Ian Thorpe Stroke cycle 12 part animation timing

[andyinnorway]

I thought this was interesting enough to make a youtube movie.

I was amazed how little time is given to recovery - Terry always say how heavy the arm is above water :)

also the arm is only in full catch as the body is flat halfway through rotation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7ovzkUgKY

It's a nice way to breakdown the 12 parts of the stroke cycle anyway. You can learn these at slow pace as a dryland exercise. with one hand only first and then two hands in opposite sync. As you get better take the tempo up, then take it to the pool

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by andyinnorway

I thought this was interesting enough to make a youtube movie.

I was amazed how little time is given to recovery - Terry always say how heavy the arm is above water :)

also the arm is only in full catch as the body is flat halfway through rotation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7ovzkUgKY

It's a nice way to breakdown the 12 parts of the stroke cycle anyway. You can learn these at slow pace as a dryland exercise. with one hand only first and then two hands in opposite sync. As you get better take the tempo up, then take it to the pool

THANKS Andy, this is great!!

4,5,6 and 9,10,11 all have the lead hand still for a full 1/2 of the entire stroke cycle. (ie for 1/2 the stroke cycle, one hand is always "gliding") Also interesting is that the lead hand is gliding through the entire "pull" cycle of the opposite arm. Finally, I love how the catch is coordinated with body rotation

Form changes are few while faster swimming is the result of holding proportions and speeding up the movements. That's the tricky part...how do you speed up the stroke and still maintain coordination?

Love it.

[Janos]

This is where I am with my TI at the moment. First 45 degrees of rotation is shoulder and kick driven, which is then backed up by final 45 degrees from hips.
I have been using a four position focal point for my arm movement.
First position is with leading arm extended, and recovery arm elbow at ninety degrees to body. Second position is both arms in the water, with leading arm dropping and recovering arm having just entered the water. Third position is after swapping tracks, leading arm almost fully extended and catch arm at ninety degrees to body. The opposite position to the first one, and the point where hip drive supports stroke. Fourth position is lead arm fully extended and catch arm at hip.
I cycle through these four positions, adopting the 'pose' of each one, to maintain the same form throughout.

[CharlesCouturier]

Originally Posted by andyinnorway

I thought this was interesting enough to make a youtube movie.

I was amazed how little time is given to recovery - Terry always say how heavy the arm is above water :)

also the arm is only in full catch as the body is flat halfway through rotation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nd7ovzkUgKY

It's a nice way to breakdown the 12 parts of the stroke cycle anyway. You can learn these at slow pace as a dryland exercise. with one hand only first and then two hands in opposite sync. As you get better take the tempo up, then take it to the pool

Congratulations for these works.

How much time did you put in it? And how did you achieve these frames? May we see the original video which you used?

[andyinnorway]

Originally Posted by CharlesCouturier

Congratulations for these works.

How much time did you put in it? And how did you achieve these frames? May we see the original video which you used?

Vitual swim charles, it's awesome. 30 minutes of my time in imovie, these guys? months I guess, great stroke observation tool though

http://www.virtual-swim.com/3d_mv/to...0wc_400_s.html

[andyinnorway]

Originally Posted by CoachSuzanne

THANKS Andy, this is great!!

4,5,6 and 9,10,11 all have the lead hand still for a full 1/2 of the entire stroke cycle. (ie for 1/2 the stroke cycle, one hand is always "gliding") Also interesting is that the lead hand is gliding through the entire "pull" cycle of the opposite arm. Finally, I love how the catch is coordinated with body rotation

Form changes are few while faster swimming is the result of holding proportions and speeding up the movements. That's the tricky part...how do you speed up the stroke and still maintain coordination?

Love it.

The subtlety I hadn't appreciated before is that it's not passive gliding but active stretching of the lead arm

[truwani]

andyinnorway this is great!

Any advice on how to do the dryland: just standing up?

I am surprised by how much one sided breathing I see, apparently this works fine for the elite :-)

[CoachSuzanne]

Originally Posted by andyinnorway

The subtlety I hadn't appreciated before is that it's not passive gliding but active stretching of the lead arm

As you subtly point out, it lasts as long as the recovery, which is pretty darn quick ! That's one if the ways to get faste... Not just stroking sooner, but maintaining the relative streamline of the glide phase during the stroking phase of the other arm and let the recovery timing dictate when the catch starts OR conversely, speed up the recovery arm so that it is ready to take the place of the quickly catching streamlined arm.

Both focuses would help for someone wanting to increase tempo even without a tempo trainer.

In either case the shoulder complex must be supple and fluid, rather than still or jerky.

[andyinnorway]

Originally Posted by truwani

andyinnorway this is great!

Any advice on how to do the dryland: just standing up?

I am surprised by how much one sided breathing I see, apparently this works fine for the elite :-)

Hi I would practice standing up bent over with one arm first in two sets of 3

Set a
1. Spear
2. Stretch/Reach
3. 2 part catch hand then forearm (one smooth movement)

Set b
1. Fire (pull phase of stroke but thinking of the spearing arm firing the other hand backwards as a bullet helps)
2. stretch (instead of pushing the back end of the stroke stretch it back as the opposite arm stretches forwards in the water)
3. 2 part recovery hand exits water and then recovers over it.


This simplified version is nicely synced up between left and right

the spear and the fire happen at the same time
the two stretches happen at the same time one is forward one back is back

the hand movements are similar, the forward hand initiates the catch as the backward hand relaxes to exit the water.

then the forearm part of the catch is formed as the recovering elbow is formed to aid marionette relaxed recovery arm.

[sclim]

Originally Posted by andyinnorway

Hi I would practice standing up bent over with one arm first in two sets of 3

Set a
1. Spear
2. Stretch/Reach
3. 2 part catch hand then forearm (one smooth movement)

Set b
1. Fire (pull phase of stroke but thinking of the spearing arm firing the other hand backwards as a bullet helps)
2. stretch (instead of pushing the back end of the stroke stretch it back as the opposite arm stretches forwards in the water)
3. 2 part recovery hand exits water and then recovers over it.



This simplified version is nicely synced up between left and right

the spear and the fire happen at the same time
the two stretches happen at the same time one is forward one back is back

the hand movements are similar, the forward hand initiates the catch as the backward hand relaxes to exit the water.

then the forearm part of the catch is formed as the recovering elbow is formed to aid marionette relaxed recovery arm.

As a non-expert I have always wondered if, as we are taught that early vertical forearm is much more efficient than straight arm technique because the vertical portion is achieved much earlier, then why not extend the principle with a co-ordinated earlier flexion of a more distal joint, i.e. the wrist in an "earlier vertical palm" movement; and why stop just there -- in principle "even earlier vertical fingers" would be even more efficient, albeit with ever diminishing returns, and then only assuming the whole very complicated movement could be accomplished accurately and efficiently. I thought this whole thing was a feverish fantasy of mine, because I had never heard of or seen anything like it until this presentation of yours. Does anyone else describe or promote or exhibit this more complicated catch? In my limited experience I have never noticed this before.

In trying to copy the exact timing and movements of your animation (maybe an ambitious project for a beginner who hasn't even got a secure grasp of the simple early vertical forearm!), I would worry that your very precise 12 part subdivision of the stroke cycle did actually correspond to equally spaced (time-stamped) segments of the original video. I believe this may be Charles' concern when he asks how you achieved the frames and wants to look at the original video -- I too would be interested in your replies.

I love the symmetry of your layout of your 2 sets a and b. This is helpful to co-ordinate the micro-timing of the 2 events of one hand vs the other. But then this requires the analysis has indeed to be precise and hold up under detailed analysis.

Do we know for certain that your 12 beats are actually of equal time segments? Or are these an approximation. I would think that no matter how accurate they might be for one tempo, they would drift away from 12-segment symmetry as the tempo changed, not to mention the differences for different individual styles and body types.

My initial surprise was that the catch started to happen before the opposite hand entry. I had always supposed the "patient lead hand" meant no movement at all before the other entry, and I took this to mean no catch, either, but obviously I had taken this too literally.

I started to try to visualise the left-right symmetry myself by reasoning that frame 1 should correspond to frame 1+6 = 7 except for reversal of the left and right laterality. Having done this, I notice that 1 (left forearm is well into catch, maybe vertical already) is not exactly symmetrical to 7 (right forearm is only very early into catch, in fact, even in 8 he doesn't seem to have got to full catch but maybe it is the view angle), which leads me to wonder what this exactly means -- is this due to asymmetry of the original swimmer, or asymmetry of assigning frames to time segment co-ordinates?