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Practice Set for Generate Forward Momentum

by | Aug 6, 2020 | Fundamental Skills

Skills To Build

  • Hold stretched, straight, stable Streamline Position
  • Wide recovery arm swing
  • Elbow leads, moves forward continuously
  • Momentum builds parallel to surface
  • High Elbow at Entry
  • Continuous, fluid motion, from Exit to Entry to Streamline
  • Recovery Arm ‘lifts’ off the torso for a moment, almost weightless
  • Have the entry arm be pulled in by gravity
  • Have the entry arm slide in without a splash, no waves
  • Have Lead Arm hold extended position until Entry
  • Slide into your best Streamline Position

You want to feel your Streamline side of the body stretched, straight and stable, while your swing the recovery arm fluidly, without a sense of being rushed to do it because of instability. The more that you use the muscles in your torso to stabilize, the less you need your legs to move around to stabilize.

Choose 2 or 3 of the cues from the lesson to work on today.

Then, for each cue, work through these activities, as far as you can go successfully. Take one cue and work through the list. Then take the next cue and work through the list again, and so on.

Practice Set for Exit and Swing

  • 4 rounds for each side, Swing Streamline for 6 seconds (time of comfortable breath hold)
  • 4 rounds of ‘4x Swing Switch with pauses’
  • 4 rounds of ‘4x Swing Switch without pauses’
  • 4 rounds of gradually faster swing, gradually bring forearm out of the water
  • 4 rounds of ‘6x whole strokes’ holding the same cue (no breathing)
  • 2 rounds of ‘4x whole strokes, Interrupted Breathing, 4x whole strokes’

 

Practice Set for Entry and Extension

  • 4 rounds for each side, Slot To Streamline
  • 4 rounds for each side, Swing Streamline to Superman for 6 seconds (time of comfortable breath hold)
  • 4 rounds of ‘4 to 6x Swing Switch with pauses’
  • 4 rounds of ‘4 to 6x Swing Switch without pauses’
  • 4 rounds of gradually faster swing, gradually bring forearm out of the water
  • 4 rounds of ‘6 to 8x whole strokes’ holding the same cue (no breathing)
  • 2 rounds of ‘4x whole strokes, Interrupted Breathing, 4x whole strokes

 

Progression From Drill To Whole Stroke

You may follow this progression in Streamline Switch Without Pauses to gradually raise the arm up above the surface (while fingers keep contact) while maintaining the qualities with cues:

  • Full (relaxed) forearm is submerged
  • Half of forearm is submerged
  • Watchband is submerged
  • (soft) Fingers are submerged, dragging through the water
  • Fingernails are just brushing the surface

As a useful permanent standard, you may keep your fingernails every so lightly brushing the surface during your recovery swing, all the way to entry. I like to call this ‘dragonfly fingertips’, like a dragonfly skimming the surface of a pond.

Lesson for Make First Connections

by | Aug 6, 2020 | Fundamental Skills

Skills

The main skill is to have the body rotation empower the entry and extension of the arm on one side and empower the catch and hold on the other side at the same time. The well-timed body rotation will smoothly transfer power from the catch side to the streamline side and result in more satisfying sense of acceleration on each stroke.

The entry/extension arm will slide into the water and forward to its target as an expression of the body’s rotation. The catch arm will get a grip on the water and hold it, while the body rotates around that hold point and forward. All together, the catch will hold the water while the body rotation transfers the force it generates into the streamlining body on the other side.

You develop these connections by practicing the connection of one arm to the rotation. Then you some practice the connection of the rotation to the catch and hold. Then you practice connecting all three at once.

Note: we don’t teach the details of the Catch and Hold until Freestyle Advanced. The underwater catch (pulling) action you have currently is likely adequate for your purposes right now. We don’t want you to get distracted by that part of the stroke yet, because there are more important skills to establish first. 

Drills

  • Balance Position to Streamline (with weighted object in lead hand)
  • Streamline to Streamline – 1 switch
  • Streamline to Streamline – 2 switches
  • One-Arm Drill
  • One-Arm Swimming
  • 6 whole strokes (no breathing)
  • 6 whole strokes with 1 breath
  • Whole strokes with breathing

 

Cues

Cues for Entry

  • Weight shift
  • Hold the scapula’s forward position
  • Keep the armpit open to the deep
  • Entry arm responds to the rotation

 

Cues for Catch

  • Gather then rotate
  • Hold and rotate
  • Hold and slide past that point
  • Slide the scapula back

Lesson for Generate Forward Momentum

by | Jun 1, 2020 | Fundamental Skills

In the second freestyle fundamental lesson we work on building skills for the recovery arm swing and entry, while relying upon the skills for The Frame and Streamline Shape.

This lesson will build the third and fourth of our Four Essential Features of the freestyle stroke.

And, here is the outline of the skills, drills and cues, with links to video demonstrations of the drills. The following lists of activities and the lists of cues may contain more items than you experienced in your lesson. The instructor will watch the time and your pace of learning and choose a certain sequence of activities and the few most relevant focal points for you to work with.

Skills

  • Hold stretched, straight, stable Streamline Position
  • Wide recovery arm swing
  • Elbow leads, moves forward continuously
  • Momentum builds parallel to surface
  • High Elbow at Entry
  • Continuous, fluid motion, from Exit to Entry to Streamline
  • Recovery Arm ‘lifts’ off the torso for a moment, almost weightless

 

Drills

There are three sections to this whole Recovery movement that we need to construct:

  1. The exit – how the elbow and forearm and hand will leave the water
  2. The recovery swing – how the shoulder slides and arm swings from back to forward position
  3. The entry – how the arm is positioned to enter the water, and the pathway it follows to Skate
 
 

Recovery Swing and Entry Drills

These drills may be used for Exit, Recovery Swing and Entry skills:

Streamline Swing is where you hold Streamline Position on one side and then practice swinging the recovery arm on the other side, in slow motion. There is no switching of the arms.

2-Arm Slot To Streamline is where you are standing in shallow water, with one arm in entry position, the lead arm in front and that side leg forward.  Then you fall forward over your leading leg, as the face touches the water, switch arms, and slide into Skate Position, and slide forward for a couple seconds.

Streamline Switch is where you start in Streamline, swing the recovery arm, then pause just a moment at entry, then switch the arms, slide into Streamline, and repeat on the other side.

In Streamline Switch, once you remove pauses, your stroke is continuous and smooth. Your movements are getting closer and closer to normal-speed, whole stroke swimming. As you gradually speed up the motion of the swing, you may also gradually lift that forearm out of the water (let the hand go wider to gain clearance), up to the point where your fingernails are still brushing the surface.

 

Cues

Cues for The Exit

  • Flick elbow outward (‘elbow nudge your buddy’)
  • Swing elbow wide (swing out, not up behind the back)
  • Shoulder blade slides, pulling the elbow
  • Elbow pulls the hand – hand is hanging below
  • Exit The Sleeve (pull forearm and hand out of water as if extracting from a jacket sleeve)
  • No splash exit (the arm slips quietly out of the water)

Keep attention on the very moment before the elbow exits the water to begin the recovery swing. Pause there a moment, with arm extended down, alongside the body. Keep the elbow underwater, tucked against the waist, in order to override the instinct that pulls the elbow up in the air, behind your back. At the end of the underwater pull, as the elbow arrives beside the waist, that is the moment it needs to swing out wide from the side of the body rather than going high behind it. Once you set the elbow on the correct path, it will be much easier to keep it going in the right way, swinging wide beside the torso.

It is so important that you start the recovery swing in the best way, right from the exit moment. This sets the stage for the rest of the swing. If there is an error in how your arm exits the water, it will create error through the entire recovery swing. Be patient to get this exit moment down well.

Cues for Recovery Swing

  • Open the Gate
  • Swing hand a bit wider (create equilateral triangle shape)
  • Relaxed forearm and hand (‘rag doll arm’)
  • Drag the knuckles (until the last moment, then swing hand forward)
  • Push the Dot forward (dot on the elbow bone)
  • Swing, then slide the shoulder blade all the way
  • Elbow reaches shoulder line before wrist
  • Keep fingertips in contact with surface (a.k.a. ‘dragonfly fingertips’)

You may start practicing the recovery swing slowly, like a robot, which will keep your torso deep and the recovery arm mostly underwater in drill mode. But eventually, as the precise movement pattern becomes more familiar, more comfortable, you must speed up the motion so that it is fluid and fast enough to feel like the arm is truly swinging, light-weight, lifting off the torso for a moment.

 

 

Cues for The Entry

  • Elbow swings forward in front of the head as far as comfortable
  • Elbow high above ear (like a tent over the head)
  • Feel the stretch in the back as you reach entry position
  • Feel BOTH shoulders slide toward the ears, bracing the upper spine
  • Forearm aiming straight ahead on track
  • Forearm angling down steeply (45 degrees)
  • Hand entry position across from opposite (lead arm) elbow)
  • Rotation slides the arm in and forward
  • Ski jump shape entry path – Slide down to target depth and then extend forward
  • Spear wrist through your target

Intro to Generate Forward Momentum

by | Jun 1, 2020 | Fundamental Skills

Forward Momentum Introduction

This introduction refers to the third of our Four Essential Features of the freestyle stroke: Generate Forward Momentum.

 

The Recovery Swing

In traditional swimming and land-mammal thinking, the main action of the stroke is pull-pull-pull back on the water with the arms. It is not so important how the arms get forward to get back into position to pull again. But understand that the recovery and entry and slide into Streamline Position is the most important moment of the whole stroke because this is where you deliver force into the most effective place to make your body accelerate forward. 

So it is extremely important to bring the arm forward in a certain way to create this acceleration effect.

Imagine how a baseball pitcher winds up and swings his torso and arm in a special choreography in order to throw a ball extremely fast with great precision in a certain direction. His rotation and arm swing generate a wave of force that travels down his arm and reaches the fingers at the moment he’s ready to release the ball. The ball receives that waves of force and shoots forward out of his hand and toward the target.

So too, you are using the carefully shaped and directed swing of your arm and the torso rotation (at entry moment) to send a wave of force down your arm as that arm enters and extends under the water, in the direction you are traveling. Whereas the baseball pitcher delivers force into the ball and then the ball travels away, in the case of swimming your body is the projectile. This wave of force drives into the water molecules ahead of you and gets them moving out of the way so that your body can occupy that space ahead. That is how you move forward.

The primary purpose of the whole stroke is about generating force that flows through the body and into that streamline shape, in order to part a path through the water ahead of you. The shape, motion and direction of that recovery swing is the start of this action. How you swing that arm, and direct it into the water have a tremendous effect on how well your body moves forward, at what energy cost. You must create a wave of force in the direction you intend to travel. 

The ‘wind up’ or delivery of that force-forward in the forward direction requires the recovery arm to come forward in a particular manner. The shoulder slides and arm swings in such a way that they move parallel to the spine, never pulling or pushing it. That arm lifted up into the air draws gravity, and it builds momentum as it swings its weight.

At the entry moment, that force of gravity pulling downward is used to pull the arm and the high side of the body back down into the water, and the forward momentum is channeled into that arm extend forward underwater, parting water molecules. The whole body then slides behind that extending lead arm.

This is the ‘wind up’ for delivering force forward, into the water to cut a path ahead. The body slides into Streamline Position as the wave of momentum travels through it, sliding it forward, until the other arm is ready to enter on the other side, repeating the same process again.

Overall, we want to create three main features in the Recovery swing movement:

1. The shoulder joint ‘opens up’, sliding parallel to the spine, to swing freely, with the least tension or internal resistance.

2. The elbow leads the way, fingers hanging below, barely brushing the surface.

3. The swing of the arm builds momentum in the forward direction, no other direction.

4. The swing of the arm is fluid, almost weightless feeling

 

 

In this video you can observe the characteristics we’re trying to achieve in at normal stroke rates.