to “catch up” in order to keep one arm always fully extended out in front of you. Yes, your arms do not move at the same speed. The key is to think, “as soon as my thumb hits my thigh, get it fully extended in front of me as fast as possible and touch my thumbs.” But keep my pulling arm at the proper pace. Don’t pull too fast or too hard. You’ll waste more energy trying to pull yourself faster through the water than you will efficiently overcoming the drag of going through the water.
Oh boy! The tough one. When you swim, you roll to breathe. When you breathe, your chin should be up against your shoulder and your eyes looking back at your shoulder. Keep that chin in! Don't lift your head. The moment you lift your head, you create a massive drag wave that slows you down. You might as well tow a parachute! If you keep your chin in tight to your shoulder, you'll have to roll your body to breathe. Your mouth will be right at the surface of the water and yes, you may get a little water in your mouth - so just get used to it. You'll find that you can breathe just fine with a little water in your mouth. When you roll down again, just spit out with the exhale. Be an ambidextrous swimmer. Practice breathing from both sides. That's how you see where you are going and how you can see the people swimming on both sides of you. In an open-water triathlon with waves or sighting buoys, it's ok to occasionally lift your head to sight your bearing. Just don't do it too often - just enough to swim straight. If the water is choppy and has waves, your form won’t matter as much and you’ll have to lift some in order to site and breathe. But this is OK. But swimming and breathing from just one side usually makes people swim in a circle in open water without a big black line on the bottom of a crystal clear pool to help guide them. Practice bilateral breathing and learn to swim straight.Unusual Training Tip:
At the pool, count how many strokes it take to get from one side of the pool to the other. When you have that number, swim the next length with your EYES CLOSED! Open your eyes when you're five strokes before that strokes-per-length number. Can you do it without hitting any lane lines? Do you continually hit the same side lane line? Does your balance tend to drive you off-line in the same direction all the time?Some more on breathing:In order to maintain that head-in position, as your roll to breathe, your chin has to stay in tight towards your armpit. Baseball players often have a big problem of pulling their heads up and away during their swing. This pulls their eyes away from the ball at the last moment and they often miss. They have a classic training technique to keep their heads in throughout a swing to keep their eye on the ball. They put a tennis ball under their chin and hold it during the swing. If the ball falls out, they're pulling their head. We can't swim with a tennis ball under our chin, but we can think about it and use the imagery to keep our heads tucked in tight. You have to think about keeping your chin in tight as if to hold a tennis ball in place.The stroke:
Let's do the breathing as an example from the RIGHT side. You can do this right now, sitting at your desk. Both arms are extended in front with your thumbs touching. As you start the right side pull, you begin to roll towards the right (left shoulder down). Now your left arm is fully extended with your shoulder extended (as if reaching for the mug in the back of the very top shelf) never flat to the bottom with your arm out. As your right thumb touches your thigh, your right elbow bends and begins to rise out of the water. Since you are rolled to the right and your head is down with your chin towards your chest, the only place for your chin to go is towards your armpit. As your right elbow comes up high out of the water you find your face looking almost behind you. This is how you sight the swimmers BEHIND you trying to catch you! You'll also find with a good roll, a high elbow and your chin in your armpit, that a big space of air at your mouth has been created. Now