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…

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…

It would be pretty hard to have missed Katie Ledecky swim to a medal at the Olympic Games. Her specialty is distance freestyle and she has won more medals than any woman in history in the swimming pool. It wasn’t too long ago that I was researching to explain how a two beat kick could be used in sprinting however it is predominantly used by distance swimmers. To my surprise, as I observed the…

This is about correcting timing on Frontcrawl swimming.  To have a swimmer with slightly incorrect timing on their Frontcrawl is a common error.  I believe there are two main areas of concern when I look at a swimmers timing. Timing concerns; how the arms & legs work together  how the arms manipulate their position, which in turn moves your body through the water, known as the ‘pull’.   Both…

Medulla oblongatta The medulla-oblongata controls all automatic things like sneezing, blinking, vomiting and the respiratory rhythm to name a few.

Breath in. Breath out. Simple. Or not? Breathing is necessary of course, everyone needs to breathe, but you don’t have to spend time considering when or how.  Except during swimming. Breathing is one of the autonomic activities that is governed by a part of our brain at the top of our spinal cord called our medulla or also the medulla-oblongata. (I prefer medulla-oblongata because it makes me…

It was sad news to hear the passing of Deryk Snelling. I was one of lucky swimmers who called him ‘Coach’. Deryk had a timelessness about him, so it is sad in an unbelievable sort of way, but an inevitable eventuality, we all sadly reach. I would like to share some of my experiences with Deryk to maybe give you a flavour of his ability to inspire a team and hopefully share how he is known as a…

A hundredth of a second is important.  But what is it?  The concept of time is abstract and difficult to see or touch.  In swimming it is the difference between winning and losing.  The difference between Gold and Silver.  The difference between Bronze and Fourth; on the podium or watching from the stands. One hundredth is important because it is so quick. It is so quick that we can’t really see…