5. Finishing on a Full Stroke

Video Transcription: So One of the biggest key issues with Flip Turns and Approaches is not finishing your stroke as you’re coming into the wall. The reason this happens is a Swimmer either, A. doesn’t know their stroke count or B. loses track of their stroke count that they take this mini T-Rex arm into their Turn. That mini T-Rex arm doesn’t allow them a full pull. That full pull Turns into this little mini arm that we see here in the video that doesn’t finish at its side. So, what this does is adds a stroke, also jams you up too close against the wall. It affects your Flip. It doesn’t get your hands into a streamline quick enough. There’s a lot of problems with having a T-Rex arm on your Approach that you should try to avoid it. 

If you slow that down, it looks like as she’s coming into the wall well. She’s got some speed. She’s got some legs. She has her eyeballs up. And you see a full pull like here’s a full arm stroke followed by another full arm stroke. And then this second to last arm stroke, you’ll see her left hand finishes at her side. And then the one that’s up top. She knows intuitively as a Swimmer that if she pulls a full pull with that right hand she would run into the wall. Instead of doing that, she just curls that right hand up towards her side and now you can really see the unevenness from left arm to right arm. The right arm is kind of like a fake pull. It doesn’t really get into anything for you. And then it’s late for where it needs to be, which then affects your surface area for your Flip Turn. Finding T-Rex arms are hard to do without underwater video. 

If you don’t or never have had yourself videoed underneath the water, I would highly recommend it because above water with Coaches. You’ll still see a Swimmer starting to initiate a pull, but you won’t necessarily with the water disturbances be able to see if they finish it. So, you want to eliminate this T-Rex, but you obviously must know if you do it first. And then if you are doing it, you must adjust your stroke count because you want to delete that stroke that causes a baby arm.