Sculling Practice

[CharlesCouturier]

Originally Posted by sclim

Oh, I get it. The "instructor" prescribes the correct plane for the forearm wipe angle. That means he must prescribe and adjust the angle for the return wipe in the opposite direction and the same thing for the forward direction again.

So it is necessarily a paired drill where one is knowledgable and skilled, teaching the other who is not. It is the "instructor" training the "student". So as a solo student I can't do it by myself, at least not by this paired method.

Hi Sclim, been a long time. Thanks for your kind words.

Yes, your description is about right, although it is very intuitive for the person performing the sculling gesture to dictate the kicking board holder what angle feels right. Obviously that angle is a compromise between the needs, which is to orientate the pulling surface backward, and your flexibility restriction.

Now one interesting thing is that other than teaching the angle that the hand and forearm should maintain, it teaches the angle the hand should use whilst sculling. I think I forgot to mention in my original description. But I would ask participants to elevate the side of their hand by about 2 inches, no more. So as your hand sweeps in, thumb is elevated by about 2 inches. As it sweeps out, little finger is elevated by 2 inches.

That can be done on any flat surface, I mean learning to sweep in and out, giving the hand the right angle. Sweeping out is generally not an issue with beginners. Problem is that often they sweep out, then recover in a non efficient way.

[CharlesCouturier]

Originally Posted by sclim

Oh, I get it. The "instructor" prescribes the correct plane for the forearm wipe angle. That means he must prescribe and adjust the angle for the return wipe in the opposite direction and the same thing for the forward direction again.

So it is necessarily a paired drill where one is knowledgable and skilled, teaching the other who is not. It is the "instructor" training the "student". So as a solo student I can't do it by myself, at least not by this paired method.

Hi Sclim, been a long time. Thanks for your kind words.

Yes, your description is about right, although it is very intuitive for the person performing the sculling gesture to dictate the kicking board holder what angle feels right. Obviously that angle is a compromise between the needs, which is to orientate the pulling surface backward, and your flexibility restriction.

Now one interesting thing is that other than teaching the angle that the hand and forearm should maintain, it teaches the angle the hand should use whilst sculling. I think I forgot to mention in my original description. But I would ask participants to elevate the side of their hand by about 2 inches, no more. So as your hand sweeps in, thumb is elevated by about 2 inches. As it sweeps out, little finger is elevated by 2 inches.

That can be done on any flat surface, I mean learning to sweep in and out, giving the hand the right angle. Sweeping out is generally not an issue with beginners. Problem is that often they sweep out, then recover in a non efficient way.

Originally Posted by CoachSuzanne

I love this post Charles!

I love you loving my post :) Been a while, I missed you a lot. I almost burned out recently, had to take a step back. Hope your swimming/coaching are going well. Have a wonderful year Suzanne!

Originally Posted by s.sciame

Who on earth doesn't love his posts? ;-)
Welcome back Charles, happy new year everybody!
Salvo

Thank you so much Salvo, good to see old friends back. Thanks a lot for your words.

Originally Posted by Danny

Happy New Year Charles! We missed you!

Thanks a lot Danny, I missed you guys too, a lot. I think I'm back for good :) Can't wait to chat swimming soon. Happy New Year Danny, peace.

[Zenturtle]

Hey Charles are you really coming back?
Thought you had a swimcoach midlife crises.
Happens to the best of us.
I think I have spread your word in your absence about inside-out, bodyroll reference smooth catch etc blabla.
Dont have so much big swimming questions left personally, but there are still some little nagging questions we can chat about hopefully.

For example
I am curious what you think about the finding freestyle guys.
Going from paddle and float to statue of liberty style swimming in one pool lenght is an awesome drill to find your personal style I think.

Hope we can have some interesting discussions.
Happy Newyear....!!!!

[Zenturtle]

Sclim, if you are applying sculling postions with certain bodyroll positions and go from there to full stroke this timing article might come in handy.

Be patient, but not too patient.
http://www.fdscoaching.com/Newsletter7article.html

[sclim]

Originally Posted by Zenturtle

Sclim, if you are applying sculling postions with certain bodyroll positions and go from there to full stroke this timing article might come in handy.

Be patient, but not too patient.
http://www.fdscoaching.com/Newsletter7article.html

Nice phrase to remember; and the url is concise and precise in helping to work out the exact right moment to start the lead hand movement. Thanks again!

[CoachBillGreentree]

Originally Posted by Zenturtle

Additionally...she is no longer Karlyn Pipes Neilson, just Karlyn Pipes.

Those videos are more than 5 years old now. A lot has changed in that period of time in addition to her marital status! Karlyn has begun teaching a version of "patient lead arm" recently for example (though that is not the terminology she uses.)

Youtube and the internet are a double edged sword. We can access a wealth of information, the problem is discovering what has been discarded as wrong or not beneficial. what still has value, and what demonstrates the latest techniques. A look at the really old Ti style videos are enough to convince anyone of how much things can change.

Oh and your comments are pretty much right on the money Suzanne.

[sclim]

Progress report: Back to pool today after holiday season decreased swim time, have graduated to 100m swim, 100m swim, 25 m right forward sculling w left arm leading superman (feet doing a light flutter), 25 m same with left forward sculling = 250m. Then repeat all. This makes 25% of total distance sculling, and I made it plain old continuous sculling after an initial abortive attempt to integrate a pulling stroke when I needed to breathe -- it just screwed up my sculling pattern for the several seconds it took me to recover my balance when I found myself in sculling position on the other side -- maybe I'll save that pattern for later use. So now I'm just grabbing a quick sideways breath when I need it, usually with a small quick pull off the sculling arm, and maybe a downward push of the lead hand, but not always, and whatever screw up in the sculling rhythm happens, happens, but I try to shorten the non-sculling time as much as possible.

I'm getting better at it, as demonstrated by my greater tolerance for sculling distance as a percentage of total. Today my scapular muscles are sore, but then I did 200m of sculling (800m of whole stroke swimming), and I remember now I was constantly trying to keep my elbow as far ahead and as high as my shoulder flexibility could maintain, so there is maybe some unaccustomed stretching to my limit going on.

On the swimming side, while this has taken back seat to the sculling focus, I realise there is also good news. My stroke per length count has stayed in the low end of my previous range, which I did not notice the significance of, until I realised that I had maintained this low count throughout the whole of the 100m continuous swimming set, whereas before this, in a 100m set my SPL would deteriorate after 50 m, and in a lesser skilled period before that, even after 25 m. During the 100m sets today I was sometimes achieving spl numbers for one or more of the length that I had difficulty hitting consistently 11 months ago during single 25m sets of great concentration and significant rest in between!

While I realise I cannot fully discount a hundred little helpful things (better balance, timing, etc. etc) I have learned over the past months, I can't ignore what seems to be a significant breakthrough in stroke efficiency from the simple device of finally getting down and learning and doing sculling!

You can teach an old dog (will be 68 this year, human years) new tricks lol.

[sclim]

Originally Posted by CoachBillGreentree

Those videos are more than 5 years old now. A lot has changed in that period of time in addition to her marital status! Karlyn has begun teaching a version of "patient lead arm" recently for example (though that is not the terminology she uses.)

Youtube and the internet are a double edged sword. We can access a wealth of information, the problem is discovering what has been discarded as wrong or not beneficial. what still has value, and what demonstrates the latest techniques. A look at the really old Ti style videos are enough to convince anyone of how much things can change.

Oh and your comments are pretty much right on the money Suzanne.

Thanks for your updating advice, duly noted. I must say, though, from the progress I have made, I think my form, feel and insight were at such a low level that any reasonable help, even from 5 or 7 years ago was still of significant assistance to me. Unless I am informed of information out there that is actually plain out harmful to my progress, I will assume that any information that seems to be helpful, especially in terms of improving insight or which actually has resulted in an objective measure of improvement in my swimming is helpful, although I'm sure subsequent experience will show me in retrospect that some bits were more helpful than others.

[Zenturtle]

thats a lot of sculling Sclim...
You seem to enjoy it so if you think you can get some out of it there is not a problem, but there is a point of deminishing returns somewhere.

I tend to deminish the end of the stroke and kick driven rotation if I focus too much on the front of the pulling arms so you may be wary of negative side effects in whole stroke that can appear.

As long as the sculling is only leading to a better traction in your whole stroke and not eating away other elements in your stroke its good offcourse.

[CoachBillGreentree]

Originally Posted by sclim

Thanks for your updating advice, duly noted. I must say, though, from the progress I have made, I think my form, feel and insight were at such a low level that any reasonable help, even from 5 or 7 years ago was still of significant assistance to me. Unless I am informed of information out there that is actually plain out harmful to my progress, I will assume that any information that seems to be helpful, especially in terms of improving insight or which actually has resulted in an objective measure of improvement in my swimming is helpful, although I'm sure subsequent experience will show me in retrospect that some bits were more helpful than others.

That's not a bad attitude to approach things with. If we manage to increase our efficiency, lower our effort, and increase our results, we've succeeded. And probably had fun doing it too.

Aloha.