Track maintenance

[Richardsk]

Another thought I am having regarding the kick is that in butterfly and breaststroke the short axis rotational pulse is followed by the kick. Should we not do the same in TI freestyle. Whereby the core drive is a split second before the kick, rather than the other way round?

This seems to make sense. After all, the dolphin kick and the flutter kick are close relatives. In theory if you can do one of them you can also do the other and they are both supposed to come from the hips. I have found that swimming front crawl with a dolphin kick is a good way to find a good rhythm for the two-beat kick and although I haven't tried it I guess that fastening your ankles together with a band or inner tube or similar would be a good way to practice this. I know that this done in some quarters. I'm not sure that it would be very different from just holding your ankles together - perhaps there would be less tension in the leg muscles, which would be a good thing.

Today I swam 500m front crawl ( 20x25m) concentrating on a six-beat kick and was quite pleased with the results. I then did some vertical dolphin kicking, which I find quite strenuous. One minute is a long time for vertical kicking, I find. I'm sure Michael Phelps can do five or ten minutes at a time holding a heavy weight over his head, but he's young and fit and has been doing that sort of thing since he was a boy. Still, on a smaller scale, we ancients can emulate the greats.

[Grant]

This thread has renewed my ambition to develop a decent 6BK. So much so that I found myself practising it while lying in bed. At least I had the sense not to do it when my better half was present. :o)
May we rest with ease.

[splashingpat]

Originally Posted by Grant

This thread has renewed my ambition to develop a decent 6BK.

So much
so that I found myself practicing it while lying in bed.
At least
I had the sense not to do it when my better half was present. :o)

May we rest with ease.

May we kick where we please and
whom we want to!

ya might be surprised!
she might enjoy it! i would!;)
i probable join ya!

Originally Posted by Richardsk

Another thought I am having regarding
the kick is that in butterfly and breaststroke the short axis rotational pulse
is followed by the kick.

Should we not do the same in TI freestyle.

Whereby the core drive is a split second before the kick, rather
than the other way round?

.

MORE LATER
HI RICHARD

i don't believe you will hear me!
but 'll listen to you guys whoever
is quotiN the right stuff anyway!

im going to be very quiet and listen who and will give Lawrence some advice on breathN
but I'm very well done , cause i do n't thnk you guys could hear it from me!
but when ya get it! we'll hear it....so say it how ya want to! i do!

[Janos]

Hey Grant, like mine, your other half will have long accepted that swimming is a massive part of your life...practising your kick in bed is probably one of many hints that gave it away!...and its no bad thing either.
An earlier post(Haschu?) asked why I wanted to develop a 6b kick. I feel it is a natural progression, and something you can use when racing. I don't do sprints and am not interested in trying to race the people who try to race me in the pool, but I do want to get my 25m lap time regularly below 20sec, and to enable me to turn on the power when needed. For example in the last few hundred yards of a mile race. Although I am suspecting that with my current focal points, and the way it has gone so far, my 6b kick could be very sustainable. The thing I find most wearing is the concentration needed! but that has to get easier with practice. Another interesting aspect of practising stroke/kick timing in either mode is that you do become 'totally immersed', and time quite literally flies, until you are kicked out the pool all too soon!

Janos

[Richardsk]

Pat

The piece in italics is a quote from the previous post by Janos.

I agree with this point of view. I think we should regard the kick as coming from the hip, whether it's a two-beat, six-beat, four-beat, two beat crossover (about which I know next to nothing) or dolphin.

Possibly even the breaststroke kick should come from the hips, although the main muscles involved seem to be in the thighs. The hips are involved in the wave-like motion that seems to be the preferred way nowadays.

Breaststroke arms and dolphin legs is one of my favorite drills.

Michael Phelps never gives much away when he speaks to the media, which is very wise of him. He is always very diplomatic and no doubt well prepared, as a good diplomat should be.

[Janos]

Hey guys, I think it would be interesting to hear about your progress. Especially the focal points used in any breakthrough moments.
The drill I am using at the moment is to push off and take my first stroke as I would in normal 2b mode, and then do two small flutter kicks as I hold the side glide position. Take a breath, and then try it on the other side. Then start doing combinations.
My focal points are combining catch to downbeat of the kick and a focus on a subtle hip rotation.

Janos

[Richardsk]

Janos

I don't know if it counts as progress but today I swam 800 meters of freestyle (front crawl to us oldsters) mainly with a six-beat kick (sometimes my left foot forgets to do three kicks and only does one, but I'm keeping an eye on it and trying to cure it of this lazy habit). This was not 800 meters continuous swimming but a sequence of 25 meter repetitions, which allows one to swim the 800 meters at a somewhat faster pace than would be possible with continuous swimming. I'm hoping the muscle memory will eventually develop that allows me to swim at that pace for longer distances and eventually even for the whole 800 meters or even more.

I think at the moment this pace is no faster than I can swim with a two-beat kick but is probably a little more strenuous with the six-beat, so my theory is that it will provide some conditioning as well as ingraining the pattern of the six-beat. My time for the this 800 meters, not counting the rest time of course, although slow, is considerably faster than I have ever swum it continuously.

Perhaps next time I will try the same process but as a series of 50m repeats. I would expect the cumulative swim time to be a little slower in this case.

In addition to focus on my feet and legs, I also tried to focus on wide tracks, deep catch with hand below wrist and wrist below elbow etc., relaxed neck muscles and steady exhalation. Plenty to think about!

[Janos]

Richard,

I would strongly recommend shorter repeats.Otherwise you may introduce bad habits into your 2b kick. I have been doing 25m drills, and then stopping. I am convinced that the reason it does not come easily is because of how we 'see' the stroke in TI. My main focus is the downbeat of the first kick and the catch hand rather than the kick and the opposite spearing arm, so it seems like I am applying the power forward rather than torsionally forward, even though that is what I am in effect doing. When it works, it sends me forward and allows a perfect window to apply a gentle flutter of two kicks, and gets me in position for the next cycle.
It is fascinating trying to work out exactly how to do it, and how our bodies respond to these different challenges, and how these challenges also show up the limitations of our movements,and how elusive, perfect symmetry in our stroke is. Especially for freestyle. When breastroking and doing fly we are looking to engage a certain part of our core to power the stroke, but it is one area only. When we freestyle the TI way we need to find that core power on two sides, and get them matched almost perfectly. It would be really interesting to see 'inside' a really good swimmer as they swam, so we could see the kinetic chain in action, as it is futile just watching them in motion, and then trying to mimic their stroke. There is so much going on!

[Richardsk]

Janos

You may be right about the desirability of shorter repeats, but I think one has to do the occasional 50m, 75m or 100m repeat so as not to ingrain the habit of always stopping at the wall. This is where a 50m pool would be nice, but the nearest one to where I live is a bit too far away. I really enjoy swimming in 50m pools though and wish I could do it more often.

The longest continuous distance I have ever swum in a short course pool is 800m. Soon I may try a short course 1500m to see what it feels like. For the last few years, since discovering TI, I have usually swum two long course 1500m events a year (I can hardly call them races because I generally finish several minutes behind the next person in my age group - not that there are very many of us). I can only gape in amazement at some of the times I see reported in European and World Masters Championships.

Incidentally, I experimented with swimming 500m the other day made up of 25m repeats and using the two-beat kick, and the time was within a few seconds of the 500m time with the six-beat. It will probably take a few months before the six-beat kick is second nature and perhaps then it will be significantly faster than the two-beat. On the other hand, perhaps not. We must wait and see.

[Janos]

Keep posting Richard, it will be very interesting to see if your short course times start tumbling.
To sort out the confusing messages my brain was sending my arms and legs I have had to develop a new way of thinking about the stroke. To gain more co-ordination I now have what I call 'position 1 and 2'. The first is side glide position with my leading arm extended fully, and my recovery arm against my opposite leg. This is the end position of the first three kicks. First one is a normal rotational kick, and then two flutter kicks, driving me into position 1. I am now preparing for the fourth kick, as I recover, and get into position 2. Which is where my recovery arm is almost three quarters of the way extended and my catch arm is vertical. This position is where, combined with the downbeat of your fourth kick and hip nudge you get full power. This is then followed by two flutter kicks and a return to position 1.
When you train like this, it emphasises certain crucial points. For instance, the recovery arm contributes virtually nothing to the power of your stroke in TI style, and that it is best placed in the optimum position so as not to impede forward progress from hip drive as soon as possible. I mean just pick it up by your elbow, recover, and place it back in the water as soon as you can. The same with taking a breath. It is completely separate from the power phase of the stroke, so let your head turn as you recover, to take a breath, but turn it separately from your shoulder to return to face down, and then take your stroke as two almost separate actions. I felt that returning your head with your shoulder makes for 'loping' strokes and an uneven stroke action. When it is done right it makes for a remarkably smooth stroke. It would be interesting to hear from anybody who has gone a bit further down the road with this. Looking at footage of Popov and Thorpe, they both do this in training, and there seems to be little mention of this on the forum. Rolling back to face down position with the shoulder seems to be very clumsy action with a lot of swimmers, which then contributes to different recovery actions on either side.