Catch up drills do you really swim this way?

You really don't swim any of the ways you drill (for the most part), that is why they are called drills.

A couple other good driills to look into:

Fist Swimming - Make a fist when you swim.  This teaches EVF (Early Vertical Forearm).  When you cannot rely on your hand to do the work, your arm/forearm learns to get in the proper scull position better.

Finger Dragging - On your recovery stroke, drag your finger tips along the top of the water close to your body.  This helps reinforce keeping high elbows as well as the concept of swimming in a tube and not having your arms recover to wide or high.

There are some others dealing with EVF, but they happen underwater, and are hard to explain.  If you do some YouTube searches for swimming drills, you might get some good video tips as well.

-Todd

x2  ^^^

I'm a newbie swimmer, and my swim coach has had me swimming 'catch up' since the beginning (which was in June of this year with him). I was definitely a windmiller. He had me doing stroke practice with fins first and with a kickboard. Fins so I could concentrate on what my arms were doing, kickboard so that I HAD to 'catch up' to hold the board. That worked well, then we would do some laps without the fins, then with fins again but no kickboard, then no fins/no board. That helped a lot to get my arms going right, but not wear me out kicking.

When I was 'cheating' on the non-breathing side, my new drill was one-arm swim with kickboard and fins (then remove aids incrementally as above). Only stroke on the breathe side - so for me that was right arm only. Mainly to emphasize that you CAN keep one arm out there gliding while breathing/stroking with the other. It feels funny at first, but does work fine after a couple laps and now I can glide both sides without feeling like I'm sinking when I take a breath.

All my practices have been catch up until this past weekend. Now coach says don't focus on that as much. But gave me other things to focus on. I have read that you are supposed to still glide during the recovery, but that the next stroke starts as your recovery hand enters the water at about the top of your head.

Catch up just gets you used to the glide part of the stroke rythym and to stop the windmill action. Windmill uses a lot of overall energy that you'll need for the bike and run. A smooth efficient stroke that includes the glide will get you through the water just as fast using less energy.

I would highly recommend that you consider taking a few lessons. They've really helped me.  I found that at the beginning, "Beginner" swim sessions were still too long for my swimming ability, I didn't understand half of what they were talking about, and didn't know what I would be learning from the drills anyway. (Yup, total newbie.) A coach can also check out your stroke and tell you what you should practice to get better so that you practice what will be good for YOU. That way your sessions are more focused and effective.

Happy Training!

Thatmakes a lot of sense.  I have issues with my stroke rate as well, but I did do a lot of catch up drill, too.

Know any good strategies for getting yourself out of that habit?

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Catch a heel to the face just once and you'll be thankful you practiced catch-up drills. 

Thereis not much here that I would disagree with and Even's article raises many good points as well. I come from a distance freestyler's background  My strongest distance was 3 miles (open water or 1 hour pool competitions). The 1650/1500 I was good at, and at 500/400 I was cometitive. After that the sprinters took over. 

 I have always believed and trained for maintaining a constant speed/momentum to be most efficient. Years ago I did  the analysis (from a theoretical point of view) and found that slowing down (gliding or otherwise) and speeding up is extremely inefficient. There are 2 basic factors. The first is inertia. Every time you accelerate you have to overcome inertia. And that comes at a cost. You might think that the energy expended is recovered when you glide and inertia (momentum) carries you along. But it is not that simple. First, try to ride your bike that way and see what it is like. Can you maintain the same average speed as when you applied a constant effort? Elements of biomechanics make this analysis complex but you'll get the idea. The second is that when you speed up you necessarily move your arms, legs and torso through the water at a greater speed than if you maintained a constant speed. If you take a quick look at some of the elements of fluid dynamics you'll find that the drag (resistance) through the water increases by the square of the speed/velocity and so will the energy requirements to overcome them. While this is not a quantitative analysis, I think the overall theories plus your own personal experience will confirm this.

 So you ask, if this is even remotely correct, why is it that olympic (pool) swimmers seem to glide so much. I'd suggest that they are not gliding in the sense we think about it. Keep in mind that no matter how fast you are as a triathlete swimmer, Michael Phelps can kick faster (without a kick board) than you can swim, at any distance on even his worst day. so he never decelerates. He is relying on his legs, something I prefer to save for biking and running.

And finally I don't think you should do drills that don't program your muscles to do exactly what you will want them to do when you are racing (other than some stretching movements during your warm up swim). This goes just as well for people who track their training progress by how fast they can  do a 100. What is that about? You want to train to do a fast 1/2 mile, one mile or 2.4 mile swim and come out of the water feeling ready to start a race. Not as if the race was over. For a 800m tri swim I train as if I'm racing a 1650/1500 swim. For a 1500m tri swim I train as if I am racing a 3 mile open water swim. Maybe I'm nuts or just plain wrong but it is how I do it and I am always one of the first age groupers out of the water. However, i do appreciate that people who come to triathlons with no ability to swim face a long and winding road to learning how to swimming well.

x3.  Led with that front arm out there pretty much the whole time at MOO 07 to protect the noggin.  Granted, I am no fish!

OK guys,

This is exactly why I posted my question. I am a mechanical engineer so I appreciate the conservation of energy and momentum. I learned to swim in January 2008 using the TI book and freestyle video. It has served me well to this point, as I completed my olympic tri swim leg in 33 minutes. I know this is not great, but I was happy with it as I felt relaxed and enjoyed it. As I try to increase my distance to a HIM next year I want to get a little better. I don't see the benefit of catch up drills as I would rather focus on the correct timing I will use while swimming.

Are we now saying to scrap the TI method? I think I am understanding that the method as a whole is solid. Please clarify.

chevy57

Seems like some pfenomenal advice from experienced folks.  However, let me tell you that after working my @$$ of and learning to swim freestyle.... finishing my first oly swim at 39:50- I took the advice of catchup drills....  Glide, body position, and front quadrant positions and trained on this from mid june to mid august.  Very awkward at first. 

 Results: last oly swim finished in 30:30/

No way I could have improved that much without the techniques taught in T1.

Good luck.  As I get better I am sure I will have to re read the other comments on this board and learn to get to that next level.

Some very encouraging results today in the pool. I watched the TI video again last night and realized it doesn't ever really teach you how to go from the multiple underswitch drills to actual swimming. I have been plunging my hands in the water as I pass my goggles. If you think about this it doesn't make sense to push your hands through water when air is so much less dense. Today I focused on entering the water farther forward to begin my pull. I actually tried to reach out as far as I could. I think this helped keep me longer in the water and promotes some gliding as it takes a little longer to get the arms out front. My time for 25 laps is usually between 29:00 and 30 minutes. Today my time was 24:51. This is a significant improvement for me and could have been better except I kept missing my flip turns as my stroke timing to the walls were off. Is this a known problem with the TI method?

chevy57

I would agree TI is wonderful for brand-new or uncomfortable in the water swimmers.  For those who are naturally comfortable in the water but do not have a formal swim background, this thread is more informative to me than the TI triathlete book was.

Next year, once I have my fitness more at a level requiring a change, I may go to a swim coach for a technique overview, but for now, this mantra works for me..."Long in the water, feel the ribs stretch, keep legs up, glide baby glide." 

I'm doing TI as well (and taking some lessons from a TI coach), so here's my 2 cents:

IMHO, it seems you have the whole TI thing backward if you're concentrating on the pull: there is NO "PULL" in the TI method.  You generate forward thrust with your upper hip and shoulder coming down as you extend your arm forward (like a screw being driven into a piece of wood).   This was emphasized by my coach when she told me to stop pulling my arm back, and to just let it "drift" back.

I recall in TI's "Triathlon Swimming Made Easy" a part describing a film of Mark Spitz: his body was moving faster than his hand.  You cannot do that if you're pulling.

My front arm stays extended until the moment the recovering hand enters the water just ahead of my eyes.  The (old) front arm then drifts back, no pull.

BTW, which TI video were you looking at?  He's got a new one at their website with some refinements.

Hope this helps.

 Well yes and no, or actually no and yes. Just because your body moves forward does not mean you are not pulling. The point is that you are PULLING YOUR BODY FORWARD, NOT PULLING YOUR HAND/ARM BACK.

 In Doc Cousilman's book "Competitive Swimming Manual" (1977) he includes "A Biomechanical Analysis of Freestyle Aquatic Skill" by Robert Schleihauf. In that article Mark Spitz was used as the principal subject. The author concludes that "the right hand leaves the water in front of where it enters". He does note that "it is possible in the case of extremely poor swimmers to obtain hand motion that is predominately backward". But the point is: don't confuse hand motion relative to the body (pulling down the length of your body) with motion relative to the water.

He also uses the action of a propeller to describe Spitz's arms motion and contrasts it to the paddlewheel and Caterpillar (as in bulldozer tracks) motions. When I swim I visualize that my arm and hand, as a unit during the sculling motion of the stroke, are acting like a propeller. This might be old school (I guess it is since I'm doing it) but it works for me.

 As for the value of TI. I don't know the program well enough to comment. It does seem to have helped a lot of people. I am suspicious however, of anything thing that is sold which is called a "system".