There used to be an excellent site called Webswim which had videos of professionals for download. I have found this, which isn’t nearly as good I’m afraid
Get a friend or partner to video you in the pool - it was a shocking experience for me but helped with my overall technique.
I learned to swim at 27 in order to dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Certainly it is one of the most important and beneficial decisions of my life. I’m now a regular 1000m swimmer and am addicted!
[quote=“Limey”]There used to be an excellent site called Webswim which had videos of professionals for download. I have found this, which isn’t nearly as good I’m afraid
Get a friend or partner to video you in the pool - it was a shocking experience for me but helped with my overall technique.
I learned to swim at 27 in order to dive on the Great Barrier Reef. Certainly it is one of the most important and beneficial decisions of my life. I’m now a regular 1000m swimmer and am addicted!
L.[/quote]
Hi Limey, thanks for the links. Those guys sure do look as smooth as butter!
Went to the pool last night for the first time since posting and the tips on here were pretty good. I guess it’s hard to take in everything that everyone suggested, but thought I’d post some feedback for others that are interested in trying to improve.
The 3-stroke breathing method helped quite a bit. It promoted better breathing for me as well good stroke rhythm. Plus when I finished my laps, my ears weren’t nearly as plugged as the were when I only breathed on my left side. A pleasant bonus as well.
Thought about tightening my mid-section more and it seemed to help my kicking. Also tried to “swim downhill” as was suggested. I think this helped keep the head lower in the water. I think all of this can aid someone stay in a straight line.
I’m still having trouble getting my kicks right. It’s like at the beginning of the lap I go strong but by the end I’m struggling. It’s hard for me to go slow because I feel like I’ll sink.
I still feel tired at the end and, but definitely not as bad as before. Was able to go an extra 100m with the suggested tips so thank you guys. I guess it’s a step-by-step process.
I recently changed my trunks, which believe it or not had a knock-on effect to my swimming.
I like the fitted knee-length Speedo type of short. The ones I used in Tw (about $250NT) were too heavy and dragged me down in the water. The lighter Speedos seem to repel the water better and allow me to kick more evenly…not to mention the fact I look damn sexy :roflmao:
If you’re using Cheepos or baggy shorts chuck them out and get quality gear. I was so surprised at the difference.
I’m still having trouble getting my kicks right. It’s like at the beginning of the lap I go strong but by the end I’m struggling. It’s hard for me to go slow because I feel like I’ll sink. [/quote]
first of all, you sound like you’re improving. Keep at it!
second, if your kick seems wrong or too tiring, you may be 1) weak in the thigh/butt/hip muscles, which will take practice and time to get fitter or 2) if your calf is the tired muscle, then you’re not kicking right.
if you feel like you’re sinking, practice with a kickboard and also with the wall. staying perpendicular to the wall will also help with your midsection muscles.
also, you might consider the hand paddles. Get small ones so you can feel the water better, later get bigger ones to build upper body strength. You’ll get stronger and be forced to have a better stroke (because the paddles “slip” when you do the stroke poorly). Then when you take off the paddles, you’ll fly.
[quote=“Anubis”]Some tips to improve your kicking/breathing technique:
Use a kicking board. Hold it out in front of you, head up, arms straight and learn to kick properly. Do a few lengths, kicking gently, trying to find a rythym that suits you.
Continue with the kicking board, but put your head face down in the water, and focus on rythmic kicking and breathing. Turn your head sideways to breath, alternating between left and right. Do regularly.
Practice often.
Repeat # 2, but without the kicking board. Breath on every third stroke, alternating between left and right.[/quote]
There’s lots of good advice here. I took a kicking board with me this weekend and almost choked to death. Ha! I will try it again though. I have big feet that should make good flippers, but they don’t.
[quote=“Dr. McCoy”]
There’s lots of good advice here. I took a kicking board with me this weekend and almost choked to death.[/quote]
:roflmao:
I know the feeling man. Well the last time I went I upgraded my baggy hawaiian trunks to the sleek speedo. Not the nut-hugger kind but the thigh-hugger kind and that made a HUGE different. Only making it to the pool once a week, but able to increase the distance a bit each time.
I was watching this one guy and I could tell he was extremely efficient. He looked so relaxed and slow but he was actually gliding along quite fast.
Any swimmers out there? I’ve been working on EVF. My right arm is better than my left, and my understanding is that this is common for many swimmers (one arm better than the other). One thing that helped is rotating more to the right to give my left arm some room. I discovered this correction technique (or my mistake) while swimming in a 50m pool, which I highly recommend to give you the time to figure out what you’re doing wrong and how to fix it. The laps go by too quickly in 25m pools.
For style, I’m lucky in that I developed a good stroke when I was really young - even when I was on a swim team, the coach didn’t feel the need to do much with my front crawl stroke (unlike the starts, which were always a disaster, and the turns, at which I became merely competent, and other strokes, which were never all that good). But because I was never really told how to swim well, that also means I have no idea how I picked up the skill, so I suck at helping out others.
When I was on a swim team as a kid one of my arms was noticeably more muscular than the other, because I wasn’t breathing on both sides enough. (Bilateral breathing? Is that the term?) I don’t have that problem now, but that’s probably because I don’t have a coach pushing me, which means I’m not often at the “Oh god I need to breathe screw this I can’t wait three strokes” stage. So making sure you breathe on both sides may help as well. Um, that’s probably an obvious suggestion.
The two issues I currently have with swimming: my flip turns are probably more floppy than flippy, and back when I learned to competitively swim, the “submerged dolphin kick off the wall” wasn’t yet a thing. I’ve tried to incorporate it a few times, but always quickly give up because it seems to do bad things to my back.
Oh, and if I’m using a kickboard, I have a choice between “inefficient splashy kick that I can do forever” and “efficient more submerged kick that’s faster and will have me cramping up in a length or two.”
One of these days I should get my wife to accompany me to the pool so she can record me swimming. I have absolutely no idea how good or bad my style looks these days. I’m certainly faster than others in the pool, but in this country that doesn’t mean much.
I did bilateral breathing a few years ago (the classic breathe every three strokes). I can also play with it, such as right, right, 1, 2, 3, left, left. But mostly I breathe every two strokes to my right. After seeing 1500m world record holder Sun Yang and others breathing every two, I decided to give up on any serious bilateral breathing.
But…I think I may resurrect that simply to work on my EVF. I’m sure that would help. I could take a little peek at my left arm and make sure I’ve got a high elbow during the stroke, for example.
I’m working on flip turns. I’ve got a decent one, but I go a bit to my side, rather doing the classic push off while still on your back and slowly rotate over. But there are some decent competitive swimmers that do this so I think it’s okay.
Regarding the dolphin kick, I think it’s fine if you do a quick (single) one or even if you kick like when doing the crawl (there’s a competitive swimmer that does this, but I can’t remember her name). For middle and long distance swimming, trying to copy the long push off with multiple dolphin kicks that Phelps employs might make someone like me pass out.
I would like to get recorded under water one of these days. The swimming here isn’t great. But it seems every pool has a few good swimmers now. I swam in the 50m pool at Songshan last week. In the lane next to me was a swim team (junior high schoolers, I think), and the two guys in my lane weren’t bad at all. I did 12x100m at a nice clip and was only slightly faster than one swimmer. The other swimmer was doing more of a sprinting type of workout with long breaks.
Do you mind if I ask what you raced (stroke and distance)? I imagine as someone young, it was a sprint distance, but I guess you never know.
I’m what they call an adult-onset swimmer. Swam a lot as a kid, of course, but never joined a swim team. I really regret that. I envy kids that have that background, though, since they typically can do all the strokes and one very, very well, even when much older. Like riding a bike, I guess.
Well, this was late elementary school / early junior high, so we were swimming all four strokes and basically competing in everything available; the specialization came later. I was best at front crawl and breast stroke; never liked backstroke; and finally “got” butterfly in perhaps the last summer, although I never do it now. I think the longest races we even had were 200m IM (individual medley); I don’t remember any front crawl races that were longer than 100m. But I was also at “B-level”; maybe the concurrent A-level meets had longer races.
This was a summer team. The all-year teams of the same age were slightly more serious, and the occasional super-good teammate disappeared to those all-year teams.
Keep in mind that I wasn’t very good! In the pool, I’m like the kid who was a B-stringer on a community soccer/football team - yet in a normal PE class, she suddenly looked like a star, because she was the only one who knew what she was doing. But yes, as you say, it’s all those summers in the pool that presumably let me continue to be a good swimmer.
On the other hand, this leaves me with mixed feelings about trying to improve my swimming. On my flip turns, I’m on my front by the time I push off the wall, which I guess is weird? Yesterday after reading your post I tried pushing off more on my back, and I’m not sure what I think beyond “Oh, that’s some water up my nose!” and “Huh, I nearly scraped the bottom - better be careful with how much that pushes me down.”
It’s oddly similar to what I’m facing with typing right now: I’ve pretty much always just used the left-shift key, and never the right-shift key. For both typing and swimming, I’m trying to improve my style, but I fear I’m going to spend months or years in a messier state before I (possibly!) come out on another side which may not even be an improvement on where I started.
Yes, a messier state is guaranteed whenever trying to change something in swimming. You should have seen my high elbow attempts when I first started. I was definitely getting slower times and it just looked ridiculous.
Same with my flip turns. I’m still slower with flip turns. But I’m determined to get them down. There’s a reason why competitive swimmers use them. It’s damn frustrating sometimes, though. I’m about 30 seconds slower on my 1000m swim, for example, when I use flip turns. But at least I can do a 1000m swim in a 25m pool all doing flip turns. I’m going to get this one of these days!
EVF. I highly recommend a 50m pool to give you the time to think about your form mistakes. I discovered last week that if I just relax at the beginning of the stroke and let my arm drop into the EVF position, I can get it better, that is, better than forcing my arm into the initial EVF catch position. Also, forcing the position could possible lead to shoulder issues down the line, in my opinion. Worked like a charm today when I did a 1500m swim.
