Month: December 2020

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Drills – Backstroke – comprehensive and complete

This very comprehensive video is produced by SWIM FAST and features elite swimming coach Bill Sweetenham (former head coach of swimming teams from Australia, Britain, Hong Kong and Argentina). 

In this video, Bill takes you through sets of comprehensive backstroke drill progressions. mywaterworld.life advice is to use fins when practicing these drills. The drill progressions can be incorporated on request into the Technique and Drill sessions conducted by mywaterworld.life

You can do a screen dump of each of the slides used as part of the video clip (prt sc key and paste them into your own document).

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Drills – Breaststroke – a complete overview

Fantastic 5 minutes investment on breaststroke tips and drills with Rikke Møller Pedersen, the current women’s 200m breaststroke world record holder. Her 2:19.11 time still stands at the date of this post, having been set in 2013. 

There are great underwater shots that help explain the various concepts that Rikke talks about. These include specific elements of the stroke to focus on – a great streamline, correct hand position and arm stoke, head position, hip movement, eliminating leg drag and where to kick (to). Drills include sculling and stroke length.  Take some notes and practice in your next training session.

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Drills – Freestyle – Triple Touch Switch

This drill called the Triple Touch Switch (3TS).  A great drill by legendary coach  Bob Bowman.  You need to master some easier drills before you start practicing this one.

At the outset it is recommended that you practice this one with fins.  

The Tripple Touch Switch Freestyle Drill  

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Drills – Butterfly – An Introduction

This great video clip is from Australian favourite Stephanie Rice.

In this clip Stephanie talks about maintaining a rhythm, keeping elbows high on the arm pull through, leg power and also includes a kick drill, a butterfly speed drill and the underwater dolphin kick.  You can practice the drills, excluding the speed drill, using fins.

Take particular notice of the pigeon toe kick in the video and, in the screen shot below, the high elbows.

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Drills – Freestyle – Five Standards

Five great all-round drills from MySwimPro.  The swimming in this video is by a very proficient swimmer not using fins. In these drills however, significantly greater propulsion is generated by the kick, so using fins is highly recommended. Once you become very proficient in these drills try them without the fins.

Five drills are covered in this video and the names of the drills described are (the time stamp indicates when each dril is commenced on the video clip: 3 strokes 6 kick (1m03s), catch-up (2m32s), 6 kick switch (3m25s), fist (4m20s), and zipper (finger drag) *(5m40s)..  In all of these drills it is critically important to maintain a high elbow position and don’t allow your kick to resemble a bicycling motion.

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Up-scale your drills

From Boxing Day, December 26, 2020 till the end of the year, mywaterworld.life will each day publish technique tips in the Technical section of the website.

Master these drills in time to incorporate them as standard part of your training sessions in 2021.

Now is the time start freshening up your technique while putting new muscle combinations to work and as a reminder to stay active and not over indulge over the festive break.

DRILL UPDATE BLOGS ABOVE

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Brent Walker breaks the 6,000th Tasmanian Masters Swimming record

mywaterworld.life has published a story on the 6,000th record Masters Swimming Tasmania record and that honor belongs to Brent Walker.

In the first and only heat of the 1500m freestyle at the Masters Swimming Tasmania, Short Course Long Distance Championships contested on 12 December 2020, a remarkable 8 Tasmanian records were broken by 4 competitors over distances of 400, 800 and 1500m. 

mywaterworld.life had to do some analysis as working out which was the 6000th record was just not straightforward – same heat, various age groups, strokes and intermediate distances and all in the same cauldron of competition.

We had to do a bit of thinking and analysis and the complete story is published in our news section.

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MST SC LD 2020 Championships

A small but enthusiastic group of masters swimmers challenged themselves at the 25th Masters Swimming Tasmania (MST), Short Course, Long Distance championships staged in Launceston on Saturday 12 December.

The mywaterworld.life full story on these championships is in the news section.

The top FINA point scoring swim of the meet was by Damian Bennett in the 1500m Freestyle.  Damian is from the Launceston club and his time of 18:28.08 was a new Tasmanian Masters record in the 50-54 year age group.

As for the racing – there were many Tasmanian personal bests and records established – sixteen records all together- thirteen by the men and 3 by the women.

Records* were shared between four clubs. The Hobart Aquatic Centre topped the records table with seven.

The top record breaker at the meet was Costan Magnussen from the Van Diemans virtual club.  Costan set his records in the 400, 800 and 1,500m Backstroke events and the 800 Individual Medley.

Wendy Winzenberg (Devonport) and Maciej Slugocki (Hobart Aquatic) broke three records each.  Wendy set her marks in the 400, 800 and 1500m Freestyle events while Maciej’s were in the 200, 400 and 800 Backstroke. The other record breakers were Brent Walker Tony Forman and Damian Bennett with two each.

mywaterworld.life earlier published a story about the national records broken by Tracy Clarkson and you can catch up with that news here.

*The status of all records established at this meet, as of 14 December 2020, is pending.

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Clarkson sets new National Masters Swimming Australia Records

mywaterworld.life congratulates Tracy Clarkson, from the Brisbane Northside Masters Swimming Club, on her two new Masters Swimming Australia records*.

Competing at a meet in Tasmania, Tracy set new Australian records in the 70-74 year age group for the 1500m freestyle in a time of 24:07.42 while also capturing the 800 record** on the way in a time of 12:49.34.  Both the times were also new Queensland records.

Tracy also broke the Queensland 400 Individual Medley record in her second race within the space of two hours swimming a time of 7:29.28

To top the meet off, Tracy recorded the top two FINA points swim of the meet – Congratulations Tracy.

Masters Swimming Tasmania held their 25th Short Course Long Distance Championships on Saturday 12 December 2020 at the Launceston Aquatic Center.

* At the time of writing, the records were provisional. Since then they been confirmed.
** The time for the 800 record has been updated as it was incorrectly reported in the original post.