- Now we are often talking about how you should swim
and what sort of things you should be doing in the pool.
And I'm sure many of you think
you're doing things perfectly as it is,
but chances are you're likely making some mistakes
without even realizing it.
- Yeah, we're going to be covering the most common mistakes
that easily go unnoticed and then helping you to work out
how to identify the problem and then how to correct it.
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The front of your stroke often comes under a lot of scrutiny
and that's because it's the start
which will then have an impact on the rest of your stroke.
So if you're trying to overreach in order to compensate
for a lack of or a poor catch,
you end up with a bit of a pause in the stroke
that can lead to a stop-start style motion.
This can also put more pressure onto your shoulder joint
as you're trying to pull in that overextended position.
- Yeah, and signs of having this overreaching
present in your stroke can be
impingement-type feelings of pain in your shoulder.
You can also develop an excess of gliding
out the front end of your front crawl stroke.
And if this is even exaggerated further
you can actually develop a catch-up type of stroke
whereby your recovery arm is effectively catching up
with your swimming arm out front and this, to be honest,
can be quite a difficult mistake to alter
because your whole timing of your swimming stroke
has to be looked at.
Break it down into single arm to start,
so you can think of keeping that continuous movement.
It will soon become obvious as you don't have the other hand
to mask the dead patch in your stroke.
Moving back to full stroke with the arms but no legs,
so using a pull buoy,
will encourage a more continuous movement
for the same reason as before.
And you'll be relying purely on your arms
to keep balance and forward movement.
Doggy paddle and water polo are two great drills for this.
Partly, because you've got your head up
so you can actually see
what's happening at the front of stroke,
but also having your head up won't actually allow you
to have pause 'cause you'll find it too difficult.
Now the shortened back end is pretty much the opposite
to over gliding at the front of your stroke
when you're pulling.
Now you've put in that hard work with your catch
and the majority of your pull stroke,
so throw all the way too soon
at the back end of your stroke.
- [Heather] Yeah, it's a tricky one
to know that you're doing,
'cause you can still have a really smooth stroke
but it can be hidden by a nice quick turn over.
So try doing a few strokes
when you brush your leg with your hand
as you finish the pull and begin the recovery,
and note the point on your leg.
And you can simply check by facing your arm by your side
and seeing if that's a similar place
or, in fact, you are actually taking your hand and arm
out of the water too soon and losing
that last part of propulsion.
- Now if you feel you're cutting your stroke short,
a drill that we like to talk about is a Superman drill,
where we've got one arm extended out front,
the other arm down by our side and then we do six kicks
and then we swap that over.
And this will really force you to finish each stroke
at the very end.
- Yeah, so it's simple and effective,
'cause you've got that six-kick time
when your hand is by your side,
to just reiterate where it needs to finish.
And also, it's one stroke at a time
so you've got more time to concentrate.
We're returning to the front of the stroke
for the typical start of this problem.
If your hand entry is going across the midline
and veering over to the other side
then it's likely to cause a wiggle of the whole body
as it tries to correct this movement.
Put a snorkel on and swim, by keeping your head still
you can still look forward and you should be able to see
your hand crossing in front of you, or hopefully not.
But that said a snorkel can naturally correct it
by taking out excessive head movement.
Another way to test your stroke
would be to swim with one arm and close your eyes.
If you quickly end up on the other side of the lane,
it's a sure sign your arm isn't going in where it should.
Now we have made a whole video on snaking,
so do have a look at that,
but a couple suggestions that we've got right now are
using a snorkel for some swimming,
as reducing or even eliminating any head movements
should hopefully stop that wiggle
that Heather is talking about.
And then another drill is the catch up drill,
which by focusing on having one hand
resting beside the other at the front of your stroke,
will hopefully make you stop reaching across
and causing that crossing of the center line.
Now having a flat body or lack of rotation
often goes hand in hand with snaking,
as we're naturally overcompensating
for that inability to get a good catch.
Now you might often find that if you're struggling
to turn your head enough to catch a breath
or even you're not managing to utilize those big lat muscles
these are often likely causes of you
sitting too flat in the water.
Adding in rotation will naturally take the pressure
off your shoulders as well as allowing
the front of your stroke, so you're catching your pull,
to become more efficient.
Now some of the drills we've already talked about
will help with this, as well side rotated kick.
Now this is basically kicking on your side
so you're facing the wall or the lane rope.
And it's an over exaggerated movement,
so hopefully when you return back to your normal stroke
you'll end up naturally having more rotation.
This one is a problem
very competent swimmers can struggle with
and is probably the hardest to identify,
as you can have a stroke that looks good from poolside
and even swim fairly efficiently.
However, dropping the elbow below the hand
makes it very hard to engage those larger muscles
such as your lats, and, again,
puts more pressure on your shoulders.
- When so with a snorkel you can sometimes see
what your elbow is doing and paddles can help
identify mistakes here too.
If you take off the second strap that sits by your wrist,
then your paddles are likely to come off
if you're excessively dropping that elbow.
Now we think that's sculling and doggy paddle
are two great drills to help you focus
on keeping that elbow nice and high,
and, also, making sure you engage the right muscle groups.
- Yeah, while self-diagnosis
is difficult at the best of times,
put yourself horizontal and in water
and it becomes even harder.
So if you feel that you might be guilty
of a few of those mistakes then try our self-diagnosis tools
and if you're really lucky you've got a friend with a GoPro,
then why not watch it yourself so you know exactly
what you need to work on.
- Yeah, so hopefully you found this video
nice and interesting,
so please hit that thumb-up like button if that's the case.
Find the globe on screen
to get all the other videos we have done on the channel.
And if you want to to see a video that we have done
about high elbow swimming you can find that one here.
And if one of your problems is snaking,
then you can check out video to help with that problem
just down here.