Topic: Improve my freestyle
Conf: Freestyle
From: Dim Dum

I'm only a beginner in freestyle. I almost never swim longer than one length of the pool at a time time. Someone who saw me swim commented that I had very "beautiful" strokes (actually I don't think so) "but" that I stopped after each length. Well I'm still a beginner and my current goal right now is to learn the correct techniques and achieve that effortless and graceful style. I don't think I should work on endurance and swim longer distance without first developing a solid good style. Swimming longer with incorrect positions will only make it harder to correct later on and also make me tired. Am I right?

From: David Evans

Please, Oh Please, don't put yourself in the position of having to unlearn years of bad form. After two years or so I am still working at convincing mind and muscles that there is a better way. But I guess that is the Kaizen way.

At least someone who starts with TI doesn't have thousands of repetitions of poor form they need to retrain. Focus on how your stroke feels.

I didn't start studying TI to go faster or further. It was the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I could reach a point where every swim was a good swim that lured me to TI.

Recently I have been regularly doing sessions where I only swim a length at a time. This gives me a chance to fine-tune my form and to experiment with changes. Stopping after each length allows you to ignore questions of pace and turns. It gives you a chance to catch your physical and mental breath and refocus for the next length.

It is wonderful that you have the discipline to not rush things. When you can consistently swim a great single length, then you start trying to string them together, one after another. Just remember to not practice struggling.

From: Terry Laughlin

When I swim single lengths (25s) I do so for one of two reasons:
1) To allow for the deeper focus and neuromuscular consistency needed for the subtlest and most elusive skills I'm working on. Those are more often in Fly or Breast than in Free now. My most recent period of concentrated, extensive practice of 25-yd freestyle repeats was last spring. Because recovery from a separated shoulder required gentle practice for several weeks, I decided to focus on eliminating some subtle but stubborn inefficiencies in my 2BK. One method involved swimming with a minimized kick, trying to keep my leg beats as vertical as possible and as small as possible. I found I could do this well for 25 yards, but not as well on the second 25 of a 50. To avoid further imprinting the ineffective habit I was trying to unlearn, I did lots of 25s for a week or two. When I found I could maintain the “minimal-vertical kick” for a full 50, I repeated that distance. And so on, working my way to gradually longer repeats with that focus.

2) I also swim 25s to combine my most efficient form with my fastest speeds. If I repeat 25s I can achieve a higher level of both stroke rate and muscle-recruitment – i.e. a better combination of speed and efficiency -- than would be possible if I swam repeats of 50 or 100 yards.

On a Sunday in early March, my training partner, Dave Barra, did 172 x 25 Butterfly, starting every 30 seconds. I joined him for the last 30 or so, doing freestyle. On each I tried to swim as fast as possible on 14 SPL. I felt ineffectual for the first 10 or so. I had trouble with the transition from a fast underwater pushoff, streamline, and kick to a "decisive" first stroke, which seemed to undermine the rest of the length. I remained stuck at 17 seconds.

But after 12 to 15 repeats, the timing of that transition from underwater to surface finally began to kick in and become consistent. After that I was reeling off repeat 16-sec, 14SPL laps, doing the last one in 15 seconds. I felt completely different at the end of the set and it was entirely the result of repeating fast exacting 25s for such an extended period. It's a bit of a stretch from 25-yard repeats to racing a 1650, but I have no doubt that this set was valuable for races of any distance.

The main distinction between what I was doing and how most people swim 25s is they usually do them in a heedless pursuit of speed -- or to swim "hard." I do them as a challenge to finding the best possible combo of SL, SR, power and timing, setting the bar high enough that I could only reach that standard for a short swim.

In this way my 2nd goal is similar to my 1st, whether it's subtlety or speed, I'm trying to raise my standard to a new level, that I can gradually learn to maintain over longer distances.