Noticing some really common beginner-intermediate swim errors in the pool

First, I'm NOT a fish. Not even close! At best chasing the FOMOP in a tri swim. So my advice could def be wrong, take with a grain of salt! I am, however an adult-onset swimmer so I don't take anything for granted, as I started at 2:30+pace/100yds, and have worked my way down to 1:35-7 T-pace over a few years of not high volume swimming.

I've been trying to increase swim volume lately to improve my weak area, so I've been swimming in a lot of different pools (scheduling) and seeing lots and lots of other beginner and intermediate swimmers. (I'm NOT referring to good or competitive swimmers here who are usually sub 1:30 pace- I'm talking mostly 1:50+/100yd pace beginner-intermediate swimmers, who are the VAST majority of the swimmers in the pools I'm at.)

Just a few likely errors I really notice that almost everyone does between 1:50-2:20pace:

- LOTS of extraneous body motion that almost surely isn't adding to propulsion. I honestly think this is the biggest speed killer for people in this speed range. We're talking bobbing of the head, wobbling of the torso, over-rotation, etc. I'm not uber-smooth myself, but at least for me, it does seem that work with an ankle band to minimize all extra motion helped me a lot to really cut out all the extra bobbing motions. Also doing one-arm stroke drills focusing on ZERO extra body motions seemed to help me, FWIW.

- Errant kicks. Lots of kicks that at some point have the leg reaching nearly 90 degrees of bend, which is a no-no even if briefly. I'm also sure a lot of these errant kicks are due to imbalanced pulls, which would be really exposed if you eliminated the kick completely (like with a ankle band+buoy).

- Big-time dropped elbows. I'm sure I'm just as guilty of this as the next, but there are different degrees of badness, and when I see the person in the next lane doing 1.5x the turnover rate I'm doing, but going a lot slower, you can't help but really notice how dropped that elbow is for them.

I've been seeing these 3 things so regularly that I'd say that there's a 100% chance that you're doing at least 2/3 of above if you were one of the 1:50+ paced swimmers I'm seeing at all the local pools. (I go to 4 different ones due to variable workplace.)

Edited by yazmaster 2013-07-11 7:31 PM