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First Session – October 7
Hello Pat,
We had a good first session. You did very well in picking up the drills and the focal points. It’s a pleasure to share these skills with you!
Below are links to the standard lesson outline, a practice guide and some additional articles to read if they catch your interest and you have time.
Please use this forum to stay in communication with me between and after your lessons, so I can support you as you practice.
Welcome to our Freestyle Lesson Series
To review the concepts we are working with in this lesson series you may view our Freestyle Lesson Series Overview and the article Four Essential Features, where the skill objectives for each lesson are explained.
In our first lesson we have worked on those first two of those Four Essential Features. You may review these to understand more about our first lesson and prepare for those to come:
Study
You may view the outline for our first Balance and Streamline Lessons, which list the skills, the drills and the focal points we used in our lesson together.
As I noted at the start of our lesson, regardless of how much or how little a person’s stroke is developed, it is a good idea to take things apart in the stroke, insert some things that are missing and tie everything back together in a particular sequence that makes a lot more kinesthetic sense to the body. However, rather than slow you all the way back down to zero, and rebuild from scratch, I think we could work through the sequence of skills without slowing you down so much, without having to cover every detail along the way. In the link above you’ll find the full outline of skills, drills and focal points we would cover in a standard lesson – off that list I’ve taken just a couple drills and certain focal points to influence your balance and streamline. The other drills and focal points might be of interest to you and make sense just from their demonstration or name, if you want to experiment with them. It is likely, that later on, we may come back to those to work on other issues that crop up as you develop these skills.
Personal Notes
Activities In Our Lesson
- Standing Rehearsal for Superman/Balance
- Superman
- Superman plus 6 strokes
- Whole stroke 1 length
- Standing Rehearsal for Skate/Streamline
- Superman to Skate
- Skate To Skate
- Whole stroke 1 length
Focal Points
- Weightless Head
- Tippy Toes spine (stretch shoulders away from knees)
- Deeper targets (hands poke down into layer of water just below body’s layer)
- Weight Shift into Streamline
Practice Guide
This is the central question we focus on answering in the Dojo. There is a set of principles that guide us in how to blend technique training and fitness training together, with respect for where each person is starting from.
You may view the Practice Plan for Balance and Streamline for some guidance on how to work on these skills on your own before our next session.
It may work for you to insert some of these principles into that, modifying and improving the effectiveness of the training plan you are already using. If that interests you, we can discuss that further below. There are some thoughts on this to study in the links below.
Some Additional Reading
Below are some links to articles in our library that may help you. And, I do hope you will take advantage of this discussion zone to ask me specific questions about what and how to practice. This space is meant to support you in your personal training time.
You may review our introduction to the Balance Streamline Propulsion Pyramid. You’ll use this BSP organization to help you set priorities in your skill learning process.
A central feature of our Total Immersion method is our use of Focal Points to create a super-learning situation for your brain. You may review our introduction to Focal Points.
As you do your personal practice between our live sessions, you may appreciate some guidance on how to organize your efforts. You may read How To Practice.
And, as you consider how much drills versus how much whole stroke you may do in your personal practice time you may view Transition From Drills To Whole Stroke. If you are feeling some tension between your need for drill work and your need to maintain fitness you may view Focal Point Swimming for some suggestions on how to balance those.
You might enjoy using short swim fins to assist while working in the drills. You may read some thoughts on this in the article Should I Use Fins? Now you can do drills the full length of the pool, without stopping and you may breathe as you please.
Second Session – October 17
Below are links to the standard lesson outline for the recovery swing and a practice guide. We didn’t use all the focal points on the list – I took just a few that I thought would get you into the pattern pretty close. But the others may be of interest to you, or I might refer to one of them if I see something later on that needs adjustment.
***
In this second lesson we continued working our way through the Four Essential Features, in the freestyle stroke.
We focused on the next two features:
- Send Force Forward through the Recovery Swing
- Optimal Arm Switch Timing
Study
You may view the outline for our second lesson on Recovery Swing, which list the skills, the drills and the focal points we used in our lesson together.
Practice Guide
You may view the Practice Plan for Recovery Swing for some guidance on how to work on these skills on your own before our next session.
Third Session – October 24
In this lesson we decided to work on the 2 Beat Kick, which ended up being more complex than you realized! But I hope I was able to convey the position it has in the skill sequence and help you to be patient with the process of training the legs to synchronize with the front half of the body.
I will insert these notes below which explain the two stages of developing this skill:
There are videos of the CBF/2BK drills on the Video Tutorial page.
The feet are the 4th component of the propulsive parts of the body which we incorporate into the full-body synchronized propulsion system. It may be timely to work on the catch arm next time we are together.
Fourth Session – October 31
In today’s lesson we worked on underwater Catch (a.k.a the underwater pull) as a bonus to the Four Essential Features of the freestyle stroke. We started with examining the catch shape and action, and then examined its connection to the torso rotation, and then the connection to the entry and extension on the other side – which leads us into the subject of Synchronization, which we will dig into further on the next lesson.
You may read the introduction for the Catch and Hold.
Lesson Outline
You may view the outline for our fourth lesson on the Catch and Hold, which list the skills, the drills and the focal points we used in our lesson together.
Practice Guide
You may view the Practice Plan for Catch and Hold for some guidance on how to work on these skills on your own.
Fifth Session – November 7
We had fun exploring new things in this lesson!
I walked you through some of the concepts of Synchronization, where the different propulsive actions of the body are connected and refined to allow for a smoother, more effective flow of force through the body.
Lesson Outline
There is some background information you may want to study. First, you may want to review Synchronized Propulsion Combinations, which establish the terms and code language we use in this kind of practice.
The individual components of the propulsion system are introduced, which may offer more insight than you were presented (or can recall) from the previous live lessons:
- Intro to the Entry and Extension
- Intro to the Catch/Hold
- Intro to the Counter-Balanced Foot Position
- Intro to the 2-Beat Kick
And here are the introductions to the particular Sync Combinations (using the codes for each propulsive part):
- Intro to the AC Sync
- Intro to the BC Sync
- Intro to the AB Sync
- Intro to the DC Sync
- Intro to the DB Sync
- Intro to the DA Sync
Practice Guide
Here is an example of how you may form a practice for sync combinations.
And, later this winter if you’d like to work on these specifically, you might enjoy working through a 2-month Master Clas Sync online course (training plan), which could be studied on your own, or included with live lessons if you feel the interest.
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