Finally, my video is here! :-)

Hi Terry,

3 weeks ago, I won the TT calculation contest. It took a while, because my local pool doesn't allow video taping, but here is a video of me swimming. Hope to see your analysis soon. So stoked about this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csbmczowo50

Thanks,
Lars

[tomoy]

Ooh, I get to reply first? Welcome to the forum!

Nice feel for the water, nice balance, good spear depth.

Something to work on? Wider target out front - your hands are too close to the centerline and it's helping you to over-rotate. Over-rotation is causing a wider-than ideal kick and sinking. There's probably some posture straightening to do as well, but you can save that for later.

Good start - keep up the good work.

[Zenturtle]

I will keep most for Terry, but a very good thing stands out in your stroke is you are starting to get a real good hold on your anchor points in the water.
There is a nice hopping from one anchor point to the next in about half of your strokes.
Thats not often seen in relative beginners, amd is a fundamental skill for efficient swim propulsion.
Must feel great when you manage to get that action repeating from one stroke into the next...

[novaswimmer]

Looks like the bilateral breathing is working for you? Can you go 'forever' this way? Or do you eventually need to switch to breathing every other stroke?

[CoachBillGreentree]

Originally Posted by novaswimmer

Looks like the bilateral breathing is working for you? Can you go 'forever' this way? Or do you eventually need to switch to breathing every other stroke?

I personally breath every 3 to 5 strokes. I rarely switch to every other stroke although I will do that if I don't get enough air for some reason such as a wave breaking over me due to an ill timed breath (90% of my swimming is open water year round --- in my case the Pacific Ocean.) I'll take a look at your video when I get back from the pool.

@tomoy:
Thanks for making me feel welcome here! That’s something I noticed as well. I got that into my stroke, but now it turns out I forgot about it and the old habit slipped into my form. Now that you made me think about it, indeed it makes sense that this makes me over-rotate.

@Zenturtle
Wow, that’s good to hear! Actually those are the happiest moments in my swim. One of the coaches told me during a workshop that TI swimming is all about going from skate to skate. That really was an eye-opener for me.

@novaswimmer and @CoachBillGreentree
Yes, bilateral works for me. In fact, once I started doing freestyle swimming I used it from the very beginning. Breathing every two strokes feels really strange, makes me a bit dizzy :-)

Thanks all for your feedback so far. Hope to hear from Terry soon!

[CoachBobM]

Originally Posted by larsvanzanten

Hi Terry,

3 weeks ago, I won the TT calculation contest. It took a while, because my local pool doesn't allow video taping, but here is a video of me swimming. Hope to see your analysis soon. So stoked about this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csbmczowo50

Thanks,
Lars

Your head position and balance look pretty good. You are breathing bilaterally and are doing a good job of keeping a narrow, streamlined body shape. And you are doing a reasonably good semblance of a 2-beat kick.

Some things you can work on:

1) Focus on leading more with your elbows during your recovery. The Swingswitch and Overswitch drills should help you with this. In Overswitch, you drag your recovering hand through the water behind your elbow until your hand has almost reached your ear, momentarily lift it out of the water and hop it over your ear as you swing your forearm forward, and then, as your body rolls, drop it into the water in front of you, extending it toward your skate position. It also may help to do a rehearsal in which you stand in the water, bend forward at the waist, extend one arm in front of you, and then swing the elbow of the other arm in an arc that is parallel to your body line. Then swim a length of freestyle, focusing on making that same motion with your elbow when you're recovering on that side. Then rehearse the same movement on the other side and swim another length of freestyle, focusing on making the same movement when recovering the other arm.

2) You are spearing a bit too close to your body when your recovering hand is entering the water, especially on your right side, and are then straightening it toward your railroad track on that side after your entry. It may help to do a rehearsal similar to the one described in the previous point, except that instead of swinging your elbow in an arc, you drag your recovering hand forward and backward along your railroad track on that side. Then swim a length of freestyle and focus on drawing the same line when recovering on that side. Then repeat the rehearsal on the other side and swim a length of freestyle, focusing on drawing a line with your other recovering arm.

3) Focus on relaxing your wrist more when your recovering hand reaches full extension. Your fingertips should be angled slightly down.


Bob

[Danny]

There is something about this film that puzzles me, so maybe someone can explain it to me. The underwater shots look very good to me, but the shot from above the surface seems to reveal some problems which are not at all obvious from underwater. The swimmer appears to have very poor traction in the water, that is, his arms are moving backward without moving his body forward. In fact, this problem is so pronounced from above that it is hard to believe that it is the same swimmer seen from underwater and above.

There may be several causes for this, but I'm not sure. First, the swimmer seems to be very dense, so that in order to maintain a horizontal position he is forced to keep his head very submerged. As a result, when he turns to breath, his whole body position is disturbed and this may be part of the problem. The second issue I see is that his elbows are crossing over his back at the end of the recovery, which is at least bad for the shoulder, but it may also be causing a loss of traction.

Again, what puzzles me is that this loss of traction seems so clear in the shot from above, yet is not at all apparent (at least to me) in the underwater shots. Can anyone explain this?

[Zenturtle]

I had exactly the same idea.
Looking from underwater it seemed he had a nice hold on the water at some strokes, but looking from above he was slipping quite bad. Strange.
Some swimmers look good above water and dissapoint underwater. Here it was the other way around.

Hi Danny, thanks for commenting on the video! It may be a difference because the two parts of the video were shot on two different days, although there's only two weeks between them. Second, I used camera stabilization in iMovie, which may (?) have had its impact on what you see (although I'm not really sure that's something that could happen).

I haven't spent real work on the arm recovery yet, just started focusing on that this week. Hopefully you guys could give me some insight on that as well. High elbows feel really unnatural right now.