[water splashing]
[grunting]
- I think the ball was only like 15 feet away.
That's going to take like maybe three seconds to go
and then you can just chuck Wilson back to the life raft,
and everything will be good.
'Cause the water is not even that choppy.
I feel like he could have saved Wilson to be honest.
Hey GQ, this is Caeleb Dressel, and this is The Breakdown.
[upbeat music]
First stop, Sex Education.
- There you go Jackson, come on man. Lets go.
- That portion is called the under waters.
So, anytime you come off a wall or off the start,
you're going to go through the underwater phase.
And then my sweet spot
is somewhere around six to eight kicks.
And then you'll transition from the under waters
into the breakout, is what we call it.
And that's where you go from the under waters
into the actual swimming portion.
- There you go Jackson, come on man.
- He took about six kicks in a span of
about three meters right there.
So off the start,
to give you the 15 will be about six kicks.
So, not the most efficient undies I've seen.
- There you go Jackson, come on man. Lets go.
We've been doing this forever Jackson. No man.
- He dove in because there's a lot of bubbles
there's no way that was a push-off.
And then he only swam one lap, which is not a real race.
That's a 25 meter pool or 25 yard.
It's definitely not long course.
The shortest race is going to be two laps.
- You're miles off. When you're coming up out of the waters,
straight into the stroke man.
You're losing on your technique.
How many times have we got to go through this Jackson?
- I've gotten lit up before
but I've never walked away from it
wondering if I deserve to be getting lit up.
It's all been within reason
and I rather be getting some type of feedback
than no feedback at all.
It means the coach cares about you.
So, in this situation
I thought this was a beautiful thing happening.
He's just trying to help my guy out.
- You need to focus.
- I am focused.
- Maybe that is why the coach is very angry.
Forget the breakout,
if Jackson's getting distracted by the girl
then that's a bigger problem.
I hate when people watch my practices.
I've never heard of anyone sitting in the stands,
watching a practice.
Maybe when I was in high school,
you'd have a couple of parents here and there,
but especially not in college.
It's just the coaches and then the team.
He was also the only one at practice I just realized.
That's never going to happen.
I don't think I've ever been the only one at practice.
Certainly not high school.
There's usually like 40 people there.
Besides the just one lap and finish
on the other end of the pool.
I'm not going to shred Jackson's technique.
I thought he did the best he could.
But they even talked about the breakout
and then the strokes into the wall,
but the only thing was he didn't really swim a real race.
Next up, Swimming For Gold.
[whistling]
- Come on Captain.
- No coach uses a whistle.
I think it's like a rule if you're a coach
that you have to be able to do the finger whistle
and certainly not just like blaring it in everyone's face.
I think you have to be like able to do it like this
to be considered a coach.
Every coach I've ever worked with they never use a whistle.
It's always the like, I can't do it.
I can't do it because I'm not a coach.
[upbeat music]
This is not a technique that I would use in my practice.
A lot of slipping of the catch.
A lot of elbows dropping
and the hips are very low in the water.
So basically the whole point of swimming
is to get your hips as high up in the water as you can.
You're going float better
and you're going to move through the water much quicker.
The higher you are on top of the water
the faster you're going to be.
That's like the whole point of my career
and existence in this sport
is to try to figure out ways to keep my hips high up,
and move forward faster through the water.
Which they were not doing.
[upbeat music]
The technique all in all is pretty bad.
So when they're holding the board
it's basically just a glorified piece of foam that floats.
So you can just use your legs.
So, it takes away using your arms
and you only can kick to move yourself through the water.
And then I saw them doing butterfly,
and I saw them doing freestyle.
But the coach could have given them a set
that was different for each swimmer.
They could have had different main strokes
and that's why they're doing different strokes
in the same lane.
All of the strokes are connected at some point.
You can learn things from each part of the stroke.
Just because you're training freestyle
doesn't mean you can only get better at freestyle
by just doing freestyle.
So, if I train butterfly I think it could help my freestyle.
If I train freestyle, I think it can help my butterfly.
At the end of the day, you can do other strokes
and learn from each of the stroke
to implement that into different parts of each stroke.
[upbeat music]
I thought the breathing pattern and fly
was actually pretty good.
I think he was going one up, one down,
which means your head's in the water for one stroke,
and then you'll come up and breathe for one stroke.
That's actually how I swim my hundred fly.
I think it's the most efficient way to get oxygen
and still be able to stay flat on the water,
and move forward.
[upbeat music]
We actually have long fins and then we have short fins,
which he was wearing short fins in the video.
They're a bit heavier and they're harder to use,
but you can get the top speed a lot, lot faster
with the shorter fins.
They don't flex as much as to where the long fins;
There's a lot more bend in them.
So, they're better for like more aerobic sets
and like if you're going anything over a 200
that's not all out.
I mean they're not as demanding on your legs.
And then the kick board, yeah they're using a couple boards.
And then the cap and goggles they were using
were not the most high end cap and goggles.
I've been wearing the same goggles since I was
I think like 11 years old.
The Speed Sockets. Speedos Speed Sockets.
That's just my goggle. That's what works for me.
That's what I practice in. That's what I race in.
And they look cool.
These just don't look that good.
And then the cap, I usually just wear a Gator cap,
usually something not with a full on design
on the side of it.
I like keeping it clean.
[upbeat music]
So, it's actually illegal
if your legs come apart in butterfly.
So if you're like, "Oh like frick this
I'm just going to start doing that"
you're going to get disqualified
and your race isn't going to count.
Your legs in butterfly have to stay together.
Your hands actually have to touch the wall
at the same time as well.
Whereas freestyle,
actually the only thing that you can get disqualified for
in freestyle is if you grab onto the lane line
and start pulling yourself down the pool,
or if you dive down below and push off the bottom.
So freestyle you can actually, there's no rules,
that's why it's called freestyle.
But the most efficient way is what you see
when people are swimming normal freestyle stroke.
If I wanted to for freestyle
I could dive in and start swimming butterfly,
or breaststroke, or backstroke, and not get DQ'd.
But you just can't touch the lane line
or touch the bottom of the pool,
and everything's good to go.
Next up, Cast Away.
[water splashing]
[grunting and panting]
If I had been on an island without food for a couple years,
and my best friend just fell in the water
I'd probably have a really hard time treading water.
For sculling it's not bad.
Sculling, treading, it's the same things
where you're kind of just windshield wiper in the arms
out in front.
There's different like type of sculls you can do
and stationary kicking.
You can just do normal flutter kick, normal dolphin kick,
where your feet are together, or egg beater,
which is what Tom Hanks is doing in this scene.
So it's actually pretty good.
[splashing]
There is a huge difference between swimming in a pool
and then swimming in the ocean.
Even when I go to the beach and I'll hop in the water
it's a totally different feel.
You don't have a controlled environment
with nice saltwater and nice chlorine,
nice crystal clear water with glass on top.
I even noticed the difference for swim in relays
to where the water will get super, super choppy,
and you'll dive in maybe behind
after the first two legs go off,
and you can feel the chop hitting you
throughout the whole race.
It can throw off your whole rhythm.
Not just in a pool this is certainly much different.
[grunting and splashing]
I feel like the boat would have moved. Right?
That raft, there's no way, it's made out of sticks.
It would have moved.
Dang it, like this is mean.
I'm going to feel bad after this scene.
You're just stranded for so long.
But I feel like even if he was stranded
he should've been able to pull the raft made out of sticks.
Things are much, much lighter in the water.
[grunting and panting]
I think the ball was only like 15 feet away.
That's going to take like maybe three seconds to go.
And then you can just chuck Wilson back to the the life raft
and everything will be good.
'Cause the water is not even that choppy
for the middle of the ocean.
Like the raft isn't going to go that far.
I feel like he could have saved Wilson to be honest.
Next up, Pride.
- To the end and back.
- Lead the way.
- Alright on your mark, get set.
- Now the guy starting on the right is correct,
but for the seventies.
The guy on the left that's way back in the day.
Some people it's called a trophy start.
That's way, way back.
And they would start like that, and then people were like
oh, when I bend over and use my arms it's much faster.
And then nowadays
it's developed into actually putting a foot back
and our blocks have a wedge now.
That's adjustable and you can find what your number is
just like the track has.
[splash]
- Yo man, what you doing man it's a race.
- That was probably the least efficient way
to dive into the pool.
The fastest part of swimming
is when you're not in the water actually swimming.
It's diving off the block.
So, you want to carry your momentum from the block
as much as you can into the actual swimming,
slow part of the race.
They said to the end and back so that would be,
they're doing a fifty-three right now.
These are Americans sounds like they have American accents
so this should be 50 yards not 50 meters.
This is the shortest race that's offered
in American swimming.
- Yo man, what you doing man it's a race.
- I'm not ready.
- Go man.
- In practice, we're going to be wearing
what the guy on the right is wearing,
that yellow and blue suit.
People just call it speedo, weeny bennet, banana hammock,
brief, I think is what most people call it.
In a race, we have something called a tech suit
and it's what everyone calls the biker shorts.
And it goes from, has to be below your belly button
and then it's got to be above the knee.
A lot of them are water proof, water resistant.
And a lot of them have materials
that are buoyant in the water
to keep your hips up the best they can.
Now you got to keep in mind
that it's this much fabric that we're wearing
so, it's not going to make you a better swimmer.
And that's certainly something I would not wear in practice
'cause it's super tight, it's uncomfortable.
You just want to be in something comfortable in practice.
- Go man.
- Go, go.
[splashing]
- The dive was terrible.
You see how much water is splashing up right here.
This is what you don't want.
You want as limited splash, as limited bubbles
as you possibly can.
He didn't get his hips high enough on the start.
So, that's why his feet are about to smack.
[splashing]
You want to visualize it as a hula hoop.
You're diving into a hula hoop into the water
and then carrying that momentum.
[upbeat music]
It's no surprise that he didn't do the correct turn either.
I guess he's probably new to swimming.
It appears is what they're setting up in this scene.
So, he didn't really do a turn.
He just kind of touched the wall, turned around,
caught his breath, and then flipped off.
And then my other guy, came into the wall
and actually did a normal flip turn.
So, that was also very accurate.
And then he didn't do any, not a single underwater
on this scene.
So for a 50 freestyle,
I usually take seven kicks off of the wall
that he's pushing off right now,
and he didn't take any.
But I don't really think under water's were as popular
as they are now, nowadays.
I think that's why the sports gotten so much faster
is because people are still figuring out
how the sport works.
What's the fastest thing to do.
And that's why I think
we've just seen a very steep progression with the sport
with people going faster times, harder training,
and better technique.
I think is what it comes down to.
This gentlemen was breathing every two the whole race
which means he's going to be breathing every two strokes
to his, it was actually to his right side.
So, I breathe to my left side every two strokes as well,
in a hundred freestyle.
This is only a fifty freestyle.
At a high level, no one breathes in the fifty yard free,
fifty meter free.
You're not taking a breath at all.
[group cheering]
- Oh man, he got beat by Captain Pants.
- You look fierce now or what?
- The other swimmer that just won the race,
I think he was breathing every three
which is just hold your breath.
You got to hold your breath if it's a fifty-three.
I wouldn't say it was fierce. It was actually so slow.
They, none of them were kicking
and it looked like a mile pace.
I was actually fine with it.
Technique actually looked pretty good
but they're swimming like really slow.
So, it's super easy to do good technique
when you're swimming really slow.
Next up, Swimming Upstream.
[clapping]
- Come on Tiny, come on, come on, come on.
- So who's planning on coming second to me?
- You'll have to do a lot better than that with me mate.
- You saw everyone walking out behind one another
single file, lining up in front of their lanes.
They'll never do that for a prelim race
so, I'm assuming this is a finals.
A lot on the line right here. It's the last race.
This is where everything matters.
The prelims and the semifinals are done.
This is just the finals.
- On your mark!
[gunshot]
[cheering and clapping]
- They started off with backstroke.
All the starts were terrible.
The backstroke wedge wasn't invented yet either.
Nowadays backstrokers get like a little wedge
to curl their toes over.
So maybe everyone's slipped off, off the start here
and that that's why it was bad.
This is bad technique.
He's looking back at the opposite end from, or the end from
where he started from.
Backstroke, you're supposed to be almost laying
on top of the water.
Because if you go like this and you put your head like that,
your hips are going to go straight down
and then you're just going to be absolutely plowing
through the water.
All of them, they have their heads straight up.
They should be laying further back.
This body position right here is pretty bad.
[upbeat music]
That part right there where they're swimming,
that actually looked pretty good.
They're catching good water.
I thought their hips were a little low.
[splashing]
- Come on, Tiny.
- He's going to win.
- Before you show up for that meet,
they'll give you a couple days
where you can warm up, get used to the pool.
Because every pool, to a certain extent,
is going to be a little different.
You can get your bearings as to where the markings are.
Sometimes they have 15 meter markings on the bottom
sometimes the lane line colorings a little different
for every pool.
Sometimes the blocks are slightly, slightly different.
[cheering and clapping]
So you get used to everything leading up to the meet
just to kind of tune things up
and get your bearings straight
before getting into race mode.
[suspenseful music]
[crowd cheering]
Backstroke nowadays, a lot of it is underwater.
It's super underwater dominant.
You have guys going right up until 15 meters.
You can't go past 15 meters so I wish they showed that.
But it's actually a pretty good technique,
besides the head position and the hips sinking down.
The catch was good.
Really happy for Tiny winning that hundred back right there.
Next up, Kingsman: The Secret Service.
[ominous suspenseful music]
This is one of my worst nightmares.
I used to not be able to fall asleep at night
because I had a fear of drowning.
I've been swimming my whole life.
I mean the water still can be very scary.
It's one of the most dangerous forces of nature.
And to be able to form a relationship with the water
through swimming, it's a beautiful thing.
I wasn't timing it but my guys lung capacity
must be gallons and gallons of air.
He didn't even get like that good of a breath
before he went down.
I'm assuming you get wakened up
by your room flooding with water.
Your heart rate's probably going to go up a little bit.
And he's talking, which is wasting air,
and then he takes one breath,
and he just held his breath for I don't know how long
swimming around the room.
No way.
[ominous music]
I've definitely gotten pressed for oxygen.
I've come up, I mean a little dizzy. It's part of the sport.
You just want to be focusing on your breathing
the whole time and then get that last breath before you go,
and staying calm is huge.
So, he did look very calm the whole time.
But he wasn't that good at swimming
from when he was just going to the door.
It was a very labored, enforced stroke.
And no no bubbles came out of his mouth whatsoever
which I thought it was incredible.
If you're panicking underwater,
air is going to be coming out of your mouth, which is not,
you don't want to be wasting oxygen like that.
I mean, it's the same thing in practice.
When we do sets like, underwater sets and stuff like that
you want to contain as much air as you possibly can.
There's definitely aspects of the race
to where I'm not breathing.
My last fifteen meters of both my hundred fly, hundred free,
I'm not going to be taking a breath,
and that's at the end of a race.
And it hurts but I feel like it's a faster part
of the stroke.
[ominous music]
It's very hard to see underwater especially without goggles.
Everything's fuzzy. So, for him to be able to find the door
and then finagle his way all the way to the window,
without running into anything,
and knowing exactly where to go.
Maybe he knew the room really well. I don't know.
But I would have said a prayer and gone back to bed.
Next up, Just Go With It.
- Go.
- Go Michael.
[people cheering]
- I don't know if the kid's acting,
or if he's like actually might be in trouble right here,
and they just decided to film the scene. But this is bad.
You want to wean them into the water.
You want to have them enjoy the water.
I've seen kids as young as,
I want to say as like one or two years old
already getting swim lessons.
I mean you can start very young.
I grew up in Florida.
You look left or right
there's either going to be an alligator or a body of water.
So, my parents wanted to make sure that
I was seeing the water as something that I can enjoy
and not something to be scared of.
I mean I grew up boating, wakeboarding,
swimming competitively, going to friend's lake houses,
and the water was never considered a threat to me.
- Let's do this.
- Really? Okay, he's ready, he's ready to rock.
- Almost.
- What, no.
- Oh my, ladies and gentlemen, off come the floaties.
- I wore floaties. When I didn't wear them
I did look something along these lines,
but I was much, much younger.
- I did it. I did it.
- That's so funny. Actually the first time I had a race,
I wasn't even entered in the race.
I just stepped up on the blocks, dove in,
swam to the other end of the pool,
and I got out and did the same thing.
I was like, oh mom, dad, I won a medal.
So, I think that's my first end with swimming.
And that's what got me my first feel to it.
And I think after that I just kind of stuck with it.
- Kick it. - Go, move your arms.
So, the more white water you have in a stroke,
the more splashing going on it's wasted energy.
Because it means you're putting energy into the water
that could be used to be driving yourself forward
with the water, rather than just directed at the water.
So some of the best swimming that you see
it's going to look almost as if the persons not even trying
at all.
Those are some of the best races I had
is where I don't try to power through the water
I work with the water.
[cheering]
We'll give him A for effort, and he was excited.
That's the most important thing. He enjoyed his time.
Thank you all for watching these clips with me,
and we will see you next time.