Last weekend I attended a swim clinic put on by Coach Al Lymon at the YMCA. He spoke for about an hour and then video taped us swimming. Last night I got the results of the swim analysis. Let’s just say I was not graceful. Ultimately, I came away with four things to work on, plus one other thing that I know is an issue.

  1. Keep the rotation down.  In the video it is clear that I am over rotating, or rolling as Coach Al says.  I am rolling to nearly 90° I need to rotate much less.
  2. Fix the Leg kicking
    1. I kick too much, but I already knew that.
    2. I don’t kick efficiently, but I already knew that too.
  3. My arm movement in the water, specifically my “catch” and my “pull” are a mess, I mean a real mess.
  4. I lift my head out of the water too much when I breath.
  5. Lastly, my own issue that he didn’t identify, perhaps because he was too overwhelmed with other issues, is that I need to do stop holding my breath under water.

So what am I going to do about it?  Well, for one I am going to pull snippets from the video and dedicated a post to each one pointing out the issues and what I plan to do to correct it.  I will bring my underwater camera with me and video tape the drills so that I can watch the results and tweak.   And in the words of the infamous Sarah Palin, I am going to drill baby drill.  (But not in the wilderness in Alaska).