I Fixed my Student’s Freestyle so He Can Break 200100m

It doesn't matter how good you are at swimming, you can't see your own stroke. And this is why it's so important to have someone else look at it. And if that someone else is a coach with 15 years of professional swimming experience, it's even better. In today's video, I will do the stroke breakdown of one of my students, Gareth. I will do the stroke analysis. We'll see what's working, what doesn't work, and we'll give specific drills to practice and also the practical sets. If you want your stroke to be analyzed too, you can apply in the link down below. Let's get started. Hello, Endurance IG fam. Today, we're going to analyze the stroke of one of my students, Gareth. We have different angles and different footage, both above and under the water. We're going to start with above the water and then move into the under the water part. And we're going to do both slow motion and general speed. So let's get started. So from the start and from the beginning, I can already tell that he's laying a little bit too low on the top in the water. And we can fix this little mistake with one single thing. And this is one of the most important things in swimming to focus on is your head position. Your head position in swimming has to be in line with your whole body. And when you're side breathing, it has to be really together with your shoulders and with your whole body. And if you're side breathing and taking your head fully out of the water, this causing your whole body to then go down and especially your lower body because your body acts like a scale. So if your head is too high and in our situation here, the head is too high, then the legs, you can see how low in the water they're kicking. And we can fix this with one simple thing. We can just put the head a little bit lower when he's side breathing. So let's say he's side breathing and like this, and we can simply just put this part of his head a little bit lower and then only keep one goggle out of the water, one goggle above the water. It's still going to be enough to take a breath. And then eventually, like when you do that, when you take a breath really low on the side, and you can also try to side your feet, try to look diagonally at your feet, how you're kicking. This will fully correct the whole body position in general. It's going to get Gareth really higher in the water and also put his hips a bit higher. Then the legs are going to also stay a little higher and the whole body position will be flatter. It's going to be less drag in the water and easier in general to swim. So we can simply just put the head a little bit down, half of the face in the water, half out of the water. And then the whole body position will also then be in a streamlined position. Yeah, so you can see that a bit high side breathing here, but that's totally fine. It's all fixable with the head position. And again, in swimming, it's very important where your head goes, your body follows. If you fix your head position, 99% of the body position problems will disappear. Another thing that I want to focus on and that I want Gareth to actually correct is the way he's entering the water. Yeah, from here, you can see that he enters the water and he is crossing over a little bit. It's one of the biggest mistakes when you start swimming. When people start swimming, they start taking strokes diagonal. Yeah, and they're breaking the center line of their body. So the center line of your body. Yeah, that's not the center line, but the center line of your body. Yeah, so yeah, if you do the stroke and you break the center line, so let's say you go from here and your strokes goes over, you're crossing over that center line. You're also going to waddle in the water. You're going to zigzag. And also we have a footage later on where you can clearly see that Gareth is zigzagging in the water and that's how he is wasting his energy. And actually that what also kills the speed then because you're not swimming in a straight line. Also from here, you can also see that because he's zigzagging, the legs then also have to compensate. And as you see later in the video, the leg also then have to move like scissors, really widespread from each other because he's crossing over and he's swimming a little bit diagonal. Legs then also see how wide the legs are because they need to compensate the whole movement just to stay flat and to swim in a straight line. So this is another thing that we're going to focus on with Gareth. And the way you can actually fix that is with a simple catch-up drill where you're trying to catch the other arm out front. So when you're swimming, basically what you do, you swim with one arm and then you're trying to constantly catch that other arm out front. So when this arm moves forward, you're tapping that other arm. And then after that, you're only then starting the new stroke and the new catch. So as you swim freestyle in a catch position, what that gives you is now your hands meet here out front and you don't have this opportunity to actually cross over and go and break that center line position. Another great drill if you want to fix this mistake of crossing over in freestyle is simply just one single arm freestyle drill. You can whether swim keeping one arm front or put it by your side. And what that's going to give you is you're going to enter, you know, in line, your shoulder, your elbow and your hand in one straight line without crossing over. You also can try at the start as a beginner level to just hold the kickboard. So imagine there is a kickboard. It's not going to give you an opportunity to also go over that kickboard yet and then cross over. So this is another great drill if you want to work on your crossing over mistake. The catch up drill, the single arm freestyle drill with the kickboard or without kickboard. And you can also optionally wear fins for more stability and balance. Now let's have a look at Gareth's underwater footage. And here I think we're going to find many things that we can focus on because what happens under the water is the most important part in swimming because that's exactly where most of the power and the movement comes from, from the underwater part, especially the back of your pool. From here, you can already see one really, really, really serious and really important thing and mistake that Gareth needs to focus on. When he enters the water, the arm goes really too deep and then it has to go back to on the surface of the water. And that's the movement that Gareth has. Yeah. So the arm goes in the water and then it has to go out of the water then to be able to start the new pool and the new catch. And that's exactly why he's dropping his elbow in the pool because from this position, he can't really have that high elbow position, that high elbow catch in the water. And that's exactly why he's dropping his elbow when he's swimming. And you can see from the footage straight here, he's dropping the elbow here as well. You can see, right? You can see here that the arm enters and because it goes straight, it enters too deep and then it has to go back on the surface of the water and compensate. Now, remember, every time you swim in freestyle, you want to enter the water, but don't go straight in your next catch. The movement in freestyle, what I want you to guys think about is you enter the water and you don't go straight down in the next catch. What you really want to do in freestyle is you want to enter the water and then you want to glide a little bit forward, build that momentum. And then from here, you want to start the catch with a high elbow position and then start pulling the water back. When you're swimming, you want to catch the donut. Imagine there's a donut in front of you and you really want to catch the donut. You want to enter the water. You want to glide a little bit to catch the donut with your fingertips. And then as you catch the donut, you want to pull that donut back and under your body, yeah? If you have this hand position, you can't really catch the donut and then pull it all the way back. And the other thing that I also want to focus on is the cutting the stroke short. And instead of finishing here at the length of your arm, you can see that Gareth is already, he still didn't finish the stroke and he's already getting that arm and getting that hand out of the water to start the new catch. So he's rushing in the catch instead of actually pulling all the way back and then going into that next catch. What I really want you, Gareth, to focus on and other students as well is most of the movement and the power in swimming comes exactly from this back pull position. It's not because of your catch. Yeah, of course, catch is important. The pull is important. The way you keep your head is important. But you move in swimming because you pull from the mid pull all the way back. And this is supposed to be your strongest and the most powerful part in freestyle. So if you cut it short, imagine how much you can move. Yeah, all the work that you have done above the water and in your catch and in the beginning of your pull is just wasted because you just didn't finish the stroke. And also you can see the little mistake here that Gareth has the palm going like this out of the water instead of pushing the water, pushing the water back down and then going out of the water. So this is another thing that he has to focus on, really finishing the stroke with like almost the palm looking up, almost like throw the arm out of the water and you can start the recovery and then the new catch. So that's another mistake that I want you, Gareth, and other students to focus on because I think that this is where most of the speed and wasted in the water because you're doing everything right. The kick works, the head position, the catch in the pool. But you can see, yeah, all the way here. Finishing here at the stroke where the stroke is supposed to be finished right here, right here, all the way, all the way. Yeah. Okay. So there are great drills to work on your underwater pool and especially the back of your pool. You can do it with fins or without. One really nice drill is the dog paddle drill where instead of actually taking your arm all the way out of the water, you're going to do, you're going to just do the same catch, pool and then the end of the pool. But instead, you're going to move your arm straight back in the next catch. You're now going to skip the recovery and move the hand back front to start the new catch. And what that's going to give you is you're going to focus on specifically pulling all the way back without cutting your stroke short. Another really great drill is same principle, but just using two arms. And that's called a double arm pool. What you're going to do, you're going to have both of your arms straight front. You're going to stretch them out, enter, glide a little bit. And then like in the dolphin pool, you're going to pull both arms all the way back with that high elbow position. Finish here by your side without cutting your stroke and then moving both of your arms underwater to start the next pool. We have another angle of Gareth filming. So we have the angle where he's swimming forward. And from here, you can clearly see how he's zigzagging in the water because of that crossover mistake. You can see how the body is going and how wide the legs are going in the water because of that compensation. You can see another thing that I want to focus here, that arc form in the water, because from here, it's really difficult to pull to to then have formed that high elbow position and pull the water all the way back. So what I really want you to focus on when you're swimming freestyle is that you enter the water, enter the water with your fingertips first, then only your elbow and only then the rest of your arm. A really great drill to practice to practice this is a simple finger drag drill. What you're going to do is in your recovery, you're going to just drag your fingertips down on the top of the water, slightly tapping the water and then entering with those fingertips, the water back. So, yes, we're going to focus on with Gareth on the head position in the water, the crossing over mistake and the hand entry, how you enter the water then determines how much water you can pull if you're going to have the high elbow position or not and the cutting the stroke short. And we can do this with the drills, catch up drill, the single arm drill with the kickboard, without dog paddle drill, the double pull drill, finger drag drill, just to have the clear and really, really easy entry. And from there to have a really strong and powerful high elbow catch. If you really want me to break down your stroke, what works in your stroke, what doesn't work and give you specific drills that you can focus on first, apply in the link down below. See you in the next video and happy swimming. Bye-bye.