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Pool Session – August 15
Since it has been a few months since we’ve worked in the pool and you’ve had some interruptions and some practice in the mean time, I had you swim a bit while I made some observations and got an idea for what to work on today.
It was great to see you swimming continuously, looking more comfortable and sustainable than ever. You have many of the features in place that we worked on previously.
What caught my attention was where you could improve acceleration on each stroke. There are two main projects to work on..
Stable Streamline Legs
As we saw previously, your legs are splaying during the recovery swing, and I suspect this is more out of old unconscious habit than out of necessity to deal with instability.
So we worked with a series of focal points to tune up your long, stretched, firm, stable Skate Position moment in the water.
The objective is to be able to slide into Skate, including the legs in Counter-Balanced Foot Position, lock these into position, then swing the recovery arm without disrupting the legs in their streamline position. The stability has to come from the torso, particularly in the lower torso. Muscles around the stretched waist line, and deep inside are braced to support the swinging arm, resisting any twist or tilt of the spine. When this stabilizing work is done in the abdominal and back region, this frees up the legs to hold their streamlined CBF position.
Activities For Skate
- Superman To Skate
- 2 Strokes to Skate (just glide in skate to check focal point)
- 2 strokes to Skate, then 1 Recovery Swing (no switch)
- 2 strokes to Skate, Swing, Switch, Skate
Focal Points For Skate
- Open the armpit (slide scapula outward on lead arm)
- Feel stretch along ribs
- Feel stretch along obliques (side of abdominal region)
- Feel stretch down the thigh
- Pigeon Toe on Skate Side
- Stack the feet – Skate side heel near surface
- Stack the feet – other foot pointed below
Synchronizing Entry/Extension and Catch
I observed that you seem to be driving the entry arm into the water ahead of the torso and catch so that this leading arm is moving to fast, too far ahead to receive the wave of force generated by your catch and transferred by the torso rotation.
The objective here is to improve your sense of connection, the feel for the flow of force from the catch action, through the torso rotation, and into the entry/extending arm as it reaches forward to the target.
Activities For Sync Entry/Ext and Catch
- Superman To Skate (holding a weighted object in the lead hand)
- Swing Switch (pause at entry moment to bring attention to either catch action or entry action)
- 8 strokes – attention on one side of the body at a time
Focal Points for Sync
- Feel Catch action and Torso Rotation blending together
- Feel Entry/Extension action and Torso Rotation blending together
- Feel sync of Catch and Entry/Extension working together.
You may read more about how to improve The Catch, the Entry/Extension, and Synchronizing these two together. You may read the Intro To Synchronization first.
Synchronization is a big, wonderful project to work on. You may be ready to start working with the Master Class Synchronization course.
That was such a great session, Mat! I practiced yesterday trying to keep your points in mind… once again I’m a work in progress, noticing things you brought up Wednesday. I’ve copied your comments down and will take them to the pool tomorrow. Thanks again for your patience and effort and I will see you in October!
Doug
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