swim vid critique

You're starting your pull with your arm almost a foot underwater.  Finish your recovery closer to the surface and start the pull up there, and then get that elbow up right away on the pull.  When your left arm finishes recovery you seem to bob down under the water a bit completely too.  No idea what's causing that, but it is partly what gives you the look of riding really low in the water.  Hips could be higher, but I've seen worse.

Your cadence seems fine.  I don't really notice my cadence going up when I swim faster, I just pull harder.  At least that how it seems in my head.

Your limiting factor is not your stroke rate.  It's your form during breathing.  Can you make another video?  I am looking for one without you breathing at all.  Push off the wall and have someone video your stroke for as long as you can go...maybe 10-15 strokes without breathing at all.  The reason I am saying this is because you seem to be using your stroke to pull your head up to the surface to breathe.  You turn your head up slightly, take a breath and come back down in the water...sinking yourself after every breath.  You need to start rotating about the center of your body.  During your recovery, you need higher elbows.  You're "snaking" through the water as well.  The new video needs to be from the side and head on as well....not a little bit to the side...right in front of you.  I'm almost positive I can explain it better with the new video.

This was exactly my (very amateur, untrained) impression.  OP appears to be sort of 'bobbing up and down' -- up to take a breathe, and down because, well, gravity does what gravity does.

As others have pointed out, you have a very straight pull, and you look up which will also serve to sink your hips and legs.

The thing that struck me though, was that at the end of the video, it is very apparent that you kick from the knees, and that your kick is disconnected from your stroke, in that it's not driving your breathing/rotation.

John

Someone earlier said "keep your elbows high" - I had a decent way of visualizing this.

Once you've got your hand in the water and elbow straightened out, imagine you're reaching over a barrel tipped over in front of you.  That's what keeping your elbow high feels like.

Slow motion of Ian Thorpe: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjbQp5fjBO0  Notice how his elbow stays in contact with the surface until it nearly gets to his head.

I wonder if you could tape something buoyant to your elbow.  I've never heard of anyone doing that as a drill, but it could remind you to keep it high.

Also, your kick looks inefficient.  I don't know how to describe what to do about it, as my roommate had a similar problem last summer and we weren't able to fix it.

You are a brave soul for putting your vid out there and super kudos for wanting to put in the hard work to improve.

- I'd echo much of what was said above. Further thoughts or repetitions ...

- You hardly rotate at all. Learning and practicing proper rotation will go a long way toward improving every aspect of your stroke, including not doing head/neck aerobics in order to breathe or artificially "keep" your legs up.

- x2 on the kick ... I don't think I've ever seen a 3-beat kick. (LOL, actually, I've seen it all, and to be honest you're doing pretty well, and if you take what we're saying to heart and do some more research and keep up masters and a bajillion more meters ... you're going to be awesome).

- Might pull the fingers in from the polar-bear-claw shape your hand is in during the pull and make it more of a flat paddle. The wrist only should drop in the very first part of pull; the main thrust of the pull should be with your wrist in line with your forearm, creating one giant paddle.

- As your stroke balances out, you're more likely to swim in a straight line. No need to work on that; it's just an indicator that the work you're doing on your form is panning out as it should.

swimsmooth.com is good, TI stuff is good, and reading this until you can recite it is good:

Bigfuzzydoug's Ten Points to Swimming