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Video Swimming Assessment

Lucy Kohnen

Program MIT Triathlon Team
Video Session June 28, 2010
 

Technique

Rating Scale: 1=beginner, 2=needs attention, 3=fair, 4=strong, 5=excellent
Skill & Clips Rating Observations

Posture

3 3.214 Your posture looks pretty good in terms of the head-chest-hips connection. As you begin to rotate on every stroke, be sure to maintain that strong connection, rotating your body as a unit.
Breathing
2 5.179 When you breathe, you press your leading arm straight down into the water. This does not move you forward. It levers your legs deeper into the water. It wastes that stroke, and it means you will have to spend a lot of time and energy yanking your arm out from that depth.
Rotation
2 16.964, 17.821 On your non-breathing strokes you are not rotating at all. You should rotate as far onto your side as you can for each stroke. From the front view we should see 45° or more of rotation.
Arms
2 Extension: 2.929 You get your arm fully extended out front - but when that happens you should be rotated onto that side.
Catch: 3.179 You start your catch by pressing down on the water with your whole arm and pulling back on your elbow. That makes your catch late and deep. If you can leave your elbow near the surface while you get your hand and forearm under it, that will allow you hold the water for longer during your stroke.
Pull: 3.464 Your pull starts deep and pulls your back end deeper into the water (and you have to kick harder to counteract that). By pulling so late your hand-forearm "paddle" does not hold the water very well as it slips toward the surface.
Recovery: 22.786 Watch the front and side above-water views with the comments turned off, and you will see that your arms are not entering the water very forcefully. Out of the water your hips and core should be snapping your arms forward into the water.
Kick
3 2-Beat: not evaluated
6-Beat: 11.25 Your kick is fairly compact, but your legs get very deep in the water because you recover your legs toward the surface using your hamstrings. This leaves your thigh deep in the water (creating drag), and means you will kick with a short lever (from the knee down only).
Other
0 not evaluated
 

Recommendations

Priority
Recommendation
1
Rotation. Get rotated onto your side for every stroke. Roll your body as a unit.
2
Breathing. Rotate your face to the air with your body roll. Roll your head right onto the extended arm, and leave that arm extended while quickly getting a breath, in the trough of your bow wave. You cannot do this easily without first getting more rotation.
3
Catch. Leave that extended arm out front and keep driving your elbow toward the far wall as you get your hand and forearm under it.

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