Ledeckyies weird kicktiming.

[Zenturtle]

She uses a 4BK here. The big kick with the left side can be mentioned a rotational kick, nr 1. This goes more or less as the normal 2BK together with entering and extending the arm at the other side.
Following the kicks, kick 3 is pretty hard and visably slows down her rotation at the time, where kick 4 helps it going again to finish the right side off.
She enters the left arm at the same time she kicks with the same side left leg on kick nr3. Kick nr 4 supports extension a bit. So a clear cross connection at one side, almost non at the other side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJNc02mis3Q

So much for proper kick timing.
Her stroke is so asymetric that the kick must be a bit weird too to connect both body halfs.

if any body can explain how everything connects, be my guest.

[tomoy]

Heh, yeah, half of it makes sense. The other half looks like a kind of wind-up pitch for the one non-breathing side. Things are moving, she's breathing but it doesn't seem as connected.

My view of her stroke is that it is completely asymmetric. The kicking is asymmetric, so is her arm movement, she search of a lot more reach/extension on her right side. Her left arm travel more under her body than the right one, it is a pretty straight (backward) movement. She seems to rotate significantly more on her breathing side, the right arm movement is more in S. She does not spend the same amount of time on her right and left sides.

Thinking of tennis, it is like a service stroke, strong push on the left leg, the left guide the movement, it is all a set-up for the powerful right arm smash and whole body motion for the stroke.

[Zenturtle]

I also believe its simply impossible to combine a certain strokerate with the long side stroke on both sides.
It needs a big rotation and a giant stretch. Cant do it in the available time, so a shorter stroke is added.
Almost all the longstrokers start to lope if the strokerate increases. Also Sun Yang in his finishing 50 m.

[tomoy]

I like to think that at high-speed, there is such a bow wave that air shouldn't be hard to get without the lifting lope we see in the 100-400M racers.

But then again, I think they're doing something so far out of my league that other factors come in to play, which I'll never have to deal with:

For instance, having such a powerful and effective kick that needs to be applied to the water sort of like an outboard engine needs to be tipped just right into the water so that it never sees air. Also, their stroke rate is so high that a certain amount of splash is generated with interferes with clear access to air. Then too, the stroke rate give such a short window to air that it doesn't happen the way it does for me when I'm swimming at 1.2s per stroke.

Looking at the 50M races, I still believe that symmetry is best, but it can't be ignored that air is a necessity.

[Zenturtle]

No doubt these people are in a different league, but not only in the kicking department. A 1 beat kick is enough. (the same kick as the most important kick in Ledeckys stroke)

1 beat kick:
paltrinieri
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm4wad6IlAU
ledeckies ever present main kick (at 4 min 50, 5 min 07 etc)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAGXNs0MXzI

sun yang has a normal 4BK with clear rotational kicks on 1 and 4.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uncOBURz-6o