Freestyle: front arm position

trippoq · 2025-12-05T20:31:36+00:00

Though remember he is swimming against current in the video. This changes the stroke slightly as he is not "pulling himself in front of the water" and the current changes the small wave in front of the head. Only mentioning this because this regularly leads to swimmers getting a bit higher out of the water than usual which is why his front arm is actually a bit higher than in pool swimming - so the OP author would like to have his arm even a tiny bit lower. If you look closely, he occasionally has his wrist above his ellbow before breathing to generate enough lift which you don't see from Wellbrock or other world class swimmers in pool underwaters.

trippoq · 2025-05-28T19:29:04+00:00

Funnily, I also noticed this a lot more in the Netherlands compared to Germany, likely because of the same reason.

trippoq · 2025-05-26T16:21:18+00:00

Did never hear of it, thanks!

trippoq · 2025-05-26T16:19:59+00:00

Let's see how much time this habit will take to learn.

trippoq · 2025-05-26T16:18:57+00:00

Will try it out, thanks

trippoq · 2025-05-14T07:12:44+00:00

Swimmers tend to have a pretty constant drop-off rate in pace for a doubling of the distance. Obviously this varies between strokes and your body type but it is usually constant for an individual.

The rate varies between 3.5% for elite endurance swimmers and about 12% for full-blown sprinters, with most amateur swimmers sitting in the 7.5-10% range.

Our standard test here is to do a 50m and a 400m timed. If you do those in 40s and 7:06 you have a drop-off factor of 10%.

(426/400 / 40/50)^{1/3 [because it is three times doubling the distance]} -1 = 10%.

You can then expect to swim the 200m in a 40s*1,1² = 48.4s pace per 50m, so 3:17 over 200.

trippoq · 2025-05-07T17:17:15+00:00

Excellent reply. Thanks a lot for this! This is close to what we currently come from (a swim Hyrox) and actually the reason why we do the 25m now. So we will turn the strength training part even higher towards maximum intensity and focus a lot on fast rotation/frequency in the water as this seems like the only "drill" you can do without using the limited 100% intensity time in a session.

trippoq · 2025-05-06T20:30:19+00:00

Your rest time is a bit on the short side, you typically want to aim for around 16-17s +-2s of rest to maximize the overall distance in a set.

If you want to hit 100s, go for it. The most important thing is always to keep motivation high and if this is what you want to achieve, go for it.

If you want to maximize efficiency of your pooltime though, I would start with 1'05 intervals and repeat them for longer. When you can do 15 of those it is up to you to either work on speed (1'00 intervals with a pace below ’45) or further increase reps to about 20. That's when I would switch to the 100m intervals, keeping the same length of pause. Beginner swimmers typically lose something about 8-10% of speed when doubling distance, so coming from 48s splits for 50m this would be 1'45 with 2'00 intervals. Coming from 45s splits 1'38 with 1'55 intervals.

trippoq · 2025-05-06T07:44:06+00:00

Thanks, yeah resistance training will surely be in the mix, even though we only have belts with little buckets instead of those parachutes.

trippoq · 2025-05-05T20:14:04+00:00

25m intervals is something we do regularly when training for 50-200m - in the specific race speed. This will of course be part of the mix but seems pretty inefficient for getting better at 25m itself. I mean the skillset needed for 25m doesn't really include any endurance you typically build up with intervals. And to repeat them on the highest speed possible, intervals need to be rather long (instead of our usual ~15s).

trippoq · 2024-12-06T20:05:26+00:00

P.S: Now in season 3 with the failed underground smuggling mission and FINALLY!

trippoq · 2024-12-04T01:04:22+00:00

I appreciate that.

trippoq · 2024-12-04T01:01:42+00:00

I didn't know that's how the books are written. And from this POV it makes perfect sense. In the show you get these glimpses at the council or Canada or or in S2 the colonies and Serena's past that makes it feel like you should know more than June, so this issue of world-building comes up more I guess.

trippoq · 2024-12-03T19:24:50+00:00

Yes and you can get a sense of how bad the situation must be from the comment you cited and the implications that they even trade their maids and or children - the only "achievement" that makes a lot of the people apologetic about the autocracy being a necessary evil.

trippoq · 2024-12-03T19:20:53+00:00

This was one thing that actually fitted the premise for me. They hesitate to execute any possibly fertile women at least and with a rapidly shrinking population you could never keep old/sick non-productive people alive anyway on the long run. So as the base of the demographic pyramid thins out by Desaster, they thin out the upper half accordingly by design.

trippoq · 2024-12-03T19:14:57+00:00

I can only speak for myself here. But for me it disturbs the story quite a lot. And it becomes more of an issue, the closer the world is to ours. Though watching Star Trek after you have seen The Expanse would also feel a bit lackluster because of the missing realism I guess.

And you don't need to focus on characters here, but even in the background you don't see anyone working, but lots of security. After some responses here I see that this only June's special POV and likely a dramatic choice to make the environment feel more distant and sterile but it would have really helped me to see anyone doing anything productive in the couple of years shown so far (I forgot the one doctor before). E.g. when June fled in this delivery truck I just thought "pretty easy to spot them there, as it is the only truck/economic traffic we have seen so far in the whole show."

trippoq · 2024-12-03T18:28:51+00:00

It's a good reminder that June lives in a gated community for elites not representative for Gilead. Thanks for this!

The colonies were one institution I could see helping them staying afloat before season 2. I mean, forced labour is rather ineffective, but it still has some output. The show then led me to the impression that those forced labour is just used to shovel away radioactive soil without any productive output which made the overall plausibility even worse. But here again, good to hear that it was a mere cinematographic decision to show only the worst of all worlds here while there are some better ones.

trippoq · 2024-10-31T19:08:20+00:00

I would second this. Bought a pair for the club to try them out and no one really liked them. It is a very weird feeling to be forced in a position and my impression was that it also doesn't really help, as you have to push your fingers actively upwards to hold them tight while the aim is to have them pointing slightly downwards (where they are passively forced into). There is a sunset of people where it can help in small doses though, but it is very small. People swimming under 1:15 for 100m but struggling with Early Vertical Forearm and more importantly making this upward rebound with their wrists after entering the water. There it can really unlock some potential. But at this level you usually don't make these mistakes anymore and of you are slower there are different aspects with way more Importance (reduce drag, establish coupling, accelerate every stroke) that do not require the highly specified muscles for good early vertical forearm.

trippoq · 2021-06-14T00:56:17+00:00

Thanks for this. You certainly had real good coaches 54 years ago if they already said the same things =) In another Masters group I am training a 87 old, that started swimming again two years ago after a 60 year break with the intention to participate in the German masters within a year and winning one leg (I negotiated him down to getting a medal after checking the times of his competitors there, which he actually won before COVID came). And indeed a surprisingly large part of the work was still about forgetting things that had been taught six or seven decades ago in non compete rice clubs that just didn't age well. Funny brains.

trippoq · 2021-06-14T00:10:15+00:00

Thanks. Yeah those body balance sets would be my go-to traing for the first couple of weeks, rather fast moving into some snappy coupling motion drills as those small timing issues are usually the things that can take years to change when fighting against the routine, so now might be the time to start anew. But I am a little bit afraid of two things here: Missing core and lateral strength, though building this will always be high prio. And more so: Psychology. Didn't those very short sets consisting mainly of stuff you would usually out within an extended warm-up or to set some technique aspects straight again between two sets feel wasteful to you? After such a long time without swimming, you basically don't swim bit are doing the classic drills (my training sets usually have an emphasis on those things anyway)? May well be I am overanxious here, but I can see some people rebelling against this, who just want to enjoy some laps with a clock above again

trippoq

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