G~VDM

Swim guru

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Stop Racing Everyone

In a training session, young swimmers often race everything and everyone. This can be detrimental to their long-term development. Competitiveness is important for learning how to race, but technical competence is ultimately more important to long-term success. Many swimmers, boys in particular, have a hypersensitivity to winning. They have to be first: first in the water, first to finish…

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You Won’t Win (In This Water)

Bravado is the currency of adolescent life for many boys. Hot weather sends almost everyone to cool beautiful places beside water and this week it was hot! And cold water killed someone. Probably more than one around our watery planet in the normally cool climate of Great Britain, when it got unseasonably hot. It is one of my favourite things to do, it’s a bit of a busman’s holiday for me, but…

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The Swimmer and the Zen Recruit

In Zen tradition, a new recruit is turned away. They are told there is nothing to learn, that the Masters have nothing to teach, that no help will be given because there is “nothing” to attain. So the recruit waits outside stubborn in their pursuit. They kneel in supplication. Hungry. Cold. Repeatedly told there is nothing for them within those walls. Only later, as an act of grace, are they…

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Fixing Late Breathing In Butterfly (It’s The Thumbs)

It seems an unlikely culprit but fixing a late breather in butterfly stems from the thumbs. Many swimmers take their breath late in their stroke. This causes, what I call, a ‘hitch’. This makes the wave undulation uneven by lifting the head up late. Your head is going up when it needs to be started on its down wave. A wave needs to be smooth and follow an equal up-down pattern. Like a sine…

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Free Bee

What job would you do for free? It would have to be fun and it would have to be on my own time. I’m sure even blue movie stars might feel the novelty wearing thin. Creativity would be included. To keep my interest and something potentially useful. Inventing new innovative homes or living spaces without any cost restrictions. I’d like that. Maybe travel corespondent but it would have to be a…

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“A person cannot reasonably be expected to change something about themselves if they do not know that they are doing it wrong. This is why a swimmer could swim endlessly with terrible strokes. A stroke won’t heal itself.”

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Olympics

What Olympic sports do you enjoy watching the most? As an avid sportsperson who earns a living in sport, my answer might surprise you. First, though, a caveat: I find all sport fascinating. Humans seem to relish that instinctive “I’m better than you” drive. As a youngster, I was obsessed with swimming. Competition consumed my thoughts. I remember watching the Montreal Olympics on TV and…

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Coaching Dolphin Kick

Here is a short video of my coaching style. On this day I was talking about dolphin kick. https://youtube.com/shorts/xFPnZr-lRRA?si=bsy31AuvzAtC4bCb

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You will see from the drawings yesterday that one of the pictures said ‘rope pull’.  This is a little trick I use to assist me to teach how correct streamlining feels.  If there is a long rope at the pool I often will use it to pull the swimmer I am working with through the water.  I ask them to hold their head up for half a length and then put it down.  I ask them how it feels different once they put their head down.  Since they are going a lot faster than normal the feeling is much more pronounced.  Faster = more drag.  So the goal is to have the swimmer experience the feeling of the resistance of the water by going much faster by pulling them through the water.  It is a very cheap way of doing the same thing that a very expensive tool called a cable tow does.  A cable tow is over £$10K, so a big step down from that fee.  It is also a great deal of fun and then it is very memorable.  Swimmers want to do it again…always a good thing. Do you want to join in the discussion with Gary? Join in his Skool and get started: https://www.skool.com/performance-swim-strokes-6754/about

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Old Tired Frontcrawl

This is one of the most common areas that I see: high head postion and arched back.  If you have a look at the notes I took with this swimmer the ‘Old Tired Stroke’ had these issues: 1. Back is soft and bent causing resistance due to poor body position.  This is due to looking forwards and weak core strength. 2. Legs tend to move towards an uneven ‘two beat’ kick, or a sporatic kick.  This is due…

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Granny Breaststroke Drill

The most common issue I see in breaststroke is a style of stroke that can only be called  Granny  Breaststroke.  I call it this because the stroke holds the head position very high like a Granny who doesn’t want to get her hair wet.  It causes a huge amount of resistance and is very difficult to do even if you have a good kick.  It is important to know what the different styles of breaststroke…

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When Dolphin kick isn't dolphin kick

Butterfly needs to have a dolphin action to swim it correctly.  The basis for the stroke is a correct dolphin action, NOT a dolphin kick.  An undulation starting from the upper part of the body is a natural body movement that I have often seen in children.  Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be taught in swimming lessons leaving most swimmers who are graduating from their lesson programme into a…

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Is the arm stroke in swimming a 'pull'?

Children take what adults say literally.  It is one of the reasons I often discourage coaches from being sarcastic in a training session when they attempt to be funny sarcastically.  Swimmers don’t get it.  They think that coaches and adults mean what they say.  Children are influenced by their teachers and the words they use are important.  So why do we call the underwater part of our arm stroke…

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Popping Drills

Shoulder rotation in Front Crawl is essential.  For a swimmer to be able to get the full benefit from all the muscles that connect the arms to the body they need to rotate their shoulders with their arm stroke. Like the great Russian coach Gennadi Toureski I like to use the analogy of a boat/paddle to have swimmers understand how the arms affect the movement of the body. Toureski called it…

Popping Drills

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Why We Think Our Hands Are Our Paddles: The Sensory Homunculus

How fast would this guy swim! Huge hands and huge feet… This sculpture can be found at the Glasgow Science Centre The information attached says: SENSORY HOMUNCULUS: Different patches of your skin have different touch sensors.When you touch something, signals travel from those sensors to your brain. Your brain analyses the signals to produce your sense of touch. On the sculpture, the size of each…

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How I Got Started In Swimming: Lloydie

Many people have a story to tell that gives a bit of perspective on their sport.  Mine is from my long lost friend; Lloydie. Lloyd was four in 1969 and I don’t know his last name.  I was also four in 1969.  He was my next door neighbour in Prince George, British Columbia.  I remember playing with Lloydie all the time.  He was a good play-mate.  I would go over to his basement suite and Lloydie…

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Did You Do A Good Job Coach?

As everyone gets longer in the tooth as a coach you always wonder if you did a good job. Was I a mentor? Was I a caring adult? Did my time with each young person become an important moment in their early life? Today I received this wonderful note from a swimmer from my very first coaching post: I didn’t want to reveal the name of the club for privacy The great feeling this gave me has really…

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