last July and be swimming a lot less Rock like!

Until next time

Michael