Video help with straight arm freestyle

Check out this video for help with swimming the straight arm freestyle:

Go Swim Straight-Arm Freestyle with Scott Tucker from Glenn Mills on Vimeo.

Glenn Mills:

In terms of explosive speed, the straight-arm technique has a couple of advantages. Traditionally, freestylers bend their recovery arm—the one that's not in the water—keeping the elbows above the hands. The newer technique, which Phelps used only intermittently in this past weekend's UltraSwim meet, gives the impression of a semi-submerged windmill. A traditional recovery arm is still moving forward when it touches the water. The water slows the hand down and prolongs recovery time, resulting in fewer strokes per minute. A straight recovery arm transitions more quickly to a propulsive stroke because the hand is moving down and back toward the feet almost as soon as it touches the water.

The straight arm also offers rotational advantages. Freestylers don't swim on their stomachs; they knife through the water on one side, then the other. The more quickly they rotate their shoulders, the faster they move forward. The straight recovery arm creates torque on their torsos, turning the swimmer into a flywheel. "Think of a baseball pitcher," says Glenn Mills, a former Olympic swimmer and founder of a popular swim technique Web site. "The windup and kick create a rotation that whips the throwing arm forward." In swimming, "when you throw the extended recovery arm over, it helps turn the torso and pulls the other arm back out of the water." - source

More links:

http://www.theraceclub.net/columns/2008/01/straight-arm-freestyle-recovery.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3871/is_200407/ai_n9418290/

Busy week for the Dolphins

Well it has certainly been a busy week for the team! We had Swim meets bookending the week and our swimmers did very well indeed. Even cooler, I found out at least one other person actually reads this blog! Who knew ;)

Austin and Morgan took 4th place in events at the State Games and all of our swimmers posted personal best times in all of their events over two meets! This is shaping up to an exciting first year anniversary for our team.

Who would have thought a team could accomplish so much in just one year of existence! We have gone to the State Age Group Championships (AKA the Junior Olympics) and grown to over 45 team members! We have also instituted a swim camp program to spread swimming far and wide in the Sanford Community. The first camp was a Major success and we are going to hold more to continue our attempts to make Sanford into Swimtown USA!

Open Water

The Dolphins got their first taste of open water swimming and did really well. Out of the entire state of NC the team placed 17th, ahead of other local teams despite the fact that we only swam one day of the meet! Well done Dolphins.

Summer swimming is kicking into high gear. We are starting practice at the LC outdoor pool which is always a lot of fun.

Coaching tip:

To keep swimmers year round you have to keep them in the summer. There is a lot of competition from vacations and laziness that can pull a kid away from the team. Try to shake it up a bit and add a new twist that is fun to keep interest up. In our case, we are practicing at a different location and incorporate diving breaks into the practice, it works for us!

Swimming for the fun of it...

One of the lessons I learned this year was that it is possible to become too competitive at the team level. We had a banner first year as a team. Our swimmers achieved best times at almost every meet, we had one swimmer qualify for and compete at the state championships and our team grew from 6 swimmers to nearly 40. As we got better we became aware of the competition taking notice of us. Other coaches were asking about our training, other swimmers were getting to know our swimmers, rivalries were forming. It became a pretty intense environment. As this peaked in February I began to notice swimmers missing practice, becoming ill, and a serious lack of smiles around the pool. As a coach, I realized that I set the tone for the team so we took action. We introduced water polo games into practice. We invented water baseball and water dodgeball. I began asking swimmers to give me their goals and to work collaboratively on meeting them. I noticed an immediate change in the team. Smiling was at an all time high, attendance skyrockted and friends of our swimmers were showing up to see what all the excitement was about.

The lesson we learned was that achievement is wonderful and exciting, but if it occurs in young swimmers at the expense of fun, the team will suffer.

ECSL Meet

Congratulations to all of our swimmers. We did incredibly well at the ECSL championship meet. Not only did we get several top 10 finishes, we also had all of our swimmers get best times by large margins. Well done Dolphins! See you in the pool.

Summer Swimming

Summer is my favorite time to swim. There are outdoor pools to swim in, kids are out of school and it is generally a fun time. This is also a great time to build our year round teams. Lots of kids will catch the bug at their local pools, it is up to us, the year round swimmers and parents, to spread the word about our team. A large, strong team is something that will help to ensure that swimming will continue in Sanford for a long time and it is our responsibility to make that happen. So here is a proposal:

It is time to start preparing for the summer. We have our last winter meet on the 28th. I am excited for this one! Several people have asked me about swimming but are afraid they aren't good enough, Kim Petrarca suggested we have an invite a friend to swim day. We can learn a stroke, play some games and have a fun practice. What do you all think about this idea? Send me an email (mark.kline@yahoo.com) and let  me know what you think.

The Joy of Swimming

I have had the interesting experience of seeing my team hit a slump over the past couple of weeks. We are into the championship meets of the short course season and looking forward to the long course. Our team has experienced a great deal of success this season and it was disconcerting to see the sudden downturn in attendance and in interest for meets.

In thinking about this I realized that the entire team had gotten locked into the competitive aspect of the sport and we have not been making time for the sheer joy and pleasure of swimming. Over the past week I have been planning some fun and social time into the practice schedule and have noticed a sudden and profound increase in both attendence and positive attitude toward practice.

As coaches and parents, I am learning that it is vital to keep our sport fun! It is why we get into swimming in the first place and, I am convinced, it is why we continue with it throughout our lives.

The goal now, at least for our team, is to keep a good balance between the competitive improvement and the fun of being in the pool. I will keep you posted.