Does 1960's swim technique still work

Do freestyle tips from the 1960s still work today? Recently I came across some notes that I made from a DVD that the 1960 1500 meter freestyle gold medalist John Conrad said put together. And 10 years ago I was really deep into learning freestyle technique and trying to figure everything out that I could about the stroke. And John and I would actually go back and forth about some of the things that he was teaching, that I was teaching, and we'd disagree on some things. So in this video I want to share with you some of the notes that I made when going through John Conrad's DVD and some of the things I don't necessarily agree with as well. Let's get stuck into the video. And if you're looking to improve your own freestyle technique, I've put together a freestyle technique checklist that you can get at the link below. It gives you everything in the right order to help develop and improve your own freestyle. The first note I made was apply energy only when needed. I really like this tip. When we talk about recovery over the top of the water, it's called recovery because you should be relaxed and recovering the arm over the top and not using unnecessary energy. So apply force only when needed. So I really like that tip where a lot of people are trying to muscle their way down the pool through all the different parts of the stroke. But if you can relax and switch off a little bit in the recovery parts of the stroke, you can build into the catch, put a little bit more force into the catch in the pool as you're accelerating through. Finding that sweet spot of how much effort and force to apply can make a big difference. Swim at flotation depth. This is something that John Conrad would teach is you should swim at the same depth that you would float. Now, I agree with this in some respects. So when we do our freestyle clinics, one of the exercises we get people to do is to float. And we get them to float in a ball. We get them to try and float horizontally. Now, everyone's got different buoyancy profiles, meaning you've got different muscle fat distribution, limb length, where your lungs are, how much air it can hold. So everyone floats differently. So I would agree with this that if you can sit kind of at the surface or just below it, that's a pretty good place to swim. But we do get a lot of people, particularly older guys, who have heavier hips and legs and they tend to sink. So I wouldn't want them to swim at that depth. But I think in general, it's pretty good advice to follow. Anxiety is number one priority. If you are tense and anxious when you're in the water, that can really ruin the rest of your stroke. So if we haven't dealt with that side of things yet, the anxiety that you might have around being in water that you can't stand up in, then we really need to address that first and foremost. Because it doesn't matter how fit you are. It doesn't matter how strong you are or how good your technique is. If you've got this anxiety around being in water, then it's going to be hard to progress from there. As you relax, your body increases in volume. This is a really interesting tip that I got from John Conrad, is that if you're tense, then you will take up slightly less space in the water because of that tension through the body. Whereas when you relax, it's almost like if you're trying to flex in front of the mirror, things will come together. But if you relax, then you'll actually take up more volume. And that means that you can float a little bit better in the water. So that is one of the reasons why you need that sense of softness and relaxation about how you hold yourself in the water. Swimming efficiently means you're relaxed and loose. If you look at the very best swimmers in the world, they don't ever look like they are muscling their way through the water. They've got this sense of relaxation, only necessary tension through the way that they hold their body. So we want to get to that point. So if you're trying to go faster by muscling your way through the water and trying to force it, that's not sustainable. So we want this sense of looseness and relaxation through the way that we move. Look forward when learning, look down when more comfortable. John Conrad's made this tip as part of his DVD, and I somewhat agree with it. So if you're not super comfortable with being in the water, you may want to see where you're going when you swim. But the downside to that is it may drop your hips and your legs. So I think it just depends on the person. So if you are really struggling with that comfort in the water, maybe it is worthwhile looking slightly forwards or forwards to see where you're going. But we don't want to stick with that for too long because for a lot of people that means dropped hips and dropped legs. But the range that we want our head position should be 0 to 45. So I think you'd be better off looking about 45 degrees in front so you can still have a sense of what's coming as opposed to looking straight down. Pivot your body. When we think of rotation side to side, don't think about rolling and twisting side to side. You're probably better off thinking about pivoting. Thinking you're rotating around the spine and you're pivoting from your right side to your left side. And where your rotation primarily comes from is that pivot or that rotation and reach forwards. That's where the rotation comes in. So that can be a good way to think of your rotation. Pivoting your body. Relax your kick. It is not worth the effort. Unless you are sprinting a 50 freestyle, maybe 100, your kick really is only going to provide up to about 10% of your propulsion. So there is no need to kick really, really hard. It's there more for balance and for timing. Not so much propulsion. So I think this is really good advice where the kick can help really coordinate kins in the stroke and can be really useful. So we don't want to forget about the legs. But a lot of your propulsion is going to come from your upper body. So let's put most of our focus there. Keep the kick light. Kick on your back instead of your front. Now, I somewhat agree with this advice. The reason you can improve your kick by kicking on your back is it can help you focus more on the down kick. Well, in this case, when we flick the foot down, it can help you work on a better up kick if you're on your back. So sometimes if we're kicking on our front, we're just thinking about the downward movement. That's certainly important. But we also need to think about the upward movement. When we draw the leg up in a somewhat straight movement, that's half of the kick. So we need to make sure we're moving our legs correctly that way. And so by kicking on your back, you can help develop that part of your kick. So I think it's good advice that kicking on your back, not only on your front, but on your back as well, that can come in handy. But same thing for kicking on your side. You can develop your kick in both directions by kicking on your side as well. Both arms don't go at the same speed. If you're thinking of your stroke as this windmill action, where everything's going at the same time and the same speed, there's a good chance that your timing's way off in your freestyle. The speed of the arms will change through the stroke. One of the ways that we like to teach is slow to fast. So once we've entered the water and reaching forwards, it's slower through there. And then it will speed up as you go through the catch and pull. And then we release out the back. So if we think of timing, it's going to enter, extend out. This arm's going to be going quicker out the back in order to almost catch up out the front. And then we go through. So we're not going in complete opposites to each other with our arms. So I think that's really good advice. Delay the pull. This is pretty similar to that last tip that John gave, is you shouldn't rush into the catch, or what he's calling the pull. You should take that little bit of time to reach forwards, set up the catch, and then go through. So pretty similar advice, but delay the pull. Don't come in and go straight through. It is counterintuitive. You think that in order to get going and get your speed up, that you enter and immediately start pressing back because you need to go forwards. But when you reach forwards and slide the hand out, you're going to be the most streamlined at that point. You're going to be able to get into a stronger position with your lats and your back and shoulders as you reach out. So it's important to not skip the reach part of the stroke. Learn by exaggeration. This is such a great tip that John Conrad gave in his DVD, that if you are trying to make a change, or you're trying to learn something, exaggerate it. So when we're running freestyle clinics, and in a lot of our courses as well, I get people to do things the wrong way, and then the right way. Do it completely wrong. For example, with your kick. Let's do a really big kick. Lots of hip and knee bend. Massive kick. See how you feel. Most people get completely gassed out at the end of that. Then we bring them to a smaller, narrower kick and get them to feel that. So going between those two extremes is a really good way to find the sweet spot. Because as a coach, I can give you advice, I can give you tips, but the best coach is going to be yourself. You can feel for things in the water. You can get a sense of what's right by how fast you travel, the feeling that you get in the water. So learning by exaggeration is such a great tip that I think we don't often do enough of. Because whenever we're trying to make changes in the stroke, if you try and change it by 5% or 10%, I guarantee you, you're probably not changing it at all. So more times than not, things have to be exaggerated to be changed. The first component of swimming is relaxing. The second is catch up. The third is almost catch up. This was quite an interesting tip that John put in his DVD. And in some ways, I do agree with this. First, we need to learn how to be comfortable and relaxed in the water. So we just work on breathing and floating and those sorts of things. Next, it can be good to learn freestyle with a full catch up. Because again, that can help you stay balanced and it can help you work on some of those other parts of the stroke if you're doing a full catch up. But we don't want to stick there because if you're still swimming catch up, as you get more experienced, you're going to be limiting your speed. You do not see the best swimmers in the world doing a full catch up. The timing of their stroke is an almost catch up, also known as front quadrant freestyle or three-quarter catch up. And all that means is that instead of having one hand meet the other out in front, it means that once you get to about here is when this hand will begin to catch. So that's almost catch up. So not bad advice, I think, for someone who is learning to swim freestyle. Don't confuse arm speed with swim speed. One of the mistakes a lot of beginner swimmers make is they try and pull really hard and fast in order to try and go faster. But there's only a certain amount of force that you can apply to the water before you start to slip and be ineffective with it. So don't equate arm speed with swim speed. The other part of that too is when we start to go faster, don't necessarily try and begin your catch earlier. It may start slightly earlier, but that increase in speed is actually going to come more from more force applied. So a little bit more force and pressure through the catch and through the pull, that's going to help you get faster. Not necessarily by trying to rip really hard and fast. So don't confuse arm speed with swim speed. Don't rush the breath. Quite often when we are struggling to breathe in the water, we try and get the breath either really quickly or we try and gasp for air where you might turn up really high, get this big inhale where mouth is really open and you bring it back really fast. Now, we shouldn't take forever to breathe. We just want to time the breath with the turn of the shoulders. So the head turns in time with the shoulders and back with the shoulders. So it shouldn't be rushed, but it still needs to be somewhat quick. But if you are really struggling with your breath, make sure that you're not trying to do this big gasp of air, quickly bring the head back. Just try and relax it. Almost like you're getting a sip of air coming back and going back into your exhale. Exhale all the time from the nose and mouth. When it comes to breathing, especially if you're doing any sort of effort, you will need to have a constant exhalation. We normally see it as a moderate exhale before a bigger exhale as your head is turning to get the next breath. So the bigger exhale normally comes as you're turning your head before the breath. So it doesn't have to be this big forceful exhale from the beginning. It can be a trickle of air and then into a bigger exhale as you go. The only time that I would see someone actually holding their breath is more so if we're doing breath control as part of training. Breathing every four, six, eight strokes. You might need to hold onto your air then because if you exhale too early, you won't be able to use that oxygen enough. But outside of that, we should have a small trickle of air at least from the beginning as you return your head back into the water. I kind of agree with this. It really depends though. You see some swimmers who prefer to breathe every two, some every three, some every four. So it really just depends on the person. But I do like the advice of bilateral breathing is okay to do. But I think most people prefer to breathe every two strokes. So if you are breathing every two, at least in training, you don't want to be doing that all to one side for the whole session. You've got to mix it up between left and right side. Whether it's half your session or 30% of your session, you should be breathing to both sides regardless of whether you're breathing every two or every three. Kicking on the side is good for developing your breathing to the opposite side. I do think this is great advice from John where if you do a side kick drill, which is one arm in front, other arm by your side, turning your body to about 45 degrees, kick with your face down in the water and then breathe to the side. That can help you get comfortable breathing low, keeping that bottom goggle in the water and finding your balance and comfort breathing to your non-preferred side. So we do a lot of this and a similar drill just called side breathing kick with a kickboard. We do a lot of that in our clinics just to help people develop breathing to both sides and getting comfortable and finding their balance. Keep your hand loose in the recovery. Your recovery is when your arm comes over the top. And if you are stiff and tense through here, it's wasted effort and it does make it more challenging to bring your arm over the water. So if we think of what brings our arm through, shoulder, elbow, they're the things that are really leaving the arm over the top of the water. If we are trying to bring the hand over and not worrying about this, it really sucks up your recovery and makes you come over in a way where you've got this closed underarm elbow pointing behind you instead of elbow pointing mostly to the sky. So I think that's good advice. Use body roll to bring your elbow through the recovery. This is pretty good advice. If you are not rotating enough on your side, then it's going to be very hard to bring your arm over the top. So we need to make sure we're rotating enough, number one, to be able to recover properly. Our shoulder does not love this position here. If you're flat and trying to get your arm over the water, our shoulders don't work very well. So we need to get enough rotation to comfortably bring the arm over the top of the water. So you can use that body roll or rotation to help with a good recovery. And that's where we should start. We've got to swim from the inside out. So the inside here out to the extremities. And that inside part is making sure that we are rotating enough. Number one, pull harder, not sooner to go faster. One of the mistakes many people make, especially those newer swimmers, is they come into the water and they initiate their catch a lot earlier than what they should, especially when they're trying to go faster. They turn into this windmill. We need to make sure that we are not initiating our catch too soon. We're still keeping good timing and length, but we put a bit more force into the catch and into the pull and we accelerate through a little bit more. Don't go straight away for fast from the catch. Go for more force, more power. That will help you go faster because that will keep not only good stroke length, which is half of your speed equation, but it will also help you make sure you keep good timing. Things can coordinate in the stroke because if we come through and we don't get enough rotation and reach, if we just come straight in, well, you're not going to be able to coordinate your catch with your body rotation and your kick. That's going to get thrown out of sync. That's really, really good advice. I think some of the best advice for swimmers who are still finding their way through that coordination aspect of how do I get faster without completely gassing out. It's common for swimmers to pull too early when they breathe. Instead, extend more, press down slightly to help keep you up in the water. I think this is pretty good advice from John Conrad's where a lot of people will come in and this arm just drops straight away. If you can keep the arm out there for a little bit of time, it not only gives you something to balance on, it keeps your length in the water and your streamline in the water. And if you can just have a little bit of a press down, I'm not saying press straight down, but a little bit of a press down through that movement of the catch, it can help keep you up to get the breath, which will make it easier to look to the side and not up to the sky. So they're all the tips that I got from the John Conrad's DVD and I think they still apply today. John was an incredible swimmer back in the 50s, the 60s and all this stuff still applies today. Let me know which tip resonated with you the most down the bottom and if you'd like to get a full breakdown of the freestyle stroke, click this video above.