Swimmingly

... that I was crushing it regarding my butterfly stroke. Several years spent doing parts of the stroke and drilling those parts ad nauseam have moved me a bit further along the continuum from struggling and drowning to swimming butterfly. 2 days ago, I was finishing a swimming workout with  dolphin kick drills, one armed fly, and some full stroke 25s. On the last 25 just before getting out of the pool, I resolved to swim full stroke butterfly. Shortly after starting the first full stroke I  got that feeling that I could really apply the power at about where my hands had reached my gut and put the pedal to the metal, even though my hands didn't really feel much resistance from the water. One of the coaches that also teaches saw me and complimented me--it completely went to my head. I got out of the pool ,showered and went home. It was a feeling. I don't have pictures to prove anything. The feeling is good enough for me.

I have a waterproof Panasonic camera. I could ask someone to take video of me underwater swimming, but I'm in Vegas, and I don't have a stick mount for the camera to shoot underwater motion.  For now, I can only deck mount it & see myself swimming from the end of the lane. The high deck at Desert Breeze pool was great for shooting and the start block also supported the camera. I mounted it on the start block at Aquatic Springs pool, but with the large glass wall panels, severe back lighting made anything in the pool appear very dark. I do wish I'd brought a tripod for placement at the other end of the pool where backlighting wasn't present. What did I see?  On the camera's little 2" screen, I saw myself swimming.  On a 24" iMac screen, I saw a very splashy hand entry while swimming freestyle. After exiting the water, my hands made a roundhouse path to the front and plunged into the water in front of my shoulder, throwing an arc of water to the oth

Up to recently, every moment I spent "practicing" dolphin kick I could feel the impact of the downward kick.  I knew that the upward kick was supposed  to contribute to propelling myself forward.  I just hadn't felt any great contribution to forward motion while swimming full stroke butterfly.  My limited understanding of the butterfly dolphin kick:  On the downbeat my head and upper torso goes forward and slightly down.  On the up beat my head and upper torso go forward and slightly up.  The first half of each upbeat and each downbeat must be forceful to be propulsive.  The last half needs to be more passive to set up for the opposite phase and to prevent undue loss of forward momentum. Now I can feel it.  Maybe I'm getting more sensation in my feet.  Maybe

Slow progress.   Don't know what I look like under water.  This is what I look like from above: Three slow kicks off the wall and eight strokes in a 25 yard pool.  I look slow here--OK by me.  I look like I'm climbing only because I don't know what this should look like.   Since the clip date, I've worked on not breathing every stroke, but that doesn't keep me from falling apart when swimming 50.    It's really hard to analyze one's own stroke and someone watching might not be able to tell if I've forgotten to put juice into the kick when it looks like I'm flailing.  If I'm lucky, I get a few tips on Monday nights.  Other than that, I do the pieces, hoping I can put them together a little bit better.

Not my first post about my struggle between mere survival and graceful, productive movement in the swimming pool.  I needed a place to compile my thoughts about that separate from other topics. Today's observation comes from watching Michael Phelps win a 100m butterfly medal in 2008(?)  Not that my form can ever be the same (it can't) , but I saw that his kicks weren't separated by the same time intervals. The observed sequence was kick-kick-glide-pull,  with recovery of the arms coinciding with the 1st kick.  Meaning nothing, really.