G~VDM

When a swimmer is learning the Butterfly stroke, making a wave movement must be done. There is more than one reason for it. One reason is to powerfully kick in a waving or fanning motion and another is to have good hydrodynamics with the least resistance possible. If a swimmer doesn’t get it sometimes an unusual parallel or clear analogy helps. I’ve used roller coaster as a good parallel. The…

I am a swim coach who specialises in one-to-one lessons. I am a good communicator, and I have a great deal of swimming experience. Could AI take my place? I suppose the question then has to be; could someone else replace me? To that, everyone has to say, yes. Jobs I’ve left or moved on from didn’t implode or crumble, they carried on. But a replacement is not the same as a a clone. To clone me,…

In a training session, young swimmers often race everything and everyone. This can be detrimental to their long-term development. Competitiveness is important for learning how to race, but technical competence is ultimately more important to long-term success. Many swimmers, boys in particular, have a hypersensitivity to winning. They have to be first: first in the water, first to finish…

Bravado is the currency of adolescent life for many boys. Hot weather sends almost everyone to cool beautiful places beside water and this week it was hot! And cold water killed someone. Probably more than one around our watery planet in the normally cool climate of Great Britain, when it got unseasonably hot. It is one of my favourite things to do, it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday for me, but…

In Zen tradition, a new recruit is turned away. They are told there is nothing to learn, that the Masters have nothing to teach, that no help will be given because there is “nothing” to attain. So the recruit waits outside stubborn in their pursuit. They kneel in supplication. Hungry. Cold. Repeatedly told there is nothing for them within those walls. Only later, as an act of grace, are they…

It seems an unlikely culprit but fixing a late breather in butterfly stems from the thumbs. Many swimmers take their breath late in their stroke. This causes, what I call, a ‘hitch’. This makes the wave undulation uneven by lifting the head up late. Your head is going up when it needs to be started on its down wave. A wave needs to be smooth and follow an equal up-down pattern. Like a sine…

What job would you do for free? It would have to be fun and it would have to be on my own time. I’m sure even blue movie stars might feel the novelty wearing thin. Creativity would be included. To keep my interest and something potentially useful. Inventing new innovative homes or living spaces without any cost restrictions. I’d like that. Maybe travel corespondent but it would have to be a…

What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most? As an avid sportsperson who earns a living in sport, my answer might surprise you. First, though, a caveat: I find all sport fascinating. Humans seem to relish that instinctive “I’m better than you” drive. As a youngster, I was obsessed with swimming. Competition consumed my thoughts. I remember watching the Montreal Olympics on TV and…

Here is a short video of my coaching style. On this day I was talking about dolphin kick. https://youtube.com/shorts/xFPnZr-lRRA?si=bsy31AuvzAtC4bCb

This is one of the most common areas that I see: high head postion and arched back.  If you have a look at the notes I took with this swimmer the ‘Old Tired Stroke’ had these issues: 1. Back is soft and bent causing resistance due to poor body position.  This is due to looking forwards and weak core strength. 2. Legs tend to move towards an uneven ‘two beat’ kick, or a sporatic kick.  This is due…

The most common issue I see in breaststroke is a style of stroke that can only be called  Granny  Breaststroke.  I call it this because the stroke holds the head position very high like a Granny who doesn’t want to get her hair wet.  It causes a huge amount of resistance and is very difficult to do even if you have a good kick.  It is important to know what the different styles of breaststroke…

Butterfly needs to have a dolphin action to swim it correctly.  The basis for the stroke is a correct dolphin action, NOT a dolphin kick.  An undulation starting from the upper part of the body is a natural body movement that I have often seen in children.  Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be taught in swimming lessons leaving most swimmers who are graduating from their lesson programme into a…

Children take what adults say literally.  It is one of the reasons I often discourage coaches from being sarcastic in a training session when they attempt to be funny sarcastically.  Swimmers don’t get it.  They think that coaches and adults mean what they say.  Children are influenced by their teachers and the words they use are important.  So why do we call the underwater part of our arm stroke…

Shoulder rotation in Front Crawl is essential.  For a swimmer to be able to get the full benefit from all the muscles that connect the arms to the body they need to rotate their shoulders with their arm stroke. Like the great Russian coach Gennadi Toureski I like to use the analogy of a boat/paddle to have swimmers understand how the arms affect the movement of the body. Toureski called it…