Posts about swimming technique and mechanics
I thank Steve Tarpinian and his webinar “Swim Myths” for inspiring and providing some of the information in this post. I get asked a lot by my swimmers is they should swim with paddles to get stronger in the water. I’m not a big fan of this strategy mainly because…
As we insert learning flip turns into practice, we, the coaches, are starting to hear from our triathletes: “I don’t need to learn flip turns. I’m a triathlete. There are no walls in open water.” Many of these same triathletes take pride in the fact that they don’t push off…
If you are blind like me, swimming has always been a little challenging because I couldn’t see the pace clock, other swimmers, the practice on the board. Since I’ve started to do more stuff in open water with my team in the last 10 years, it’s…well…game over out there. The…
I got this email from a client this week: “Hey John, thanks for quick tip. I purchased the Tempo Trainer from the CBD site. Should have it soon. I have been reading some of the documentation on the TT…but still not sure about what my ideal stroke rate is.” Here’s…
Finis Swimmer Snorkel We want to encourage all of our swimmers to purchase a Swimmer Snorkel this fall and bring it to practice on a regular basis. We’ve found in our teaching that the snorkel is an incredible tool for working on swimming mechanics without being encumbered by the…
One of the most common comments we get from our clients who know how to swim but just can’t turn it into a fitness activity is: “I get so out of breath! I can run a marathon, but I can’t do two lengths of the pool.” The swimming literature commonly…
We use Finis’ Tempo Trainer training tool quite a bit in our swim practices. This post is a second part of how to use the Tempo Trainers to work on your kick in swim practice. One way that you can use it is to work on the tempo of your…
We use Finis’ Tempo Trainer training tool quite a bit in our swim practices. I want to discuss some ways that they can make your swim practice more effective. One way that you can use it is to build a steady tempo in your stroke. Swimming, like music, is done…
Continuing on with our discussions of strokes other than freestyle, we now look at Breaststroke. Breaststroke is the oldest known swimming stroke as evidenced by cave drawings from the Stone Age depicting people doing a variation of the stroke. It’s also the most popular stroke in swimming throughout the world…
Most every one of the new swimmers who joins my Masters team or comes in for lessons tells me, “Fitz, I really just want to learn freestyle. I want to be able to {insert goal here – “swim a mile,” “do a triathlon,” “swim for fitness”}. Freestyle is a spectacular…
