Swim Training- Technique & Form

I didn't have a great swim this past Monday at practice. I slowed down considerably towards the last couple of sets. I also didn't feel as fast or strong as I had in previous weeks. Since last week was a recovery week, I shouldn't have felt that way. I do know that I haven't been in the pool as much as I had been before my Gulf Coast race and thought I needed to get back and start working on my technique.  Monday's practice confirmed my thoughts.

I haven't done any weight/resistance training at all this year. I decided to hit the weights and work on muscles specific to swimming. Primarily my upper body concentrating on my triceps, deltoids and lats. I also brought a video camera to record portions of my swim for analysis once I got back home.


I guess one way to look at it is that there's room for improvement. It took me a couple times and to view it frame by frame to see what I was doing wrong. Here's what I noticed and will be focusing on during my next training sessions.

1. I need to keep my fingers close together. My fingers are relaxed in the video and water is just flowing through them. Keeping fingers close together, but relaxed will allow me to pull more water through.
2. My hands keep crossing to the center line. They need to extend straight forward as they enter the water into the catch phase of the stroke.
3. It seems that at times my right arm swings outward in an arc. My left arm seems straighter, but both should bend at the elbow and continue through the recovery phase giving me high elbows out of the water.

There are probably more things wrong with my technique, but I'm only going to focus on these 3. I'll record my swim again at a later date and will try other angles. I can't tell from underwater how well my body is rotating and if I'm getting high elbows on the surface.

I think this was a great exercise in helping me recognize and correct the mistakes I'm making. I'm sure an experienced swim coach would catch a lot more. Getting the opinion from my swim coach is not out of the question, but I want to work on the things I know I can see and fix and them move into more specific items that I may be missing.