Subject: RE: Specific swim drills Yup, I had this problem, and in fact suspect I'm still approaching a near-midline x-over with one of my hands despite thikning I don't. (A masters coach pointed it out to me, and sure enough, my hand's creeping that way!) One armed swim drills, starting with one arm extended while other strokes, and then moving to no arm extended while stroking, help a lot with reducing crossover. With the arm out, it's hard for the stroking arm to cross the midline, and with the arm back, if you cross the midline, you'll fishtail more and go off-axis. Graduating from the one arm extended drill to the 'catchup' drill is a decent way to progress to normal swimming while avoiding that x-over. I've read that the tarzan swim is supposed to help, but I haven't found it helpful, honestly. First off, it's too dang hard to swim more than 25-50yds with head up and out of water, and next off, the head up position is so far from normal swimming that you'll revert to your problem stroke once you're back head in water. (I did a fair amount of this before with little result.) The one arm swims helped the most for me. You can also focus on the "EVF" with one arm swims as well as true flat body position. I'm a pretty MOP swimmer, but after a bunch of practice, I can readily swim 1000 straight at 1:45/100yds with one arm and a minimalist wimpy kick. |