Heather: I know that Mark, Fraser, and I regularly bring you swimming videos with tips on how
to swim faster or how to improve your stroke. Just because we know how to help you guys
with your swimming doesn't mean that we think our own strokes are perfect. In fact, in my
case, I know that my stroke is far from it. Today I thought I'd be really honest and open
up and share some of the faults of my freestyle stroke. I'm then going to be covering some
drills which I could be doing at home and also in the pool which I'm sure you guys could
benefit from too. [music]
Heather: I've decided to do some self-analysis with my stroke but I'm also going to be getting
a little assistance. Yes, of course, I listen to friends and obviously my fellow presenters
at GTN. I'm actually wanting to step outside of the GTN bubble and speak to a particular
coach who I know will give me a very objective stroke analysis. I've chosen to speak to my
former coach and friend Robin Brew who was an Olympic swimmer himself and now a coach.
It was actually his father Archie Brew who taught me to swim and coached me up until
the age of 15 when Robin then took over. With more than two decades of having coached me,
I think it's fair to say that Robin has probably seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of my
freestyle stroke so it's probably time I gave him a call.
[phone rings] Heather: Robin, great to see you again, great
to speak to you. I know you have seen my stroke over many many years and you've of course
seen it evolve. I just to let our viewers know. I've sent you some clips of more recent
footage. First off, what are your kind of main observations of my strokes from a critique
point of view? Robin: Well, I think the important thing to
establish is that you have come from a performance swimming and pentathlon background. There's
a big difference in looking to what you do now which is open water swimming and triathlon
swimming and things like that. We work very hard to make your stroke as efficient as it
could be. We knew we had sticking points. I think one of the things that you see in
anybody's stroke there's a signature to it. I think you've commented before people can
tell that you're swimming, you have a style of swimming, you have a unique movement pattern
to your stroke and so do most people. I think the thing is to look at the things that are
value-added to strokes rather than just breaking it down. A lot of people are very quick to
jump in say, "Well, that's wrong, that's wrong, this should be wrong." Actually, what is the
value to what you're doing? We didn't worry about the things that didn't matter too much
in your stroke. We're worried about the things that were going
to make a bigger difference, propulsion, for example, a little bit more efficiency for
example. You didn't have the tidiest stroke and a lot of swimmers don't but you have an
effective stroke. I'm coming in with a positive analysis.
Heather: I'm bracing myself, it's been a very lovely start but now if we sort of get to
the point. I think of all the years of working with you and with Archie and with other coaches
that insist like-- and probably the majority of our viewers' main issue is the elbow and
the actual pull. I don't know what your thoughts are from those clips. In some angles, it looks
better than others and it's something that especially when we're filming I'm probably
even more conscious of trying to keep it high. Is that something that you would really notice
still in my stroke and if so what I can do about it?
Robin: Yes, again a lot of coaches, a lot of athletes will look to and obvious point
high elbow. We need a high elbow in the stroke. A high elbow generates more proportion, gives
you a better catch, you get more connectivity with the water, you've got more leverage and
so everybody wants a high elbow. You've got to look at what's stopping you getting a high
elbow. When you look at your strokes, your balance in the water at the moment is significantly
out, you've got excessive body roll in the stroke, your hips are rolling way too far.
If you imagine a boat in a choppy sea let's think from side to side, how can you stay
balanced and get a connection when there's so much movement? First thing for me would
be to sort your body position out because there's way too much movement, you're rolling
around. You've got a body roll, yes, you need a body roll but not as much as that. There's
a little bit of a disconnect between the hips and shoulders and you've always been a shoulder-led
swimmer. Now, what does that mean? It means that when
you get out of the pool and your shoulders are killing you and that defines your stroke.
You've never really been able to get the pressure on your upper chest and your lats. When your
lats work for you, you then know you've got that connectivity with a nice high elbow.
I watched you swim, the whole movement pattern is quite deep, it's led from the shoulder
and it's very hard then to straighten that back and say let's get a high elbow. Because
you've missed it, you're moving too quickly. Heather: It makes sense, now obviously we're
in a weird situation now where we can't get to the pool as much as we'd want to. What
would you give me to take away from this both if there is anything land-based I could do
and when we can get back in the pool what I could be doing to work towards this.
Robin: There's a whole bunch of things, first of all, you don't have a swimming engine or
a biking engine or a running engine. Everybody is out there you can see on social media keeping
fit, that's great, that's got to be the first thing to do. To be a little bit more functional
in the movement patterns, to train them to trap fiber recruitment going that's relative
to swimming, using stretch cords is a great way to do that. One of the things I did training
for the Olympics was use ice connecting machines. We've got you on them before if you remember
at [unintelligible 00:06:12] and under the gym the ice connecting machines there, they
were fantastic for dryland work. Now not everybody has got an ice connecting machine and they're
hard to find so just use a Swiss ball or a bench or something like that to lie down.
Put your body in a similar position as prone as you would be in the water and then maybe
hook your stretch cords out and do the stroke on your back, not on your front.
Now that's an interesting concept because on your front you're fighting against gravity,
you've got the balls in the way. If you manage it lying on your back, you could really stretch
out at the catch and the front and follow the stroke patterns through the whole body
right the way to the end without interference and with optimizing control. You can see it
that way, you can look and watch your hands and actually think about what your hands are
doing. We've done some videos and sent them out to
people and it's bizarre how the video is correct. They've sent me videos back of what they've
been doing but like how can you get that so badly wrong when it's there in front of you?
It's about movement patterning and it helps people get it right.
Shoulder stability is another one, simple things like pullovers with small dumbbells.
If you haven't got any dumbbells, put two full water bottles in your hand or get something
that gives a little bit of resistance. Again use elastics, find a way of creating
resistance and just simple movements that replicate the stroke mechanics is quite a
good thing. The other thing is take time to watch clips of good swim strokes and then
visualize. I absolutely love visualization because you've got to have an understanding
of what you're doing and you've seen the videos you were doing. I bet you think you're not
doing that when you're swimming and you say "Well, that doesn't look quite right. I think
I'm doing this." You start imagining correcting those things
you want to and use the technique of imagery and visualization to help you create some
better movement patterns. Because there's a whole load of evidence out that say thinking
about it does actually work. Thinking about how you want to make those movement patterns,
putting the stroke in your mindset of the perfect model, and trying to replicate it
and feel it if you can. It's useful. There's loads of things, it doesn't have to be all
effort. Heather: When I go back to the pool, what
drills or what could I be doing to actually help me find that natural timing again?
Robin: In terms of triathletes going fast or 200 freestyles going fast or 1,500 free
stylists going fast, the timing really is very very unusual. You'll get some outliers
but they'll be less than 1% that have a timing that is not at the front of the stroke. What
we mean by that is that the two hands are always close together. As one hand enters
the water the other hand is exiting the water. You've got this thing called catch and exit,
that's got to be pretty set. As your hand is going forward, the other one
is coming out as the other hand is coming forward over the recovery you've got to have
almost got this catch up feel to it. Now you can start by doing pure catch-up and then
work back. Now a lot of people can't do catch-up, they don't know how to do it. If you leave
one hand extended and put the other beside it and simply kick for six beats of the leg
and then pull the other hand through back to the front, kick for six, pull the other
hand back to the front, kick for six, pull it, then move onto just touching the hand.
Then move onto the hand moving just before the other hand gets in. Then move onto just
increasing the timing, so what I call quarter timing, you've got-- That's pretty much where
the most effective stroke is, in quarter timing. Once you've established your timing, it gives
you that ability to get the stroke set up at the front, which is what is important for
you. You'll be better balanced because the timing of the stroke is better. If you watch
the videos on your leg kick, you can see how much sway you've got in your stroke.
A lot of it is because of the rotation. I know you are thinking about your head going
down. It looks pretty good, but when you breathe, your head comes up. Instead of keeping it
down and rolling it, you actually keep it down, lift your head to breathe. That adds
to the twist in the stroke as well. All those small things have a big impact further down
the body. The big giveaway-- don't worry about the legs because the legs look after themselves.
If the head is right, and the body position right, then the pull is fine.
Heather: Very quickly, just going back to the rotation part of my stroke. Now, I feel
that my rotations maybe increase more because I've been trying to engage my lats more because
I find, obviously, if you're too flat, then it's very hard to engage your lats. How do
you find that happy medium of, "I'm still not quite engaging my lats enough, but I'm
over-rotating," and how would somebody watching this work on engaging their lats?
Robin: Right. You alluded to earlier that you were pulling with your shoulders, so your
hand is going deep and you're leading from the shoulder, here. Try thinking about working
from your forearm rather than your shoulder. Put the hand, point to where you want to go.
Imagine that you're swimming in the water, you're looking at the bottom of the pool.
You don't look at the point, but just imagine you're pointing forward to the end of the
pool. Once you've got that, it's wrist flexion,
elbow flexion, and feel the water on the forearm. A really good drill is to swim with closed
hands because that takes away all the feel of the water, and so where do you have to
feel the water? With your forearms. That's a good thing to do. Using your forearms to
pull really does help lift the elbow up and does engage the lats. In your case, a little
bit late because you're going deep. You've already engaged the shoulder and then you're
trying to transfer the pressure here onto here, and you can't do it because it's loaded
here. Avoid loading the shoulder, go straight to
the chest because it's this connection with the forearm. The chest will then, if you contract
those two, the major and minor at the back and the pectorals at the front, connect. That's
what pull the arms back. What you're doing is you're pulling back with your shoulder,
and it's a common issue. It just needs slowing down and refining. Stay a bit flatter.
Think of your hips and your upper body. What's tending to happen is your upper body's doing
the bit and the hips are overdoing it so there's a disconnect here. Lock that in. It's nothing
to do with core strength. It's just to do with your kinetic chain and making it work
together. Heather: I completely understand that. Final
one, and we touched on my head movement. Now, I remember years ago that I moved to bilateral,
and then you changed me back to breathing two and fours. This was obviously for 200
freestyle. Open water is different because of waves and where you need to look. You need
to breathe on both sides and I've definitely gone back to just breathing when I need to
breathe. I know we reduced it down to purely on my right side to limit that head movement.
You've touched on excessive head movement. As a triathlon swimmer, when you do need to
breathe on both sides, how can you work on reducing the head movement?
Robin: When you're not turning your head to breathe, it really helps you build that symmetry
of the stroke. It's not just about keeping the head still. It's the alignment when you
breathe. What tends to happen is that people lift their head around to breathe rather than
roll into the stroke to breathe. It's balance, for more balance. Swimming with fins is a
good idea in the warm-ups or warm-downs. Try not to use them in main sets because you get
this artificial assistance, you lose the feel of the water.
When you're working on skill-specific stuff, fins is great because it gives you a bit more
propulsion, a bit more time, a bit more length to the stoke. Coming back to your point about
should people breathe bilaterally? I think if you've got a naturally short stroke, and
from what you mentioned earlier about there's a community that think, "Actually, forget
the timing. Just get on with the stoke," you'll probably need to breathe bilateral because
the stroke's too short. You've got a right breath, a left breath,
a right-- because you can't get a proper breath in. If you lengthen the stroke, you only need
to breathe one side. You can choose whether that's a right or the left side, or choose
to see a buoy on the left. You've got to practice sometimes breathing to the left, sometimes
breathing to the right. In all the work that I do, I tend to advocate single-sided breathing
because it helps extend the stroke out. You're getting more propulsion because you've got
more length, you've got more time, and you can get a bigger breath as well.
Heather: The camera doesn't lie, and it seems that the coach doesn't either. Honestly, some
great and frank pointers on my stroke there. Plenty for me to work on. Yes, I know this
was an analysis of my own stroke, but, hopefully, there were lots of similarities and crossovers
that you guys could relate to and go and work on yourselves. Obviously, we cover points
of exercises you could do for dry land. If you have missed our dry land videos, then
go and check those out. There's one for stretched chords and bodyweight exercises.
You can also work on flexibility of, say, your shoulders, or your ankles. It's now a
time to identify any weakness in your stroke and work on it so when you get back in the
pool, you're ready to go. I know I'm certainly desperate for the pools to open and get back
in and work on my own stroke. Hopefully, you've enjoyed this and it's given you some ideas
for your own swimming strokes. Do check out all of our social media channels as well and
give them a like and a follow. [00:16:44] [END OF AUDIO]