Journey to Olympic Trials: Take a Look At Me Now -- January 18, 2012
Commentary by Jeff Commings, SwimmingWorld.TV associate producer
PHOENIX, Arizona, January 18. IT'S Wednesday, yet my mind is still thinking about last Sunday, when I swam at the Austin Grand Prix.
Before I continue, take a look at my 100 breast, provided to you thanks to Chris Lundie and his team at TakeItLive, which was streaming the meet live online:
As you can clearly see, I lose a lot on my start. The guy to my left gains a half-body length on me, and the guy two lanes over is a body length ahead before the first stroke! I've watched this video at least 50 times, pondering the mystery of my deficient start. It would appear that my trouble starts after the pulldown, that I lose forward velocity quickly. I want to believe it is my extremely inflexible ankles slowing me down after doing the dolphin kick. There seems to be no other explanation. What else could be slowing me down so severely? When I dive in, I'm pretty much even with these guys.
One thing Coley Stickels suggested to me immediately after the race was that my arms were recovering too slowly after the pullout. I think he was onto something, though as you can see on the video, the damage had already been done by the time I was recovering my arms to start swimming.
The good news is that on the first 50, I kind of make up some ground on the guy to my left. That makes me feel good, that I'm outswimming him. Or, maybe I'm overswimming the first 50? That's not true, since I only went out in 30.8 or 30.9, depending on your stopwatch. That's not too bad for the first 50 of an in-season swim. When I swam my 1:04.42 last July, I was out in 30.26, and was probably doing the same pullout then that I did on Sunday. (I don't have a time goal for Omaha, but I do know that I want my first 50 to be under 30 seconds.)
The more I watch the video, the more encouraged I am by what I see. (Of course, I stop before the camera pans to the scoreboard. I don't need to be reminded of the time!) I like seeing that there is a major point in the race that needs fixing, and by simply fixing it, I can probably drop five tenths of a second or more on the first 50! My pullout on my turn was just as bad. As you can see, I turned almost even with the guy in lane four, but he took off after that. He must have been quite rested, because he swam a time very close to his seed time. I, on the other hand, was swimming on about six hours of sleep and tired legs.
This afternoon, I talked with my two coaches, Mark Rankin and Coley Stickels, to get their thoughts on the swim. Mark also noticed my legs were not ready to swim that morning, while Coley went a little deeper, pointing out the deficiency in my start and making some stroke suggestions that make sense. The chief problems, he said, were the timing of my dolphin kick on the pullout and my arm speed on the recovery of my stroke. I'm looking forward to taking to the pool in the next few weeks to make these better. I'm not fully committed to when my next meet will be, but I know I need at least one more before Trials to see if the changes I'm working on are effective.
I know you also have the urge to tell me how to fix my start, pullout and overall stroke. I would love to hear from you. Post your comments here, or if you're too shy, send an email to jeffswim@aol.com.
Portions of this commentary were reprinted from Jeff Commings' blog. Commings will be the third-oldest male in history to compete at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June. He holds a few Masters national and world swimming records and was an All-American at the University of Texas in the 1990s.
