23022011 Swim Squad - Start of Swim Evolution In Team

Dear Team,

Firstly, let me apologize sincerely that I'm doing a pretty bad job explaining most of the items in this week's training session. I felt very bad because there are too many puzzled faces in the team and I couldn't seem to find a way to synchronize everybody's thoughts and enlightenment about the coordination of movements..

Despite the fact that I used many many ways to describe how it should feel like and mental cues to help you mimic the movements and feelings that is correct, I still felt that the session wasn't as fruitful as it ought to be in my expectation.

I also purposely set the swim to be many 50m laps with rest and analysis after each lap to try to make it more productive and for you to have immediate mistake feedback.. I don't know if it worked well for all...

What do you think?

Anyway, assuming that the session was like a big big puzzle broken into even smaller pieces and getting more and more confusing...do allow me to explain why this is happening.

The team is not "young" and "beginner" anymore. As the coach, I cannot keep asking you to swim laps after laps and I have to share with you more perhaps not profound, but in depth knowledge about both performance swimming and swimming as a skill in itself.

And as the skills gets more in depth, it gets harder for me to explain (that is not a defence to my lousy coaching. I'm sorry about that.) and the part you need to understand most is that the coordination also gets harder to grasp and FEEL.

Using mental cues (hugging a person.. bodybuilder's pose. etc..) and visualization (looking at my movement in the water and out of water.. ) are perhaps the best and only ways I could think about right now to show you what is right. After discussion with sam, vincent, teckbeng and KH, I decided I will do a video of my own movement on dry land and allow you all to access through the blog to see how is the movement done frame by frame perhaps? That will need some time and I will have to find them.

I will do a description of what we're trying to achieve then I will go on with INDIVIDUAL SWIM ANALYSIS for each and every one of you. I hope you find them fruitful.

Rhythm of Freestyle Arm Movement..
Starting from catch phase...

1) Imagine beer barrel in front, slip the fingers, wrist and then forearm over the barrel conforming to its round shape.
*The earlier you can get to this position (about 130-150degrees elbow flexion) of elbow higher than wrist higher than finger tips and finger tips pointing towards the floor, the better. Earlier as in the elbow is still in front of where the forehead is - Recall Early Vertical Forearm but this time with LESSER ELBOW FLEXION (previously was 90degrees).

2) Once you have a firm hold of the barrel, HUG IT closer into your body

3) Once the barrel touches the body, push it backwards immediately.
IF you get part 1 and 2 right, you'll be able to feel tremendous amount of resistance here as you push back. If you feel that you're slicing through the water with your arm, you've slipped the hold of water and got the first 2 parts wrong.
*When pushing barrel backwards, remember to make sure forearm and palm is facing directly backwards all the time.
Imagine this: After pushing the barrel backwards, the barrel should ROLL backwards just underneath the surface and not fly out of water.
- If you cannot follow me, go from step one and REALLY imagine that there is a barrel in front before you start the catch

4i) At the end of the push, the arm should be almost straight but not locked.
ELBOW should exit the water first, then with the elbow going up towards the sky, the forearm follows the elbow and the wrist and fingers will also follow to exit the water promptly.

4ii) When the fingers exits the water surface, move the elbow forward using the shoulder joint and again the forearm, wrist and fingers follow. Feel the stretch at the lats when the elbow is at the front then drop the hand into the water surface until its wrist deep and extend UNDER the water relaxly.
*Extension under water means reach forward with the hand, arm and also the shoulder. I.E the furthest reach.

Notes:
i) Stage 1&2 should be slow, stage 3 is the POWER phase.
ii) Stage 4's relaxation need to be CONSCIOUS control of muscles especially DELTOIDS (shoulder) and triceps and forearm.
iii) There should be no pause in any part of the stroke no matter how fast or slow you're swimming.
iv) There is only one part of the arm movement that you use power.. and that is stage 3. Stage 1,2 and 4 should literally be tofu arms just merely holding a streamline or recovery position/posture.

Coordination of body rotation with freestyle arm movement.

1) Body rotation initiates the Catch phase or stage 1. Body move first then start the hugging of the barrel.
2) As the body rotates to your side, continue through the stage 2 and 3.
3) The rotation to the side Ends TOGETHER with the end of stage 3. When body is at its side, the arm is straight. Note that rotation and pushing is done simultaneously and not one after another (NOT rotation to side ends then push or push then rotation ends).

Coordination of kick with body rotation.

When you rotate from the hips, the hips move from one side to another. Keeping your legs straight and let the hip pull the leg to its correct position. When the legs get pulled by the hips, the 2-beat kick will automatically fire. - my brain says: "damn, that's easy."

For individual swim breakdown:

Pauline
Somehow I got this idea that you're one of the smartest in the group maybe because you're a surgeon.. :P But you're one of the fastest to grasp completing the movement of the arms and body in a coordinated fashion.

The two things you need to change is that there is a minor imbalance in your stroke and also a wrong execution in your breathing rhythm which you already clarified before you go.

I could tell that you're still not absolutely comfortable with your breathing side (not fully automatic yet) and that resulted in the left arm(non breathing side) execution being totally neglected. That said, you're still able to finish the push on your left side together with the rotation.

Problem with breathing:
When you breathe on the right, you tend to turn your neck solely by itself then follow with the body rotation. It should be the other way round letting the body rotation lead the neck to turn. When you reverse the cycle, what you did was to lead the movement with your neck and it wouldn't have enough rotation for the mouth to clear the water surface to take a breathe.. As a result, the body rotation is slower than the neck since it is following instead of leading, you will have a tendency to crunch the body side way to lift the head slightly higher because you want to keep the head resting on the extended left arm to maintain a streamline position.

What should happen is when you rotate your body from the hips, let the hip/core pull the shoulder and the neck to the side and then slightly rotate your neck a little more as if looking over your shoulder to see what is behind you. The neck rotation should not be severe as the head and neck alignment causes a lot body alignment problem.

Problem with left arm pull:
Because of the focus on the breathing, the left arm is neglected. The catch phase was done with a small elbow angle and the fingers were pointing to the right side instead of directly downwards. And problem starts from here because if the catch phase is not done correctly, you won't feel resistance and thus you'll be pushign nothing backwards even though you got the rotation and push timing right. Make sure that when you take a breathe and recover the elbow back to the front, you pay a lot of attention to how your left arm is starting and getting into the catch phase. Get the catch right and you'll be flying in no time. :)

Having said that, it is still impressive to get the coordination right. There is a reason why scientists and sports specialist says age trumps when it comes to endurance sports. First of all, swim/bike/run or any endurance sports are skill based and repetitive movement. The more you do them, the more impressive is your body rhythm - Thus, I'd attribute the quick coordination pick up to your running age. Keep up the good work and share with robert! :)

Marianne

Problem 1: 
Your pull is broken into 2 parts. You have to do the phases in a continuous manner with no pauses or breaking down into robotic parts. Think Silky smooth movements.

Problem 2: 
Your catch is still not deep enough, i.e the angle of elbow flexion is around 90degrees only.. should open up more and "dig" deeper into the water at the catch EVF phase.

Saori
You always never push back one lor.. must push until arm is straighten.. cannot pull half way and quickly exit the water with your elbow still bent la..

Yukari
Problem 1:
Fingers always opened! WHY AR???? :pPP

Problem 2:
Recovery with elbow high but the hands are flaring outwards. Have to keep the hands closer to the body from the start of recovery to the entry. It should travel a straight line from when the hand exit the water.. along the side of body above the surface and that will lead to an effective entry in front of the forehead.
That is because the hand was already travelling beside the body when it started recovering.

Problem 3: 
Push phase is not hard enough on hard swim.. need it to be EXPLOSIVE. :)

Take
Same as Yukari for high elbow recovery LA.

Problem 1: 
Recovery with elbow high but the hands are flaring outwards. Have to keep the hands closer to the body from the start of recovery to the entry. It should travel a straight line from when the hand exit the water.. along the side of body above the surface and that will lead to an effective entry in front of the forehead.
That is because the hand was already travelling beside the body when it started recovering.

Problem 2: 
head a bit on the high side, water is at hairline at forehead.. it should be submerged LA.

Other than that, SUPERB LA~!

SamSam
Crazy amount of improvement tonight. Remember that only when you persist then it will be consistent. You got it right for 50m swim but you must know that it will take a lot of practice to continuously have that same catch water feel lap after lap... and the longer the swim, the harder will the push phase become because we're all not used to swimming this way yet for long distance.

You'll feel your tricep and deltoids aching as the distance increases and you'll then find it hard to push the enormous amount of resistance backward and even harder to relax after the push phase because of the force applied.

BUT - You still have to consciously try to work on it persistently and you'll find the improvement to soon become permanent.

The only issue is your left arm still not recovering with elbow first. It is still hand first recovery. I don't need to type much about it here and you know what to do right Coach Sam~~~

KH
You more or less got the concept right but you need more practices. You felt a lot of frustration because there is a lot to think about and you're too clever but lazy to think about them. I like that.

Problem 1:
Left arm catch is not done correctly.
The left elbow is dropping when doing the catch phase. You need to make sure the left fingers are pointing almost straight down to the floor when you do the catch. When you breathe, you have to shift the attention to making the next catch right.

Problem 2:
Your catch is too fast at times. Swim speed does not affect the catch speed. Catch is always slow as its the push phase that you alter to swim fast or slow.
For visualization purpose, speed 1 is slowest and 5 is fastest.
Catch -> Hug barrel in -> Push back powerfully = 1 -> 2 -> 3 OR 4 OR 5 (depending on how fast you want to swim)

Problem 3:
When you breathe, the extended left arm tend to stay outside. It should stay fully extended and let the whole body rotation.. in your own words - you don't have to make the left hand stay where it is when you rotate to the right to breathe.. just rotate together in the same plane and alignment. :)

Problem 4:
Your left arm tend to extend til its almost straight before you enter and thus pressing air into the water with your palm.. that resulted in the bubbles you saw in your catch and push. The lesser bubbles the better, no bubbles = best. Solution: left arm entry should be earlier, in front of forehead.

Problem 5:
Remember to follow through the push phase with your forearm and palm facing parallel to backwards as far back as possible. You tend to drop the elbow and use only the elbow's small surface area to push the water back.

Last but not least, remember it is an endurance problem now.. you've experienced a 15seconds improvement in your swim time just by getting the right arm correct.. you're not able yet to maintain the hard push for the whole lap but that's the whole point.. you're trying to create a lot of resistance at the catch part so you can propel yourself forward with a hard push. Understand ? :)

Calvin
Firstly, H.A.P.P.Y. B.I.R.T.H.D.A.Y.!!!

Problem 1:
I can't tell if you've made any changes to the catch phase but you arm is still a straight arm pull at the beginning. Contrary to what all the others are doing, you need to catch with a smaller elbow angle. Yours is like 175 degrees elbow angle.. need to conform more to the barrel shape if you get what I mean.

Problem 2: 
High elbow recovery not really working when you're not touching your body with the fingers.. need more practice on that one with the thumb dragging along body drill to nail it.

Problem 3:
Your streamline position is top notched but because of the straight arm catch, you can't "hug the barrel in closer to the body" and thus there is no transition to a push phase - that directly resulted in NO SURGING FORWARD.. so all things start from correcting the catch... Teck beng got a close watch on your swim.. ask him, he'll be able to help you out tremendously. :)

Wilson
Problem 1:
It seems to me that your core muscles are only strong enough to hold your body in that superman position to hug the water surface for 1.5 laps. The next 8.5 you're swimming with your buttock down. Need to work on that core strength. Friday morning gym with me if you're free.

Problem 2: 
Your push phase ends slower than your body rotation. Need them to end at the same time to have the proper propulsion angle.

Problem 3:
Your arm extension after entry cannot be done fully due to inflexible shoulder. As a result, you're extending your arm forward to about 90% and then bringing your ear to the side to touch the deltoids instead of bringing the deltoid to the ear at the end of extension.

Problem 4:
The catch phase is too quick and powerful and not smoothly transiting to the hugging the barrel stage. Start slow. :)
More critically, same as KH, the left elbow is dropping when doing the catch phase. You need to make sure the left fingers are pointing almost straight down to the floor when you do the catch. When you breathe, you have to shift the attention to making the next catch right.

Jaslynn
Problem 1:
The kick should stop after the push phase but you continuously kicked throughout the whole stroke. This caused a disruption in your streamline position because the kicking was done on its own and not following the hip's coordination.

The hip should be the main engine initiating all the bodily movements.. When the hip turns to the right, the right arm pulls and the kick fires. When it's at the side already, the push phase ends and the kick also ends and the body will glide through the water.

Right now, your kick is just working like it's got a mind of its own and thus you're not moving very quickly due to a broken streamlining posture.

Problem 2:
This is not a problem but you're not yet used to keeping the hands close to the body when you recover with a high elbow. Keep practicing with the thumb dragging along the body then change to dragging ON the water surface then transit to lifting it just above the water surface. Need time to get used to it.

Problem 3:
When you breathe, you're still lifting your head very high. Were you thinking about turning behind to glance at somebody in the sky or were you thinking about Just Breathing?

Problem 4:
Maybe because you're very used to working very hard, it is very difficult to relax and do the recovery gently. You're like the female counterpart of vincent (initially our bullish swimmer who has turned into a finesse first swimmer).. Whenever you drag the elbow to the front, you thrust the hand and whole arm through the water AND FRONTWARDS REALLY HARD and that directly causes a stopping force to occur because when you just thrust in and forward, the water is being pushed forward.
Need to relax on the entry and extension.. try this visualization: when you swim VERY FAST past a school of fishes.. they should barely notice you gliding pass them. When you swim past a bunch of kids from behind them, they should barely feel you gliding past as you do your entry. It should be that quiet.

There is a lot of things to think about and to be one of the slower ones don't feel good for competitive people like you and me. In fact, I hate it to the core. But let the hatred be your strength and let me be your guide. Let us do this together and we'll make it work okay? :)

Lawrence
First, let me explain that I understand most of what is going through in your mind - probably.

Your kick is very continuous, same as jaslynn. I believe that happened because you were not able to stay on the side and kept sinking when you tried to do that. As a result you're trying to keep kicking to prevent the sinking so you can better focus on getting the catch and coordination right. Correct? Maybe I was thinking too much and you just really enjoyed kicking? :Pp

Anway, if the former is truly the case, I should have suggested you to use the pull buoy between your legs to help you concentrated on the arm pull instead. Because kicking continuously that way just disrupt the whole body position and coordination due to the messy rhythms in the legs.

Problem 1:
Your extended arm in front tend to start pulling or the catch phase very early. Keep it extended until the elbow comes back mid way then start the catch.

Problem 2:
It is a continued issue from problem 1.
When you start the catch phase too early, you also catch too quickly. As a result, the arm underneath the water was already almost ending then the previously recovering arm actually enters the water in an extended position. You'd notice that there is very little glide.. so little that it is almost jerky or just not feeling smooth in transition. It is almost like you're rushing your pull each time when you just finished one pull.

Once you keep the arm extended and wait for the elbow to recover mid way then start the catch from a slow movement then you'll be able to have a better catching up stroke.

Problem 3:
Recovery was all the way hand leading until you tried keeping your thumb close to the body. You have to religiously keep working on that because the hand tend to flare out alot when you recover.. ending with a side chop at the entry...

When you swim fast, the problems are all covered up because of the fast arm turnover.. but when you go slow, the bad stuffs start to come out.. its just like me.. it shows we haven't fully master it yet.. keep working on it! I'm working on it too! :)

Benjamin
Problem 1:
You need to work on the shoulder relaxation and also flexibility. After discussion with KH, you and him both got the same problem of "stucked" shoulder. It happen because you're recovering the elbow BACKWARDS and not towards the side (sky). That caused the humerus bone to pinch into the shoulder socket and thus the deltoid muscles are all tensed up.

To make matters worse, you're putting out a lot of torque at the push phase and your shoulder just aren't able to recover and relax immediately after the high power push. Need to train more neuromuscular control by thinking.

Problem 2:
You got the same problem as Pauline as neglecting the left arm. Especially on the catch phase. Need to put some thinking to that.

Problem 3:
Your head is still VERY HIGH when you breathe. Same as Jaslynn.
When you breathe, you're still lifting your head very high. Were you thinking about turning behind to glance at somebody in the sky or were you thinking about Just Breathing?

I'm glad you're able to get the catch right and put your power into good use.. but you need to learn to relax immediately in order to make the same amount of push again and again without accumulating too much fatigue. :)

Teck Beng
From 1min to 47seconds. Without any mean to carry your balls, seriously, you're easily the most improved person even though KH's timing shaved is more but yours are way much more consistent because both your body and mind grasped the concept of the new catch phase.

Problem 1:
This is same as KH: Your left arm tend to extend til its almost straight before you enter and thus pressing air into the water with your palm.. that resulted in the bubbles you saw in your catch and push. The lesser bubbles the better, no bubbles = best. Solution: left arm entry should be earlier, in front of forehead.

Problem 2:
Still same as KH- Left arm catch is not done correctly.
The left elbow is dropping when doing the catch phase. You need to make sure the left fingers are pointing almost straight down to the floor when you do the catch. When you breathe, you have to shift the attention to making the next catch right.


Problem 3:
The left arm entry still tend to go too deep and that brings your body and head deep as well. That resulted in a need to do a higher "lift" of head when you do your right arm pull to breathe. When you swim, glance to the left and right of goggles to make sure water surface stay consistently at just around back of head and is always moving. At the same time, make sure your buttock never sink when your head is near the surface.

Vincent
Both Fred and I looked at how you swam and we both agreed you improved A LOT from the first time you came. You're swimming very very smoothly and you're just lacking the flexibility to make you look like a truly powerful yet relaxed swimmer. A good swimmer makes a level 10 effort swim look just like a level 1 effort swim when watched from the outside.. work towards that. :) On the other hand, you're truly a very hands on person and through the discussion at dinner, I noticed you understood fully whatever I was sharing and you grasped the coordination already from seeing my dry land demo.

Issue 1:
Your left arm recovery tend to be hand leading but with much thinking you will get it back on track. Need to put more focus on that.

Issue 2:
Your pull acceleration from slow(catch) to fast(push) still need some fine tuning but you can already tell the difference between slipping the water through your hands and holding them throughout the push so this isn't much of a problem but an attention issue.

Problem 1:
Same as KH and Teck Beng- Left arm catch is not done correctly.
The left elbow is dropping when doing the catch phase. You need to make sure the left fingers are pointing almost straight down to the floor when you do the catch. When you breathe, you have to shift the attention to making the next catch right. Remember to follow through the push phase with your forearm and palm facing parallel to backwards as far back as possible. You tend to drop the elbow and use only the elbow's small surface area to push the water back.

Foong
First of all, welcome to the team! =) The girls were all excited to have another lady join them! So are the guys but lets not comment on that for now... =P

There were some major setbacks in your swim strokes.
Namely:
1) Not pressing on the chest to make the buttock float
2) Not activating the core muscles (erector spinae/glutes/hamstrings and calves) to pull the hip and legs up and hug the surface
3) Breathing is lifting head up and not turning
4) Lack of body rotation from the hips
5) Underwater arm movement is basically all not very correctly done
6) Body was not stretched out from finger tip to toes and when that was done, relaxation was not occuring.
7) Your exhalation did not start immediately after you rotate your head down into the water. This cause a build up of thoracic pressure that make the swim even more breathless than it ought to be not.

My golden advice is this: The earlier you get the problems corrected the better. The more you practice the bad strokes, the more it gets burnt into the nervous system and then the longer time you'll need to undo whatever you practiced. Frustrations and worries of details now are normal and is way lesser than when you're so used to a bad stroke and then having to change them.. I had been there and changed my strokes many times.. each time, I was frustrated to the MAX.. and it takes a LOT to get me frustrated in terms of practices.

General study states it takes 300 repetition to get a brand new movement dialed and remembered, it takes 5000 good repetitions to undo the learnt movement. From my personal experience, it takes more than that. I personally just changed a part of my stroke and I already did a good 10 thousand repetition considering I did it about 800-1000 times every night before I sleep and I still couldn't really get it changed to be automatic yet because previously I was practicing the bad technique too hard unknowingly until somebody told me.

KK
Problem 1:
The left arm entry is still too late. It entered when it was 85% extended. The ability to relax before it contacts the water helps in reducing the downwards force application and also trapping of air bubbles but this is not a permanent fix and especially visible in hard effort swim. Need to enter after passing the forehead - I.E Earlier.

Problem 2:
When swimming fast, the deltoids were not able to bail out of the hard push fast enough. It is better than average but still, it could have "softened" that much faster.. at least a good 0.5secs earlier than what is happening now. Maybe its the gym and bballing.. I'll keep working on it.

Problem 3:
When doing slow swim, not able to coordinate the lats to the arm movement. Because since it's meant to be a slow effort, can just use the arm right?
But neh.. I need to be activating the lats and doing the correct movement throughout no matter what pace it is so that the strokes are CONSISTENT.

Problem 4:
This is more of a endurance problem as I am not able to continuously swim hard effort with that kind of explosive push yet. Need to practice more.

Problem 5:
When sprinting, the transition of body roll from one side to another is still choppy, need to be more snappy and continuous.

Problem 6:
Right arm entry tend to steer too much to the center point.. should be slightly to the side where the shoulder is pointing.

Problem 7:
Left arm catch feeling is not tip top yet. Need to do more left arm iso practice and fist drills.

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In conclusion, we all need more practice to perfect this skills. As your coach, I am proud to introduce changes because with changes we all improve, without innovations we all are but just followers of the norms.

Let us not be frustrated about what is wrong right now but rejoice in the fact that we're seeing so much potential in improving our swim strokes just by tweaking what we already know. :)

Cheers
KK