one armed drills

[Danny]

Originally Posted by Janos

It depends how you apply the power. Like I said, body rotation is only a link in a kinetic chain.
The no arm drill that Charles posted demonstrates this perfectly. Open your mind to other permutations. Consider the dropping of the shoulder as the start of the stroke and a flick of the toe as the end of the stroke, so you apply the power front to back. You are actually using the same principle as dolphin kicking but with a cross-torsional aspect. If you master this you will see that the catch comes second to this. That is why it is called a catch...not a pull, in TI terminology.

Janos

When I read this last week, it made no sense to me at all, so I filed it away and tried to focus on other things. This morning while doing the one armed drill I started to feel for the first time like I may be understanding what Janos was trying to say here. There seemed to be a cross diagonal undulatory motion to my stroke which I could use to propel myself forward and save energy. Even better, I was able to feel and use this effect in two stroke swimming, although it was delicate and still needs practice. I will be interested to see if I can recreate this effect the next time I get in the pool. The shoulder on the spearing side gets driven down and forward as you spear and then it comes up as you go into the catch. I think that this is where I was getting the feel of undulation.

This is not the first time that I have read things about swimming which made no sense to me at all, only to discover at a later date what was being discussed, largely because I started to be able to feel the effect.

Suzanne, does any of this sound familiar to you?

[Talvi]

I was thinking about this and isn't the flick of the toe before the pull? When I analysed the Shinji video (and others) the toe flick - the end of the kick - concides with the beginning of the pull/end of the catch, so it's not actually the end of the stroke?

[rcrawf]

Coach Suzanne,

I assume you mean the "secret" that Terry mentioned was it's not a pulling drill, relax, use buoyancy and focus on balance, side to side motion from hip rotation and drive. Concentrate on the position of the head and the sinking introduced by non stroking arm at side, try and make breathing easy, especially when silent arm is reintroduced. Feel the toe flick as lever to engage and initiate rotation from both sides of the core and shoulders.

Question, should we stick with 2k or flutter, pause then kick, I'm comfortable w/ 4k or is all that not important?

Also, I printed out your 1 armed wonder warmup swimming set, may have to get this laminated.

Also, no good 1 arm drill videos? Perhaps, a video of each one of your 4, 1 armed swimming warm ups, by yours truly would be invaluable.

Ironically, since I am still struggling with getting enough breath in my swimming,
it's nice how you have equated 1 armed swimming with improving relaxed breathing.

Thanks for sharing.