I posted a home-made video of myself 6 weeks ago with my self-taught freestyle stroke, in my interpretation of Total Immersion. I've been swimming now for about 6 months, no swim background whatsoever aside from not drowning.
My old form (6 weeks ago) - 2:05 pace/100m (my fast pace then)
I think my body position was ok, but I had a huge over-rotation as well as a lot of flailing leg motion. I honestly didn't feel that I was doing any of those errors while I was swimming! But I dutifully got down and dirty with the pull buoy to eliminate that over-rotation and streamline the kick. And wow, that pull-buoy did wonders. It sucked to no end when I first started using it, but after only a few days, I had flattened myself out and straightened out that kick.
This pull buoy was of huge benefit in my swim technique
I'd consider it essential for any new learning swimmer
I unfortunately don't have a followup video (yet), but I'm pretty sure I've gotten rid of most of the over-rotation and the kick. I went from being a terrible swimmer with the pull buoy to an good one with stable core, and now I go without it.
I didn't time myself for awhile since I was so depressingly slow for weeks - it was akin to relearning my stroke from scratch. When I started my "new" stroke, I was about 2:40/100m for at least 2-3 weeks, or slower than I originally was by a good margin. In fact, I was barely evening finishing 100m the first week! I worked hard at it though, for the past month, paying strict attention to form. Today was the first time I got back to my original pool, and did 12 x 100m timed intervals with 15sec downtime between.
Before (6 weeks ago): 2:15/100m
Now: 1:51/100m
I know this is FAR from good, but I was honestly shocked to see such a big improvement. This was ALL due to form and definitely was not due to swim fitness; I've been forced to swim only easy strokes to refine the new form and just started picking up the pace - I swam significantly harder with my old form. With that prior form, an all-out 100m sprint was 1:58/100m for me, or slower than my current interval pace.
I really have to find a good coach to fix the rest of my form errors to get more of the "free speed." I know it's cliche to say "it's all technique", but I'm definitely convinced now.
2 comments:
that's a huge improvement, Willis! if/when i decide to do a triathlon i might copy you and video myself--i'm already curious as it is. i imagine it must make workouts significantly easier as well.
Sara - In my opinion, for a newbie swimmer, the self-videos are the single most effective teaching aid you can get. That and a swim buoy will get you to at least intermediate level swimming if you just read stuff online and watch the youtube videos.
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