Looking for swimming critique (video attached)

Sorry about that, I realized I had to upload to youtube to get this to work.  Here are the links:

No Snorkel - http://youtu.be/cEjlgtjJ3Zg

With Snorkel - http://youtu.be/GZaT0jgHxlI

So gliding is a not a good thing, I thought you wanted a good glide. The less strokes the better type thing. Looks like I have some more work to do. Sorry to hijack.

Two things struck me:

1) You are flexing your knees quite a bit.  Kick needs to be generated more from the hip.  This keeps your legs more parallel to the water surface and helps hydrodynamics.  I bet you can feel some water drag on your knees, right?

2) When you breathe you are over-rotating your head.  The action of your head going through the water and the pull from your shoulder creates a trough of air along the side of your head that you should breathe from.  This means all you need to do is rotate your head 90 degrees so your nose is parallel with the water surface to breathe, you should have one eye in the water and one eye out.  Currently you are over-rotating and your entire face is out of the water when you breathe.  You will need to learn to exhale into the water because when breathing correctly there is very little time for you to suck in air.

Nevertheless, your stroke looks pretty smooth to me, need to work on your stroke turnover rate, this is what will make you faster.

Thanks everyone who responded so far.  As for oysterboy that said something about my turnover rate........ This is kind of a catch 22.  I am having a hard time breathing, I am able to breathe out underwater and then suck air in when I turn my head to breathe, but since I am still very new to swimming, I really can only do about 50 yards at a time before my breathing starts to get heavy, so to counter act that, I tried to really slow my stroke down so that I am not over exerting myself and causing myself to breathe hard earlier in my laps.   I am sure once my endurance gets better, my stroke rate will improve as well.

Probably the biggest thing for me that I noticed after watching this was how bad my legs and kick were.  I will have to work on that as well

What you are experiencing is absolutely common amongst new swimmers.  Swimming uses muscles and mechanics unused in any sport.  Also, water offers constant resistance so the act of swimming can be really exhausting.  This will get better as you train more and your mechanics get better so you are fighting the water less.  As for being out of breath, one piece of advise, dump the bilateral breathing (at least for now) and breathe every other stroke.  I'd much rather see you have good stroke mechanics with unilateral breathing than having poor mechanics because you are struggling to get your breath.  I swam competitively for years and I unilateral breathe (every 4 strokes when I train) but when the heat is on in a race I end up breathing every other stroke.  Case in point:

[url] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HmYwLQ-7ZE

Pieter Van den Hoogenband at the Sydney Olympics. Notice he is breathing every other stroke in the last ~25% of the race.  Oh yeah, he set a world record.  I think you can risk it and breathe every other stroke for now.

lots of good stuff already mentioned.

you can tell you kick a lot but it really doesn't provide any propulsion. if you were to just kick, do you go anywhere or maybe even backwards?

someone already mentioned about kicking from the hips and getting rid of that runners' kick you have going on. one other thing i'd like to add about the kick is your feet. you can tell that your toes are pointed towards the bottom of the pool. it's really easy to work on this... sit on your feet. it will hurt at first working on ankle flexibility will do wonders for your kick.

Oysterboy - Thanks for all of your input, very much appreciated.  I got to the pool at 4:30am this morning for my workout and decided to try unilateral breathing.  Two things stood out right away...... The first was that I was definitely breathing much easier when I was breathing every other stroke instead of every 3rd stroke.  But with the good comes the bad...... the second thing is that it seemed harder for me to get into a rhythm.  I think for now, I will stick with the uni breathing though.  I feel much more relaxed and my breathing is more controlled.  Thanks for the video link

eriqpimental - By far the biggest thing I took from those video's was my kicking and toe pointing.  Pretty much everything from the waist down seems like a mess right now, but working on it.  I have seen people talk about kneeling down and sitting on your feet and leaning back to stretch your ankles.  I'll give it a shot

Gonwalkabout03 - I didn't even need to see the video to know that I glide.  Unfortunately, it has been a habit since I first started.  I think it was from watching all the video's on youtube, mainly the total immersion ones.  People in those videos seem to glide, although the glide is seemless with the catch and pull, definitely something to work on.  Also, with the snorkel on, yes I was kind of trying for a 2 beat kick.  With no snorkel, that video was taken after my trainer told me to constantly do little flutter kicks.  That is what I was trying in that video, but prior to that, I had an even worse kick than what you are seeing in the vid's.  

Thanks for sharing your thoughts everyone.  Its coming along slowly, but thats to be expected.  I asked a woman at the gym today how long she has been swimming, because her stroke was effortless and she told me since she was 2 years old.   I have to keep that stuff in mind.  When i see all these people swimming at the gym they all look like it is so easy, I have to keep telling myself that they did not all just jump in a pool and a month later it looked like that.   Practice, practice, practice is all I am trying to do right now

Yep, practice, practice, practice.  I am not surprised that the unilateral breathing seems awkward as just about anything new that you do in the water will seem awkward.  Do some swimming using a pull buoy between your legs to isolate on your stroke.  This will also give you how your legs should feel going through the water, and identify when your legs are dragging you down.  Do some kickboard drills, obviously you need to work on your kick.

Mostly keep at it.  Do not underestimate how many yards have gone into well-polished swim mechanics.  I'd really like to know how many miles I've logged in the water, likely in the thousands over the years.  One thing I think will help is to watch you tube videos of the great freestyle swimmers (for example: Van den Hoogenband, Phelps, Ian Thorpe), this should help you gain a mental image of what you should look like going through the water.

Good call Suzanne,  it this vid you can see his glide, his effortless kick and hydrodynamic body positioning.  You can even clearly see his unilateral breathing and his underwater exhale.

[url] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvM3JYC--hM