Rotation - Over Rotation vs Just Enough

[CoachKevin]

Originally Posted by cynthcor

I can see both of your points. It is quite hard to see her hips rotate but a twist of the torso is there. This seems to me to be a combination of the black suit impairing the clarity and the kicking action that seems to be keeping her from getting a full rotation of the hips. The upper torso does seem disjointed from the lower torso. Definitely something to think about when I'm drilling.

Twisting, both as a stroke thought, and a stroke action, is not good. It's not just semantics either. The words we use often have to "paint" the right picture for a swimmer. One of the good things about having access to swimmers for an entire weekend of instruction is that these pictures can be "touched up" repeatedly before the wrong picture develops too completely.

It's pretty clear that her butt (attached to the hips) moves VERY little & the feet are always moving up&down except when she breathes. But that's not keeping her from rotating. The fact that she's "all arms" means that she finishes her recovery long before she could purposefully rotate. Hence the act of reaching forward just "drags" her torso from one side to the other.
Another left over swim habit is her kick - it's pretty nervous, what I call "happy feet". The legs are moving, but to what end? One of the first things I'd do with this student is change her kick.

Originally Posted by cynthcor

For as many times as I have watched the video's of Shinji, Terry and others, it really just hit me in my research last night that there is considerable more body rotation than what I think I'm getting. Time to bring the camera out again.

We'd love to see your drilling & swimming, cynthcor.

[cynthcor]

Originally Posted by Janos

I really fail to see what relevance the clip has to TI swimming. Is the swimmers style an aspirational one for anybody?

Janos - I found this clip by searching on TI Drills on YouTube and it is clearly marked as a TI Drill clip, thus my question.

CoachKevin your comment on hips leading the spear/rotation vs the arm pulling rotation along made a big difference in the way I thought about the movement today. I focused on the action of my hips first and then the follow through with my spearing arm and it helped me to get greater rotation. Thank you for response.

[CoachKevin]

Originally Posted by aquarius

Thank you for the detailed reply. I see how the weight shift connects to the spearing, and realize the timing is paramount, but still don't grasp how the weight shift can possibly push the arm forward, as you say. If I don't do anything, it will simply push my arm down, but not forward.

What could you do to get the hand/arm going forward versus going down?

[aquarius]

Originally Posted by CoachKevin

What could you do to get the hand/arm going forward versus going down?

Certainly not rotation! It's easy to rotate without spearing (and without getting anywhere), because there is no propulsive element in rotation (speaking from the point of view of physics, and not of a certain TI mystic). It's much harder to spear, pull and recover without rotating. So there's little doubt as to what causes what.

How much propulsive rotation do we see in other swimming species, by the way?

[eganov]

I'm a TI novice but I have watched Shinji's stroke a lot and try to break it down. I think everyone would agree it's a thing of beauty. From that here's my take on rotation.

One constant is that the shoulder of the lead arm and always will be ahead of the shoulder of the recovery arm. The more you reach/lengthen the greater the distance between the two. If you were to do this swimming flat you're presenting a wide "beam" perpendicular to the direction you are moving (not hydrodynamic). There's wasted side-to-side motion as you army crawl your shoulders through the water AND the recovery shoulder is moving against your forward motion as your arm moves from back to front.

Rotation gets your shoulders into more of a vertical plane which streamlines the profile you present to the water. The recovery motion of the shoulder is more natural (safer) and the shoulder is out of the water as it moves forward. The lead shoulder (arm) is able to reach/lengthen more without causing that side-to-side motion.

Personally, I don't think rotation itself has anything to do with propulsion. I do think it enables efficient propulsion. I'm kind of (anal)ytic and came to these conclusions by downloading Shinji's video and stepping through it frame by frame, drawing lines connecting his shoulders as they progressed through the stroke.

[borate]

Originally Posted by eganov

...here's my take on rotation.
One constant is that the shoulder of the lead arm and always will be ahead of the shoulder of the recovery arm. The more you reach/lengthen the greater the distance between the two.

You have hit upon an interesting, if obvious, observation...
The necessity (IMO) for good "shoulder rotation" is seldom mentioned here - a puzzlement.
Perhaps that is because the movement is intrinsic to the stroke, or that the term itself is imprecise.

(IMO = in my opinion)

[CoachKevin]

Originally Posted by aquarius

Certainly not rotation! It's easy to rotate without spearing (and without getting anywhere), because there is no propulsive element in rotation (speaking from the point of view of physics, and not of a certain TI mystic). It's much harder to spear, pull and recover without rotating. So there's little doubt as to what causes what.

Reach forward, not down...

[Janos]

Eganov, I think you are making an excellent, if little discussed, point. The recovery path should be as linear as possible, as you rightly noticed in Shinjis video. I have been working on this for a while now. I think it is essential for having a low stroke count and maintaining speed. In fact, I now deliberately work on the area in the gym too. I attach an exercise band to my elbow when lying down, and rehearse the movement.
The intricacies of the finished stroke are difficult to perceive when you first start swimming, so perhaps for ease of thought 'rotation' suffices at first.
Perhaps torsional rotation would more accurately describe the core movement. Either way, it is a combination of a lot of factors that drive you through the water, but for me, the key is always the relationship between hip and catch.

Janos

[eganov]

I've always just been logically troubled by the "rotation driving propulsion" comparisons made to other sports. In every sport I can think of where engaging the core is critical to propulsion, that engagement is defined by the rotation of the hips (big muscles) in the same direction as whatever you are propelling. I see the value of rotation in swimming because it allows the shoulders to be positioned most effectively in the stroke, not for the propulsive reasons in other sports.

[madvet]

Originally Posted by eganov

I see the value of rotation in swimming because it allows the shoulders to be positioned most effectively in the stroke, not for the propulsive reasons in other sports.

The sports analogy that I think is appropriate is throwing a baseball. A pitcher uses the hips as the basis of the throw, but noone would claim that the ball gets propulsion from the hips. But without the hips not much of a pitch, because as you said it allows the shoulders to be positioned effectively.

I feelt that the forward-moving scapula of the recovery arm helps to stabilize the stroking-arm's scapula, that there is a sort of "rotation" around a point of the spine between the shoulderblades. Is this the rotation you are talking about?