Swim Critique Thread. Post Your Videos

I need to get me a GoPro to take nice video like yours.

  1. your main issue is body position. Your feet and hips are sinking. Do the drill Emily described above.

  2. your head is too high and related to why you have the 1st issue.

  3. your strokes cross the midline on both sides.

  4. also your stroke isn’t efficient. You’re working a lot for not much speed. Slow down the stoke a little. Get full extension. Point your fingers to the bottom and pull all the way to your hips.

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Well done for posting it up.

Low hips and legs, and its a very common situation - you are not alone. Thats what I would work on for now, and you should see a big change. :+1:

I think there are a few things to improve that, 1. body rotation and reach, 2. kick.

  1. Side finning, fin the whole length on your side with one arm reaching out, the other on your side. Switch sides coming back. Get used to how it feels on your side and fully reaching out.
    After a few lengths like that, add in one stroke to switch sides, every six kicks or when you need to breathe.

  2. Kick boarding, head down kicking from the hips not the knees. You dont need a wonderful kick for OW as the wetsuit lifts your hips and legs.

  3. Pull buoy. Do regular lengths with the pull buoy, your head is already very low but you want to get used to the feeling of the hips and legs being high. Focus on rotation and reach from 1. when you do this.

Thats my advice anyway! :grinning:

Heres the stereotype you fit in from Swimsmooth, they have plenty of advice:

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Good video, @Joelrivera. To add to @JoeX’s comments and having you concentrate on pushing your chest into the water, I’d focus on your catch. Realize that your forearms are a critical part of the propulsion. As you enter and with the body rotation, the arm goes (or enters) forward, then you “break” at the elbow to make the hand and forearm vertical. That vertical paddle grabs the water as you push it back. There should be no to minimal bubbles on and around your hand. Air compresses and doesn’t help you propel you through the water, the water won’t compress. Getting the rotation right will help you tremendously with this. Paddles will also help you with this “feel” for the water.

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I am gonna defer my all comments to @EmilyS and @mountainrunner now :wink:…all excellent points. The only thing I would add is that you also need to work on getting a “high elbow” during your catch and pull.

To add to mountainrunner’s point about improving your catch, here is a simple drill I was given to help improve my catch. You can see pretty big gains quickly with it. It is a variation of a “catch-up” drill…

That a length of tube or a rod, about two feet in length…I have used a length of 1” PVC in the past, as well as a length of steel rod. Push off from the wall, holding the tube out in front of you. Take a stroke, continuing to hold the tube with the other arm extended. Bring your stroke arm through recovery and grab the rod and then take a stroke with the opposite arm. The delay in changing arms caused by grabbing the tube will force you to get a good catch when you start your stroke with the other arm because you lose momentum.

For rotation, do single arm drills where the arm you are working is the opposite side from the one where you are breathing. You will lose the ability to “push up” on the water to take a breath so you have to rotate. And yes, you will feel like you are drowning…the drill sucks, but it works. Take it one length at a time. (This will also help with your catch)

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Yes! That’s one of the simplest and best ways to improve body position. Keep working on that, and you’ll get a big return on the effort.

Effortlessness is the end goal; I guess I meant it as a “philosophy to swim by”. You’re basically trying to find the path of least resistance through the water, and that means optimizing your body position first. After that, next step is reducing drag as you go through the water.

@Joelrivera Thanks for posting these (lots of angles, too, which is great!). As @Alen mentioned, body position is the first thing to work on.

My approach to teaching swimming to people is inside->outside (core->extremities). I like to start with the core and body position, move on to rotation, and work on the hand position/catch/breathing toward the end. Nice part about this is that some of the arm movement stuff works itself out as you are working on the earlier steps!

Trying to integrate too much advice at once can just leave you flailing, so I would suggest two simple drills to start:

  1. The body position drill I mentioned in my comment to @Alen and
  2. Body position rotation drill. Face down, hands by your sides, light flutter kick. Still looking straight down, use your core to rotate your right side down to the bottom of the pool – a complete 90 degree rotation. Kick ten kicks, breathing out air as you go. Take a controlled breath to the left (still lightly kicking!), then use your core to rotate your left side down. Repeat. Key points: HIPS UP, CORE TIGHT, and a constant flutter kick!

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions!

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This is the first thing i working on.

I was moving my arms in what can i only describe as a windmill motion. I start the the pull and applying force from the moment my arm reached the water, and because of that by the time my arm reach the real pull position i am done…and take my arm out.

Yesterday I start what will be a long change. The way it was described to me is i need to use similar muscles as i was doing a push-up or a muscle up. I was leaving everything to my shoulders, but there is a problem with that. My right shoulder is very effed up (I got a bad injury in my early 20s playing basketball) and i was advise to have surgery in my early 30s…but now at my early 40’s i dont really want to go through that.

Once i use my arms the right way and start moving forward, then phase 2 will start, and thats fixing my body position and making sure i dont pop my head out. I am slightly optimistic on that regard. I think my body position might be align with the fact that im not really moving much. It takes between 26 and 30 strokes for me to get to the end of a 25 yard pool. Thats a lot of strokes.

Yesterday practicing i was able to get the stoke count to between 22-28. May not sound like much but i definitely felt it, specially on the 25s sprints. I was making them on about the same time as before (26s) but with fewer stokes (22) and i was not feeling winded at the end… I was consistent and not slowing down. It will take some time to develop the muscles i am trying to use now.

@JoeX Bruh. Thats me on the pool…haha! they look exactly as i swim!
Ive been practicing the pull, and next will practice the kick. Im want to be able to get to the point where i dont use much of my legs. we need to save them for bike/run.

@mountainrunner the catch is part of phase 3. My buddy told me, that once we get the catch and better align the body to the water, we can fix the catch. As long as the pull and position are there, the catch i will at least be able to move slightly faster than now (and that very slow)

@Power13 catch-up is one of the drills ive been doing. This week has been catch-up, one-arm, finger drags, and fist. Ive seen the alt version of catch up. Some people use a paddle board (thats what my kids are using).

@EmilyS Thanks. I will try them. Would you say correcting how im pulling water is the most important thing right now? The “windmill” rotation is not great and its not helping thing… The approach i was suggested was: learn how to properly do a pull, correct body position then rotations and other areas. Since you are an instructor and I know absolutely nothing, I would appreciate your input

Thanks all for the comments and suggestions. I really hope to improve my swimming. I think getting out of the water, higher than last place is worth the time investment! :sweat_smile: (yes ive gotten dead last (or very close to it) on races. It has taken a monumental amount of biking (to 10%) and running (usually top 5 overall) to squeeze into my AG podium!

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Body position is most important. Drag is everything in swimming. Propulsion comes later.

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100% this.

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even if i have no propulsion? I mean…i literally not moving fwd. haha

My friend point: Once you actually start moving fwd, it should be easier to adjust your body position in the water, since you will not be fighting sinking because of lack of forward moving.

@joelrivera I’d actually say that body position comes first! To make a analogy to cycling: having poor body position is like having a poor connection to the saddle. If you are bouncing around, can you really have an efficient pedal stroke? Same thing with swimming. Solid body position allows you to fully translate the motion of your pull into forward speed.

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It’s the other way around. Once you fix your position, you’ll be moving forward. Water is 1000x more viscous than air.
1% drag reduction is worth way more than 10% power production.

It’s a hard concept for us that bike and run where power production is a big component of moving forward. Just like reducing CdA on the bike is important except in swim it is very important and takes precedence over power

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Nope. You’ll just keep fighting the water, rather than moving through it. It’s 100% ok to be slow at first. With enough drilling and practice, you won’t have the hips sinking problem :slight_smile:

All righty then… adjusting plans…

Body position will have priority (on drills). But i still practice the correct pull movement… just not as the focus of the next few weeks.

thanks @EmilyS and @Alen

Sounds good! Keep us posted :slight_smile:

One drill to try is a body position drill where you kick face down, hands by your side, and slightly press down at the “T” of your chest/shoulders every 10 kicks. When you swim, you should incorporate this slight downward pressure of the “T” to keep hips up.

does this drill have a name? I would like to visualized it… I usually dont do what i need to do if i just read instructions!
haha

No official name…T press hands by your side is what we called it. This is a good demo video: Drill #1: Front to Back Body Balance - YouTube but I would add a slight downward press of the chest every little bit. Slight meaning just a couple of inches, keeping core engaged!

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Looks pretty good! One thing to consider might be NOT crossing (or coming so close) to the center line. Especially with your right arm. Might do some finger tip drag to get the right arm recovery looking more like the left (though, honestly, what happens above the water doesn’t matter nearly as much as what happens beneath the water). Could also try a bit more rotation, bit longer glide, and maybe a bit less kick (not sure if that was your 100y pace, or your 2000y pace).

On the whole, though, pretty darn solid!

Swimming is hard…

Practicing keeping the body in the right position is hard work… So lots of struggles today

Swimming is easy. Swimming fast is hard :slight_smile:

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