SY is well on his way to completing his first 70.3 race in Mont Tremblant. Having completed multiple marathons and adapting well to biking he’s in pretty good shape. His swim is the weak link in the chain. He’d previously been working with a swim coach and has been taught the mechanics although he needs a bit more targetted improvement in order to reduce the time in the water in his race.
The main two things I noticed about his freestyle is that he swims the entire time doing the catch-up drill, and that he pulls his head way out of the water to breath. The catch-up drill causes an issue because much of the momentum is lost at the front of every stroke because there is a long period of time where there is no propulsion created. Bringing his head out of the water so far causes another issue because he creates momentum to pull him out of the water so after breathing the only place for him to go is straight down.
Before we get into that, it’s worth noticing that at times he looks quite streamlined in the water:
When he isn’t taking a breath his body tends to revert back to a fairly flat position with his hips quite high in the water. I think if we resolve the issues causing him to sink his position will be maintained in this more hydrodynamic state.
Another shot from further forward. His legs are in the shadow of his body so do not create much drag.
Now back to his head position when he’s breathing. He is really launching himself out of the water to grab that air. The first shot below shows the head, and then the second shows what happens below – he drops his hip and leading hand to support the vertical movement.
I had him do the one armed kicking drill and now I wish I had filmed it. He already does the drill but in order to breath he rolls onto his back to breath and then rotates the whole way round again. In the future he’s going to continue doing the drill but really focus on staying flat in the water and rotating no more than 90 degrees to get his breath.
Perhaps the biggest issue is catch-up style of swimming which accentuates the downwards momentum of the stroke. The following three shots show the progression of the hand entry to the point where both hands are fully extended at which point the stroke is initiated.
By the last shot his momentum has completely dissipated. His ability to create momentum seems to be pretty good because he manages to go from being completely submerged in the water (last photo) to being in a relatively great position (first and second photo).
We toyed with a few verbal/visual cues to have him initiate the catch on the leading hand much earlier. It was at the point I asked him to swim like a windmill that his rhythm appeared to be much improved. It did results in a higher turnover that felt hard, but I believe that it’ll feel much easier once he gets used to the change mechanics and how that impacts his breathing.
So the recommendations are:
- Swim like a windmill (NOTE: This is isn’t how he actually swims – it’s just the cue that seemed to work).
- Spend some time swimming with a snorkel trying to hold his head steady and just concentrate on the rhythm. I’ve highlighted the part of the head, below, that should be hitting the surface of the water (so that the crown of the head is slightly out of the water).
- When doing the one-armed kicking drill try to replicate that same position in the water and when breathing try to turn just enough to lift the mouth out of the water (one eye should remain below the water when breathing)
Tired Legs Empty Mind 