Sensational Freestyle Homestudy #2
Practice Guidelines
- Keep it simple, one focus point at a time!
- Develop body awareness through exploring the sensations that both exaggerated variations and fine tuning of intended postures and mechanics bring to you.
- Repeat, repeat, and repeat with accuracy each focus point to achieve muscle memory imprinting.
- Begin practice with a clear plan of focus points for the session. Try to stick to this plan.
- We recommend having no more than three focus points per session.
- To begin your session run through a review of the foundation of your stroke for five minutes or so, allowing you to get comfortable and sensing your body's place and movement in the water again.
- Work strictly on one focus point at a time for a given lap, half-lap, number of strokes comfortable on one breath, or even just for one switch. Then stop, stand up, reset your mind to focus again on the details of the focus point, and try again.
- If the intended posture or mechanic is getting less accurate the more strokes you do, then stop at the point when it begins breaking down and reset. 3 accurate executions imprints better than 8 messy ones.
- Play with how much mental attention is required to maintain accuracy in performing a posture or mechanic.
Following are the practices for your home and pool study after week #2 of Sensational Freestyle. Please do each of the home practices at least twice (only take 25 minutes) and the pool practice at least once (30-40 minutes).
Dry-land Practice
Mirror Practice @ Home
General Instructions:
* Find a mirror at home that you can use. The taller the mirror is the better.
* Put on your bathing suit, so that you can see how your body is moving in detail.
* Bathing cap and goggles are optional. :)
Otherwise attempt standing head rotations checking your posture and head/neck alignment in mirror.
Drill 1: Standing glide with breath
Otherwise attempt standing head rotations checking your posture and head/neck alignment in mirror.
Drill 1: Standing glide with breath
- Preferably attempt this in the mirror.
- Assume a stable glide posture as you would have in the water and check your torso and arm posture, and head/neck alignment.
- Once you have your posture feeling stable (see previous notes from last week for details), attempt to find comfortable head rotations as though you are going for a breath.
- Check: Rotation does not affect your posture.
- Check: Rotation keeps your neck inline with your body-line.
- Check: Rotation reaches the same position as if you were gliding on the opposite side. Some of you had feedback that your tendency is to not fully rotate your head to air when in the water.
Drill 2: Bed glide with breath
- If it feels comfortable, attempt to practice the glide posture laying on the end/side of your bed with your gliding arm extended over the edge of the bed. The edge of the bed should be just below your arm pit.
- Place your upper leg forward a little to maintain your balance.
- Assume a stable glide posture as you would have in the water.
- Your head will also be over the edge of the bed. You will feel some strain from holding your head inline with your body in this position.
- Once you have your posture feeling stable (see previous notes from last week for details), attempt to find comfortable head rotations as though you are going for a breath.
- Check: Rotation does not affect your posture.
- Check: Rotation keeps your neck inline with your body-line.
- Check: Rotation reaches the same position as if you were gliding on the opposite side. Some of you had feedback that your tendency is to not fully rotate your head to air when in the water.
Pool Practice
Drill 1: Exhale control
Standing in shallow water take a deep breath and lower yourself in the water just enough to submerge your mouth and nose. Aim to exhale through your nose with the tiniest bubbles.
Check: After 20 seconds aim to still feel that you have lungs that are near to full.
Experiment: Different kinds of exhalation (fast, slow, nose, mouth) to experience how to best control your exhalations. This will be useful for different situations (speeds, increased need for air, etc).
Drill 2: Exhale - nose and mouth
With control as per Drill 1, exhale from nose. Inhale and repeat with exhale from mouth. Inhale and repeat with exhale from both mouth and nose. To inhale, either turn your head or simply raise your head out of the water.
Drill 3: Balance and relaxation
Objective: To feel when you are balanced and relaxed during drills and full stroke (with and without breathing
Glide drills: kicking in glide with following what if? points while holding your breath (5-10 metres, fins optional for some reps)
- Raising and lowering head / tensing and relaxing the neck
- Tensing and relaxing both arms
- Variations on degree of rotation (flat / completely on side)
- Imprint best feeling glide position
Drill 4: Breathing in glide position
* Once you feel comfortable doing drill 2, now try it in glide.
* With relaxed kicking turn your head slowly for breath.
Check: Arm, opposite glide side, is pressed firmly to your side with elbow straight and pressed to upper hip.
Check: Hand is on front or inside of your thigh as opposed to the outer side of your thigh.
Check: There is no vertical bobbing in the water as you rotate to air. Head down causes no vertical bobbing, head turned for breath should cause no vertical bobbing, and head rotating should cause no vertical bobbing. If there is bobbing/sinking and you struggle to resolve this, contact us for advice.
Check: If water is going up your nose and distracting you from achieving this drill, put on a nose clip or a mask until you can achieve it smoothly and consistently. Once you are comfortable at reaching air and no vertical bobbing, remove the assisting device and aim to achieve the same confidence without through accurate mechanic, end posture, and breath control.
Check: Nose is not higher above the water than the chin. The line between chin and nose is parallel to the surface of the water.
Check: Initiate laying your head into the water immediately as your mouth rotates to air. Think “front, side, and back” when you are looking to release your head into the water.
Check: Neck should be aligned with torso, not lifting the head and angling up from the torso.
Experiment: Since your goal is to reach air easily without sinking, lifting the head, and running out of air in your lungs too early, it helps to try variations that develop confident familiarity with the consequences of postures and mechanics that you would expect of yourself and those you would not. “What if?”
Experiment: With a nose clip or mask, try exhaling more than 75% of your air and then turn for a breath in glide position. See where you end up and develop sensitivity for the correlation between lung volume and buoyancy. Try more and more lung volume until you can reach air without any issues.
Experiment: Tilting the chin towards air and letting the crown of the head reciprocally sit into the water, will put the weight of the head into the water removing the bobbing effect and moving your mouth to the highest point it can be without using arms and legs to compensate.
Experiment: Rotate mouth to air less and less, to see how little rotation you require while still getting air. Some people rotate only enough to breathe out of a corner of their mouth. Ideally breathing is done while facing in a direction that is minimal in angle to the plane of the water, such as looking at the side of the lane and slightly above.
Experiment: Wear nose clip or mask to master this sensitive and subtle posture/mechanic.
Note: Removing the distraction of water going up the nose in this drill will allow you to have confidence to test “what-if” variations and thoroughly see the effects on your position in the water and your potential to reach air.