Thank you! I'm glad it made as much of a difference to you as it did to me. I really am passionate about it and I'm hoping it's helping many others like yourself too :)

Thank you!

Great observation. Thanks.

Good point! very true

Great news!! Just keep at it, persistence pays off 🙌🏻

Keep it up!! And glad it helped, hopefully the next ones will too ☺️👍🏼

Thank you! You could try using all of the toys? put paddles a pull boy and fins on and practice the 3/4 catchup drill whilst thinking about the kick timing?

@@Josh_lewis thank you Josh, will try that!

Thanks! best of luck!

I am 65...I swim daily 300 to 500 metrs.... Now i am triathlete as well Tell me this ...What is yr diet or gel fr swimming g this 2.5kms under 58 mints...That will be more impressive😮

Thanks Ian!

I agree! My squad sometimes do opposite paddle/fin and I’ve never understood it. Your way is much better IMO.

Best of luck!

No problem ☺️

Good point!

@@Josh_lewis The other thing to bear in mind is that propulsion from kicking is something stupid like 2%. Single figures anyway. So legs are best used to keep yourself horizontal. So hang on to the side of the pool and figure out the SLOWEST kick rate you need, to keep your body horizontal, with your eyes above the water line (sight swimming for open water). Then start working on the timing with the arms and catch like you say from there. Like music. Start super slow, then speed up as you get better. Don't forget fatigue will reeeeaaally mess up your timing.

No I haven’t used drills to do it at a higher cadence. I think once I’ve got the rhythm and feel in my head I’m able to apply it to higher stroke rates… but I’ve swam all of my life so maybe It’s a bit more automated. If I were to do a drill to speed it up it would be catch-up and just do it faster

Hello, did you come to any conclusion? I think I'm timing my hand pull with a kick in the opposite side as well. Is it the same?

@@filipeamador314 I kept going with the same side pull and kick combo and that's now feeling more connected than the previous (even though it should be the same in the end)

@@dave2402 Thank you very much Dave, I'll give it a try :) Have a nice one

Love it!

Am 52 and now have a Coach whom is teaching me this technique. What a complete game changer. Great video and the underwater footage is awesome. Thank you.

Sneaky!

Thanks for watching!

And as an instant result inwas able to swim faster than with a bouy first time in my life last season 🤔😂

That’s some outrageous improvement! Mine is all measured over shorter distances and then when I go open water it’s slightly less tangible, but I’m glad I’m not alone in thinking it’s a good tip!

@@Josh_lewis thanks, hope to get half of that this year still and dream to transfer the banked hours on land too on the race day this year... triathlon is so fun, because its so easy... :D

No problem!

@@Josh_lewis I’m 😮😅

Hope it works for you too!

Great idea as well! Anything to get a feel for it progressively is perfect

Swimming is a whole beast of it's own, it doesn't matter what level of any other sport you reacted. Practice is all that matters. Took me years to be able to finally swim well

As mentioned above it’s all practice! I’d definitely put all your kit on, fins, paddles, and pull buoy and slow things down to try and get the rhythm. The kit emphasises what each element is doing. Let me know if it helps!

mate, try different tactics with toys, sometimes i find the timing pretty well with same sided 1paddle1fin as u get more pressure on your propulsion bits in the extremities....i've now started playing to synchronizing the back/posterior kick on the otherside to it to really enhance the kick on 2bk and with fins, damn u get fast like with 40-50 strokes per min...

Great timing I’m at lesson 7 in the Effortless Swimming and trying to get the serape effect. I thought they want you to time the kick the same time your hand enters which I guess aligns with your statement of before you start the catch. Ive been doing the drill with opposite paddle and fin but found if I think about it too much I mess up. I mess up the same side far less. Kicking with the opposite leg when you start your catch I find hard to coordinate on my breathing side. The non breathing side seems to get it. I can’t say I’ve really got it yet but I’ve been trying this a lot the last few swims. Glad to see others using this method and having success. I’ll keep trying

You may be the dance equivalent of born with 2 left feet, neurologically unable to coordinate a sequential limb and muscle movement.

Love this , all true and catch-up to get a feel is spot on 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻

This popped up on my feed again, and couldn't remember watching it before..... Age related memory stuff..... Anyway, watching your arm pull, the angle of your palm changes a lot during the pull. Ideal for me is that the palm stays at 90 degrees to the direction that you are wanting to travel. You angle to the outside and inside. Part of me wonders if this is due to the slight S pattern to your arm pull. I think most say to pull in a straight line since the S pull 'is not efficient'.

Awesome, thank you!

I’m not sure why it’s not standard… maybe it’s just explained different t and this is just something that we can understand?

@@Josh_lewis I’m not very good, but I’ve had a lot of coaching, different approaches, TI etc. The standard seems to be to emphasize opposite arm-leg coordination. Cross connection. That’s valid, and works for some people, but never clicked for me. Why same leg-same arm isn’t generally taught is a big mystery, in my opinion. It’s so amazingly clear when pointed out in video. Good you’re spreading the word!

@@elev140 cheers Ed, hopefully it’ll help a few people out

👏🙌🏻🙌🏻

Yes will do!

Will do!

Thanks!

I don't think it matters how many kicks you do between the strokes, I vary how many I do depending on how fast I want to go. I think it's more focusing on the reason the kick is there, to encourage the rotation of the hips and therefore whip the arm through and propel forward :) And thanks!

@@Josh_lewis sweet thanks for the reply 👍🏽

Maybe just try and get a bit more strength by using paddles whilst keeping the rhythm, and then you can up the cadence without paddles, which will in turn allow you to go quicker with the same timing. Hope that makes sense.

Keep at it though! Sounds like you enjoy it :)

@@Josh_lewis Great. Thanks for your reply!

So I tend to breathe on 2, I'm not a bilateral breather in the traditional sense. I do however breathe towards the same side of the pool constantly... so essentially each length I'm breathing a different way. This makes sure my stroke is even both sides and i don't get neck ache ;)

just before you start the catch phase, you want to kick down with the same side leg as you're about to do the catch with

I’m watching it back and trying to work it out. Are you talking about hand /wrist / elbow entry? I’m currently unsure as to how this effects the inflexion point to get power? Surely that’s more to do with having a better hand entry and therefore streamline? The catch and power phase are separate, no? Can you explain please as this could be an easy win for me if it’s important 😀

@@Josh_lewis I re-watched the video frame by frame (using the period and comma key in KZfaq), and yes this does have more to with a better hand entry leading to an optimal streamline. The central issue is where you place your right hand on entry. If you watch at 4:40 you see that your hand enters almost center to your axis line, then as you rotate into a streamline your arm straightens out and your hand swings about 4 inches to the left as you set up the catch. You can observe the same effect from the above camera at 4:45. I'd like to see on the recovery keeping the elbow at a little higher angle as you start to drop your hand into the catch, and -- critical -- think of reaching out at shoulder width. The shoulder rotation drives the streamline, rather than the hand leading the shoulder rotation. My phasing would be recovery, wider hand entry with a bit more of an angle, streamline as you push the opposite stroke, and catch and pull. All of this is to shave off a little bit less drag. The top view also shows that you are over-rotating on your breathing side. I suggest working on bilateral breathing, at least in training sessions (warm-ups, easy recovery/DPS or at the start of a descend set). Also, for drills, breath to your right side and work with a snorkel to check the side-to-side balance in your stroke. Another good drill is single arm stroke, breathing to the opposite side--making sure your catch stays outside the shoulder. A higher head position (drills only) will help you watch your hand entry and forces a wider entry. On the very commendable side, your early vertical forearm catch is exemplary--that's where the power is! And your overall rotation and timing (the point of your video) is also excellent. I confess this analysis is very, very picky. And inch here, an inch there. But every swimmer can improve technique by minding the details.

pretty sure there are two kicks per stroke? i may be wrong?

@@Josh_lewis One kick per stroke are meant

I agree with this!!!!

I think opposite leg to arm is also good for cross body connections and engaging abs.

@@erinlawrance9728 cross body stuff is definitely great for abs/core, but here we’re just trying to develop coordination and muscle memory. So a swimmer trying to change his/her technique will have to go very slow at first, and define success as not getting confused during numerous repeats. Try it, check, recheck, stop and fix, repeat. Then, gradually increasing RPM and effort…which naturally occur as coordination gets dialled in…but “gradually” means many pool sessions, not just deciding to “go for it” during one set. Technique and drill stuff is extremely hard swimming!! Lots of mistakes, patience, frustration, coughing up water….if the drill does not feel uncomfortable, at minimum, it’s not being done well. But it definitely pays off on race day.

Completely agree, like you say, can approach from different ways. I'd never even considered the connection between the two before this, so I guess it didn't matter which way I thought of it, alternate arm/leg or same arm same leg. Was obviously more natural for me to think same arm same leg as I was thinking of what I considered to be the important part of my stroke which was where the power was coming from... rotation and catch etc... I don't get much from thinking about hand entry to be honest as weirdly don't value it too highly in the overall propulsion of going forward... I understand it's more to do with streamline, but I think it's just what i was concentrating on in my head... I'll do a video on what I mean by using the pullbuoy etc.

and i predominently use 2beat kick on LD swims and thus on pool mostly also, so i think its there for even more important to get it 100% right

Definitely important to get it right. I personally think if the kick as starting slightly before the catch, but they probably happen pretty simultaneously. It’s very close… they should both help you rotate the hips!

I'd say think of it as same time, but in reality the arm begins to drop just before the leg kick of the same side, but the leg kick is a very similar time to the actual catch part of the stroke.

@@Josh_lewis great tip. Thanks

The leg should bend and flex at the knee when putting more speed/force through the kick. To keep your hips involved as the primary driver for the kick focus on the body rotation. It is easy to stop rotating when focusing on your kick or anything else specifically. From this point its learning to feel the rotation and the flex working together.

Thank You for your reply, it would be easier for me to fly to the moon, than to do these things in the water with my legs.

I don't think that the kick does truly start from the hip. I think when using a big leg kick it does to an extent... but primarily the glutes. essentially, i wouldn't over complicate it. Start with a pullbuoy and allow yourself to still kick, but think of it more as flicking your ankles with a little bend in the knee to help you rotate. This should help you with your feel for the rhythm.

@@Josh_lewis Thanks for your reply but I am afraid that this swimming thing will never happen for me. I can swim 2 million km legs with board, but it won't reflect in my freestyle swimming. Upper body and lower body just don't work together, there is no co-ordination.

@@bravosierra1000 Thanks for your reply but this rotation is another thing which is mystery to me. My body is not built for swimming, I am just too stiff.

Agreed, this is actually a video from earlier in the season and I've been working on mitigating too much kick since and think I'm a lot better at it now than in this video. It's obviously beneficial to have both assets in the locker, but the timing of that same arm's same leg was the real eye-opener in my opinion. Sounds like you've got on really well with this technique though!

@@Josh_lewis cool man. I'm glad you have improved. All the swimming videos including yours is a motivation for me. I study the techniques by watching the videos lol. So thanks for sharing yours too. I actually have so much room to improve. However yes the two beat technique has definitely allowed me to swim in open water for longer distance. So I'm working on it. But I'm still trying to improve my rotation from my hips. Rotating side to side at the right angle will also help with streamline. I'm using a snorkel now just to do drills for things like that. Oh and another thing that helped me was hand paddles. The hand paddles was a game changer for me. Because with those paddles I swim super fast through the water and when we have speed then our legs lift up and we don't actually need to use our legs that much. This helped me to better my catch and in turn helped me to feel what it's like to glide through the water. So when I remove the hand paddles then I try to get that same swim feel where the water rushes off the skin and you just glide like flying. Then my feet follows my body and the water passes over my feet. This way I don't kick much. When I kick more than just flicking my feet then I feel the drag and I feel I actually swim slower. Sprinting is different. But for freestyle swim, the less feet the better. But like you mentioned. You have it figured out now💪 keep it up. Enjoy the swimming. Looking strong bro. Definitely motivates me. 😀

I noticed the two kicks per stroke vs. one kick per stroke, too.

I've only started swimming Jan 2023 and I was so so bad 170bpm and gasping after 50meters. Now with a two beat kick (one kick per stroke) I can swim 2200m easy 130bpm at 2:00/100m and have done a few at 1:50/100m but heart rate 140-150bpm

@@leslie7922 that is so awesome. I share your sentiments exactly. I felt the same way. My whole life I thought I was a good swimmer but I compared myself to no good swimmer lol. I just compared myself to anyone swimming at the beach or local swimming pools. But once I started to learn to swim. I realized I have been splashing in the water my whole life. Now when I go do my swim sessions. The lifeguards are so fascinated with my swimming that they all get into the pool to swim and practice with me lol. It's a good feeling to actually glide gracefully in the water. I'm very far from perfect but that feeling of flying in the water makes me so motivated and addicted to swimming now. I can't stop. Every gap I get, I go down to the pool to do drills and swim. But good on you for the swimming improvement. No one will understand what an achievement it Is for someone who couldn't really swim like a proper swimmer and then they practice and learn and become a competent swimmer. Don't necessarily have to be a pro. But just knowing that you can enjoy the water so much more and it's really a way to destress. That time in the pool is just a time of bliss. No thoughts about life No thoughts about any stresses. Just you focusing on the feeling of the water moving over your body. It's like flying. Amazing. I absolutely love it. But all the best with your swimming journey. Take care👍

Could be someone who cleans pools? Haha if that’s what I said or it auto transcribed to, I meant pull buoy, which is a float you put between your legs

There is a note at 3:10 that explains what I mean by catch. Which is effectively the same as yours. I don’t disagree with shoulder strength helping, but I wouldn’t say I’m losing a significant amount of water, just in comparison to who this video is aiming to help. And tbh i think that it’s very similar whether you choose same arm same leg or opposites, but I prefer this way around as it emphasises rotation rather than forward momentum. If you focus on both arm and leg from same side, that’s what helps you rotate. The recovery arm isn’t helping when it’s out of the water. Both are correct, but just focusing on different things 🤷‍♂️

@@Josh_lewissorry dude but you’re completely back to front. You should maintain maximum internal rotation of the humeral head when entering the power phase of the pull. You are in full external rotation (dropped elbow) at this moment. You will struggle to progress to higher levels of performance with these errors in tact

👍🏼

you swim a bit slower but you are spending less energy on kicking. Why should that make you tired faster?

The legs have the largest muscles in our body and therefore the more you use it the more oxygen (and energy) is expanded to maintain it. It's probably better to focus on maintaining a better streamline from finger to toe and the 2 kick technique helps keep the body on a horizontal plane

@@koklead7904 so it means for each stroke you do two kicks ?

Yes pretty much, the down beat to switch the hips around (same arm same leg, and then the second kick is both a stabiliser and propulsion)

@@Josh_lewis I will try this in my next session. Thank you!

Sorry about that! Hope it was still useful ☺️👍🏼

Thanks! I’m not actually a ‘fast’ swimmer… I’m pretty short and am trying to go against short term speed. That being said I think my pb is a 54… so not slow, but not a sub 50 🤷‍♂️

@@Josh_lewis that's very fast to the rest of us, bro

In what way? I time myself all the time on different reps. And also take lactic readings and HR to see relative efforts

@@Josh_lewis before and after implementing this technique. if it helps you have to gain speed.

💯 if you want to keep it simple that’s perfect and would definitely recommend. At the end of the day it’s just about doing the work. I think some people struggle with this more than others and maybe it’s useful for them as sometimes it just takes one cue to help with something they were struggling with… or may even make them faster.

I feel as though it’s one of those if you know you know scenarios. But if it helps at least one person find it then it was worth the title 😅

@@Josh_lewis this technic change my (swimming) life....I was totaly exhauted after 100m and need to make a break....Now I can swim 5 km and more on the sea

Could you explain a bit please, sounds like interesting advice but I can’t quite work out what you mean 🤓

@@Josh_lewis You are swimming underwater, get on top, hands enter the water ahead of the elbow, you are dropping your whole arm onto the water and pull UNDER the body. The further from centre the weaker the arm. Straighten the body out, you back end is so low in the water ,you should be straight body at water surface,you are about a foot underwater, so much drag.

Yeh good point, I made it into a 60second one on Instagram as well to be fair so I’ll maybe meet halfway 😇

Thanks for the feedback Dale. Always nice to know there are easy areas to improve…