VIDEO REVIEWS - 6 May 2011

KH

1) when you are gliding, the legs are opened up instead of kept together, notice that when you attempt to glide each time, you come to a complete stop in the water despite looking pretty streamline at the upper body.. its because of your legs opening up and tensing up to get ready for the next kick. Keep the legs close.

2) When doing pull, both hand fingers are widely spread apart. It is a MUST to change.

3) It seems like after your catch, you just let the pull become automatic. You have to continue to make sure that the palm is facing backwards and your forearm also as you push the water back. This "automation" of pull and push is now causing your palm angle to be pitched sideways when you push.. and thus the water you controlled at the catch all "slipped away" and when you push, you're not surging forward cos the water already gone and you're not pushing onto anything! Do you feel that way? 

I used to have that problem and now i still experience it on my left side unless i am really conscious about keeping the forearm and the palm facing back as i extend my elbow. Where the palm is facing is REALLY important. (Check your swim catching ben.. you'll see what i mean, he is always surging forward because he made sure that during the catch, he establish the control over the water with a Vertical forearm position and the palm facing backwards.. then when he push back, he made sure he is always in control of the water till his push is fully done.. thus he moved much further than you do since your push "isn't working".)

4) Right arm pull is late. It waited for the left arm to come back then you start catching. The late pull also contributed to the stop in gliding.

5) The body is generally not moving as one piece in a synchronized manner. It looks pretty ok to the non swimmers but you can see clearly that the arms and shoulders leads the rotation and the hips follow, then the legs kick to get to that side position. The rotation to the side has to happen as a plank from head to toe. I.E the turning must be from the core, obliques and hips area in order for the majority of the body to "swing" together.

6) When you're tired, you tend to have the Mr Take mistake of leaning your head to your arm and think that you're stretching your arm and shoulder forward to touch your ears with your shoulder.  It has to be the shoulder moving up and not the face coming closer to the shoulder.. learn to focus on one point diagonally in front when you swim and stay focused on that point when you rotate your WHOLE BODY from side to side. 

7) When you're tired, you also tend to fidget your line of sight from front to down to the side.. keep your line of sight focused on the diagonal front.. you need to feel like you're a very stable knife slicing through the butter(water) while moving the whole knife (synchronized body) side to side.

Ebnu

1) Not enough rotation on the left side.

2) Too much focus on coming up to breathe.  The lifting of the head out of water to inhale caused a lot of tension to the shoulder area which translate to a sinking rear end.

3) Return lap looks better because the right arm (master arm) is better at stretching. However, it is important to note that it is the stretch of the LEFT ARM that allows you to stay on the side to breathe without any pull.

4) Currently, the left arm is dropping down as you breathe. You should keep the left arm extended until you finish the inhalation. 

5) You need some personal time to grasp the concept of turning with the left lead arm as you surface to breathe. Take note i used the word 'surface' to breathe.. not lift. Right now, you can see that even though you're rotating your neck to the right, your left arm is pushing down with the momentum of the entry to help you keep your head up to breathe.. look at 00:00:29sec of the video onwards till 45 seconds and on.. it is obvious. 1:31 also showed the same thing.

6) The legs are pretty opened up when you breathe thus causing the drag to stop your glide.. same as KH.

7) It is important to note that you have a much better control over your legs' exertion now that you don't kick that much. You have to shift your focus to having an effortless breathing on the side.. no need to press down on your left lead arm.

Remember: To succeed, we have to be discipline to do those that are good but we don't honestly like to do. In this case, if i were you, i'd hammer the drills and ask Teck Beng how to do it. He's good with the side skater drill.. :)

Teck Beng:

1) Catch angle is too small, i.e too shallow and the fingertips are pointing inwards to the chest. The finger tips should point straight down to the floor (with the elbow, wrist and palm in one line). When your fingertip is pointing inwards to the centerline, you're catching with a dropped elbow and thus the resistance at the front is very very little only and no matter how hard you try to push, nothing much will happen because you got nothing to push back. This is a mistake resulting from over pushing in your swim even when you're feeling fatigue and you're no longer able to control the amount of water from the proper catch… the hand will automatically make adjustment so that you'd slip some water during the catch to make it easier to catch, pull and push. Go look at my multi angle land drill again and compare against yours.. you'd see your hands are really under your centerline when you finish your catch.

2) Don't keep your left lead arm on the left side of the shoulder. Note that when you rotate your shoulder you need to rotate the arm together to keep it at shoulder width apart. If you keep your arm at where the previous shoulder was pointing then you're separating the arm from the body to rotate the body only. the 6th second onwards of the video clip shows this very obviously.

3) Recovery is hand leading instead of elbow leading. The elbow is not high enough. Remember that when you finish your push, the first thing that exit the water is your elbow, not your hand.

4) The overall rhythm of the stroke is very jerky.. need to start smoothening by recovery with the elbow and swinging the elbow in front effortlessly. Because of the hand leading recovery, it becomes very controlled in order to do a finger tip entry at the front while keeping the elbow high becomes a necessity. When you start recovering with the elbow first, the high elbow, fingertip entry will become an automated smooth process.

Mr Take:

1) The body is swinging from side to side. 8th to 30th seconds in the clip shows this very clearly. The side to side movement is causing a lot of drags and also causing the body to move sideways instead of using the momentum to move forward.

2) The stroke you're doing is very upper body and upper limbs dominant, thus if you're going to race like this without the kick, your hips will drop very low and sink.. look at 1:33 onwards from the clip. So if you want to continue this position of your head, you have to add the kick continuously.. else, i'd advise to keep the head lower and press more on the chest constantly to keep your hips floating.. just like what i showed in my short swim for you guys illustrating between kick and kick-less fs swim,

3) Very wide arm recovery causes a very slow transition from stroke to stroke because the arm and hand takes a longer time to travel back to the front for the next stroke. This is not obvious in a slow swim like this but when you attempt to go faster, you'll find yourself not able to pull as fast as you want because of the outward swing of the arm during recovery traveling a longer distance. The shortest distance to recover from the back to the front is a straight line along the body's side as close as possible. =)

Yukari:

1) Recovery started with the elbow… but…. once the elbow comes out of water, the hand/palm immediately takes over and lead the whole arm forward. Thus it is still a very wide recovery like Mr Take's. If you take a ruler and put it along side your body on the video screen, you'll see actually your arms are swinging outwards like a butterfly stroke too… you felt that it is correct because the recovery do start with the elbow… :P

2) As you get tired, the catch become very shallow and you're not getting a firm hold on the water anymore.. Need to be more conscious and focus on the catch to control a large amount of water before pushing back. If you can push back easily, it means your catch has been done wrongly and need to scull and feel the water a bit more when you catch. I can see that your body is "cleverly" adapting to the tiredness by trying to catch a little less water so you can push more really… not the way to go ya.. :)

 3) Also you can see very clearly from 1:06 onwards.. i closed up on your catch and you're doing actually a STRAIGHT ARM PULL.. no more EVF high elbow catch! That slowed you down a lot because you couldn't catch properly… You see from 1:51 to the end.. you're not really moving at all! So need to control more water yup! Cannot be lazy on the catch.. because if you're not catching the water, you cannot push. I know i'm repeating myself.. but it is just That important..

4) Last but not least, your fingers are all opened up when you're pulling… see for yourself~ this is a mistake that must be changed.. VERY compulsory! Without a closed fingers palm as your paddle.. you won't be able to catch too!

Ben:

1) You're not comfortable staying on your right side (right arm extended) as you recover your left arm.. your left arm recovery is always rushed.. that uncomfortable feeling forces you to kick a lot more when you recover and breathe and do your right arm pull.

2) at 1:16-1:20 you can see that your arms are not straight in front. The yeo family syndrome. 1:47 also shows clearly your right arm is crooked. No stretch…….

3) You're doing a straight arm catch. No good. Please go read back my "Description of the catch" post and watch the video of the rotation and DO IT in your swim. If you jus think about it and expect your limbs to follow, it won't happen because you haven't learn the rotation of your humerus properly yet. You're compensating on your catch by doing a very very exaggerated 'S' pull.. that is not good cos it causes your body to move sideways and back straight each time your catch.

4) You are kicking with very opened legs.  Keep the legs together. 

5) STOP YOUR HEAD FROM FIDGETING AROUND WHEN YOU'RE TIRED!!!!

Lastly, a video of myself for you to compare...

KK



It is a 1:33 but it isn't that fast in the sea all the time.. i just try to aim for this effort as and when i can.. =)

Cheers
KK