Olympian Explains How To Generate Speed In Freestyle

Introduction have you ever wondered what the coach of an Olympic gold medalist and world record holder would say about freestyle technique I caught up with current coach of Kyle Charmers Ash Delaney who's an Australian Olympic silver medalist and former Australian record holder himself to get his take on freestyle technique what does it take to become fast and efficient and what are the key areas of freestyle technique that he looks to develop with his athletes I think body position relates so much to head for me Head and body position so I'll connect those two together um but you're always looking at nice long neck I think is the key um and then that one that helps then your body can rotate around your spine much better and that helps you obviously with your rotation and your length um I think that's that's that's a big key and then making sure those hips are actually up and if you're looking down at the at the bottom of the pool with a nice long neck and really good posture then you're setting up your good body position from that you're looking for a nice tight kick um Kick depending on if you're going for more distance or if you're then going more Sprint freestyle but Sprint freestyle you're looking at constant tight kick which then helps the uh helps lock in the hips we want to make sure we're generating um a lot of torque through your core by keeping those hips locked on and then that relates to the kick being nice and tight so if you can do that then you've got something to like initiate the catch from to the opposite hip you create that torque in your body and like kick only it probably only contributes to between maybe 10 and 15 prop propulsion uh but then if you you lose your legs you lose your hips you lose the core you lose the connection of the stroke and that's where it goes so it's so important to be conditioned in Kick um for those types of Sprint events probably 200 down but making sure that you you are conditioned with your kick because if that goes at the end of your race the connection goes I then asked Coaching Kyle Chalmers Ash about Kyle Charmers and Isaac Jones two of his athletes who made the Australian Olympic team Carl's stroke is if you look on top of the water uh it can be can be a little bit messy and he's got a really big kick kick up above the water but nothing ever if you then look underneath the water is almost perfect the kick doesn't go below his body line so there's no drag at the back he uses his kick for connection of the stroke and timing and then he's got that loping stroke where he just connects on and he just drives through the water with his rotation so our goal is to connect right at the top there and then he's got this amazing um catch from top to halfway down and then he's got another press out the back where he holds amazing water and then all of that sets up with really good length he tries to go um connecting on his left for rotation and then length for right so there his cues to his stroke um and you can see that the way that he swims that loping stroke but he's just so powerful through the water you go Isaac who's 216 Recovery for 53 he's very much Str straight arm over the top of the water for the 53 um and then his his recovery really starts from he's really driving out the back doesn't want to be flicking the water and continuing out but it's a drive underneath the water and then it's around the side of his he finds that that just balances him out and all momentum moving forward is where Kyle is a little is a bent arm freestyler of in the recovery um and we work on really trying to have that relaxed hand or with anyone in freestyle should be it's called recovery should be nice and relaxed as soon as you start to tighten up you're using way more energy than you need to um and then you're probably going to overreach or you're going to drive in too hard uh because you're not relaxed your hand should be nice and relaxed the whole way through until you just start to put a little bit of tension on it when you when you start your catch so that's what I look for nice and recovered um lots of relaxed recovery you're definitely looking at Entry for your entry is soft hands and again but depending on the stroke it all depends where those hands enter so again crossing over or entering in wi that's not what we want everything's got to be in line with your shoulder because when you start that press that's where you're going to be strongest if you start to lose or you're a little bit wide or your press starts to go out wide then you're already in a weak position one it can compromise your shoulder for injuries but two you're just missing all of the good water right in front of your shoulder where you're strongest that way you can utilize your lats and making sure that's all in line um easier said than dumb because when you're you're laying down in position um and the your hands above your head so that's where the coach comes in or video feedback comes in really important cuz it always feels like you're in line you look at the camera and you're way out here so I think that's really important definitely get definitely get that video footage so Catch when you're setting up your catch the very basic is um again your hand in line with your shoulder and fingertips you're talking about freestyle fingertips pointing to the bottom of the pool and then because you're getting maximum Force going backwards as soon as you start to move your hand out of the way or swivel out of the way then you're letting go of that water um but then looking at the top catch and then you're looking at a second press using your forearm for that end of the stroke you really want to think feel like you're pushing to your ankles then you come up into that recovery position but what I then go to the next level is more about connection so if you could have the best catch in the world but if it's not connected to your rotation connected to your core connected to your hip you're just doing everything with your arms and you're disconnected so you're really trying to find the connection of the stroke um and that's how you set it up to being the full connection with your catch and that's when you're going to have a much smoother free style and be more Favourite Drill efficient I then asked Ash if he has any favorite drills that he likes to give his Squad call it freestyle timing drill uh but easy to do with fins it's one arm out in front and then the other arm just sits up here so you rotate over you're kind of trying to hold your good body position constant kick and then the catch here out in front has to initiate this arm coming through because if you just bring this over you're already stuck into 3/4 catchup and this one just gets out of the way but if you actually set it up all right you got pressure on the water and then you pull yourself into that next rotation um and then that's the timing of the stroke so again it's that one the arm out leads it so you're pulling yourself in and then I talk about the the catch pulls this shoulder in the arms just connected to it so when you actually do it and you extend your arm that shoulder that shoulder comes in at the same it's leading that arm and then because obviously your shoulders connected to your trunk and then that's where you start to build that connection a little bit more yeah if you go no breath you go no breath um very easy to do then you need to work out the timing of the breath as well yeah the timing of Timing your breathing the breath for what I want my guys to do is as your hands coming through should start to turn your head so your hands entering while you're um taking your breath and then it should be nice and quick and it initiates back when you actually start to apply pressure there it's a very common mistake is you see the other arm coming over and then your head has to get out of the way of that other arm coming over and that's going to be a little bit more Sprint model um but if you're then pulling yourself back in you're pulling it back in and then your eye your hand should be in front of your eyes as this starts to come through so then and again that's probably more Sprint model than it would be for for distance um but that's definitely the same concept you probably just a little bit later if you're doing distance in Breathing Pattern terms of breathing patterns I think again it comes down to the individual and you can go you can go Twos for rhythm you can go fours cuz it creates more length more length to your stroke cuz you're allowed to keep your head down and you can feel the length and the rotation going through but and then like I said it goes to more the individual because then you can go on the flip side you can breathe twos but then they might start to lose their length because of it and shorten up but then what do they need then for rhythm so you've got a whole different whole lot of different models that you could sort of go off um I know some people breathe 224s um you could go Four's on the way down twoos on the way back um it's all how you find your your breathing model yeah so I don't I don't have a particular one that is that I would teach the most but I do like breathing fours for 100 I don't know why I just I I for me when I was swimming that's what I liked but then there's you've got someone like Aron tipas that breathes 224 in a 400 freestyle so but it's actually it's how you train so you need to condition that if you want to breathe fours you've got to do it every time you do a pace 50 then that's what you've got to do so you've got to condition that and you can do it easy you could do it Sixers if you really wanted to but it's got to be it's got to be what you think is optimal right for you and what about favorite cues or phrases that he likes The best 'cue' for swimming to use when he's coaching I think one of the phrases I would use the most is length like I'm very big on efficiency and counting your Strokes uh so I I'm always looking for length because what happens when people tight tighten up at the end of the race what do you see them do they start to just chop in so the more you can keep practicing holding your length and that's length out in front and then length through the catch that's sort of what I'm talking to them about a lot yeah I think when you're working on your Technique I think it should be done slow but very thoughtful so you don't want to rush your way through it because then that starts to mask mistakes um so it's like you're hiding all the imperfections by just rushing through it so I always try and get my guys to slow down slow down think about it then you can balance a little bit more or if you're unbalanced you can start to feel that so it's more about feel I I mean I've had the best of both Coaching vs competing world right like I was a uh swimmer on the Australian team and then now coaching getting getting kind of close to that level as well I feel like I've been able to transfer a lot of my knowledge or at least my feel as a swimmer to then now coaching sort of being able to explain it really well but there's been a lot still that I need to learn as a coach I think that's really important to be aware of uh but it just gives me an advantage knowing how it feels and knowing what the sets are like and um like if they're hurting or where the pain comes or and then trying to communicate that to the swimmers as well so I think that's where it's been really good um but yeah like I said still plenty of still plenty to learn in the coaching space but I think um if we're not constantly improving then um then we're kind of just staying still so I think that's really important to think about are there any common mistakes that Biggest mistakes in swimming you see being made when coaching high performance athletes I I think the biggest one for me probably is overtraining uh you've got to make sure like I think about when I'm thinking about speeds and you've got to make sure you can actually hit your top speed so if you're tired or being overtrained then you don't have the ability to go when the coach wants you to go um so I think that that's a really important one for me so if you're too tired and you can't hit the top speeds then you're probably not going to hit the speeds you need and then that's then going to transfer over you're going to be stuck in that zone of just a little a little bit down and you're going to start to shrink it right down your slow is going to be too fast and then your fast is going to be too slow and then you're stuck it right in that threshold middle Hardest swim workout level what's the hardest set that you've ever done I've got two that I sort of go to about that one was one is uh one that I did a lot with Rowan Taylor was 450s on 2 minutes and then it was probably about 4 500 M of removal and I'd do that three to four times but it was the the 50s were best average but like my lactate would get well over 20 well over 20 lactate in that sort of set even though I'm just swimming basically to was just 100 pce making sure I was hitting 100 stroke rate 100 count um so I was quite specific in that sense um but it just accumulated and it was just by the third or fourth set it was just an absolute grind um but not not not difficult to ride or anything like that it was it's pretty basic set but it's probably the level of detail you put into it the other one was more of a hypox one that I did with Vince Ry but we would do 8200s 8200s backstroke but we would progress go 15 underwater off the First wall 20 underwater on the second wall 25 underwater on the third wall and then 30 underwater on the last one and the time the time cycle was 330 I couldn't make all those underwater but it was the time cycle that ended up getting you and it was just a hard mental grind by the cuz you could get through the first two it was the middle ones that was just insanely hard and then you were just so out of breath by the last couple that it was yeah that was tough I'd have to say my best ever race Best race was probably my 200 backstroke in 2009 where I broke the Commonwealth record and went 1558 uh it just was everything just came together in that race um I just executed it really well the process was spot on um we' made a shift two years before to say I was going to start focusing on the 200 back stroke and all that kind of led to that led to that moment so um but I I look back now and I look back of the video and it probably wasn't necessarily there's 10 things I can pick apart of as a coach now uh but it was still my best performance because of how well I put the process together oh yeah the worst Worst race ever race I did was actually it was when we had this hard training camp and it was part of a um National camp that we did with swimming Australia and we had to come race a Grand Prix in Brisbane and it was also the turn of back uh but the it was more because I I didn't really want to do it and it was so terrible and I thought I was putting in the effort but I swam it a little bit slower which means I sunk down the water and it still hurt so much even though I didn't really want to do it but it was just terrible mindset going into the race and then it was a terrible race attached to it so you have to be 100% in and if you're going to be a professional athlete or even an athlete that just wants to take ownership don't even have to be professional you've just you're there for you and you've got to do what you need to do and doing a subpass swim like that is just not good enough so um and that was but again maybe being a little bit younger and immature but you've got to have those mistakes or failures to learn from them I think the best ever advice I've been given or it's Best advice probably actually more of like um I guess a way of learning but um Kaizen have you heard of that before where it's continual learning I think if you take that into anything anything into life and Rowan Taylor was a big one on this um being my coach and now the national head coach um I really took that on board and I think that is if you're continually learning you're continually bettering yourself I think that just becomes you always progressing and you're never staying still I said that before but um I think that's a really important bit of advice and a good why to live you l