Video analysis no. 100!

September's kicked off nicely with 3 successful video analyses, including an excellent session with John - my 100th VA client! John has all the basic elements to be a very good age group swimmer - decent alignment, relaxed breathing, reasonable body position and rotation. Looking at his stroke at first, I was surprised at his fairly modest speed and felt sure that the footage would reveal a key underwater issue not visible from the surface - and so it transpired! John's catch and pull through, on both sides, was with straight arms, contributing to a slowish stroke rate, slight sinking of the legs and of course reducing the amount of forward propulsion produced and therefore his speed. It also tallied with his reported shoulder strain from prolonged swimming. So we'd found the specific issue to focus on, got back in the pool and worked hard on sculls 1 and 2 and doggy paddle. Typically for swimmers with this stroke flaw, John initially found scull no. 1 tricky, but we got there in the end - helped by doing a little treading water (when people nearly always scull automatically) and transitioning this into forward-propulsive sculling on the front. By the end of the session John was moving much more smoothly through the water and looks set for significantly faster triathlon swim times...if he does his homework! His 1-month swimsmooth.guru subscription (included with the session) will guide him through this :)

So a great example of the power of the Swim Smooth video analysis and also I feel, my own ability (developed over these last 100 sessions!) to identify the key issue and work effectively with the swimmer to get them moving towards their swimming potential rapidly and sustainably! (if I can use that word about swimming?!) Swim Smooth! 

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Seamus Bennett