Creating the foundation for success

Hello again, For this next episode, I’m going to outline my plan to make myself a better swimmer. After a class with total immersion, and learning their principles, I have an idea of what I need to do in order to get better and get competitive within masters swimming. The plan is gonna be this : learn the technique, build my endurance, and aim for speed. From what the instructors at total immersion told me there are a few kinks I need to fix. One thing they mentioned was my bad habit of crossing paths when I cut in the water to pull my stroke. Instead of aiming right and pulling right, I’m aiming left and pulling around toward my right side, slowing down my time. That’s not the only problem. Last weekend I listed a few of my goals I’d like to achieve in order to perfect my stroke. First thing I want to work on is to swim down. I was told to swim down not up, meaning I need to make sure my hips are above water rather than below. To make sure I always do it, I kick with my snorkel and make sure my chest is positioned below the water surface, that way my hips will stay up. After working on keeping my hips up, next thing to work on is maximizing my kick and minimizing my stroke. My ultimate goal is to find the appropriate stroke count, but keep it minimal while putting huge emphasis on my kick. So I’m going to be working on a lot of my kicking. The next thing I’m gonna work on is learning to rotate my hips so I can add power to my stroke. When I’m cutting in the water I need to make sure I’m shifting my body and hips toward my leading hand. I’ll be doing a lot of pull sets while using my fulcrums to also make sure my elbows are up. The next thing I’m going to work on, which is important, is to find perfect targets for my hands to aim and commit them to memory. The best way to remember is to make sure my arm is at 4 o’clock and not 3:00. Having it at 4:00 helps keep my hips up and it helps balance my rotation if my targets are aimed right. More importantly I have to make sure my arms are loose so I can move them through water. The perfect target is to make sure my arm is low enough so that my wrist is slightly below my elbow. Secondly I need to make sure my arm is aimed toward the 2:00 and 10:00 position. Finally I need to work on finding the sweetspot for my breathing. I need to be able to rotate my body upward, aligning my spine and head when going up for air. Most importantly when I go for air, I’m rotating my head and spine as if I’m on a stretcher and I can’t move my head. The overall goal is to not only trim the edges of my stroke so that I can shave seconds, but also lower the effort of my stroke so that I’m consuming less energy and swimming longer distances. I will keep you posted on my progress and inform you of any findings I discover. Take care.