A swimming video analysis is a powerful learning tool that can accelerate your learning and help you to swim faster. It’s often underused by triathletes and swimmers who get bogged down with swimming as far and as fast as possible. Here are 10 ways a swimming video analysis can help your technique so you swim faster.
- Visual Aid: One of the challenges of swimming is that you can’t see yourself when you swim and often have no idea about how you are moving in water. In addition water dampens your bodies ability to sense its movement, so it’s hard to feel where your limbs are and know what they’re doing. A video analysis means that you can see yourself swimming and is a powerful learning tool.
- Underwater: A video analysis with cameras that are above and below the water gives a much clearer picture of what you are actually doing how this effects your efficiency. From pool side it’s really hard to see properly what’s happening underneath the water.
- Slow Motion: Being able to slow the video footage down, move it on frame by frame, re-wind and replay as many times as you like makes it incredibly easy to see how you’re swimming and understand your movement patterns and opportunities for improvement.
- Lines and Highlights: Using some software or an app makes it possible to draw lines, measure angles and highlight faults which also helps you to understand your current swimming, and how to improve.
- The Movement Chain: You can see how things are connected, and how one part of your stroke is connected to something else. For example what happens when you lift your head up too much on a breath, or what is causing your arm to cross the centre line.
- Interpretation: It’s easy for your body to misinterpret a movement pattern once you’re lying down with your head in the water and can’t breathe or balance. So you end up with your hand as high as the ceiling because you were aiming for a high elbow, or in aiming for a long stroke you end up over extending your arms putting strain on your shoulders. Seeing yourself on video can help your brain and your body to figure this out.
- Symmetrical: You’ll be able to see if you’re symmetrical which really helps with swimming efficiently. Seeing yourself on screen will enable you see if one arm or leg does something different to the other one, if you rotate evenly, or breathe differently to different sides. This is useful for things like swimming straight, figuring out why you can only breathe to one side, or why you have an injury.
- Blind Spots: It can help your learning and highlight blind spots in your stroke that you weren’t aware of, helping you to keep discovering new opportunities for learning and improved efficiency.
- Bad Habits: It’s easy for habits creep back without realising it. A recent video analysis of my own stroke highlighted that my thumb first entry had crept back. This was a fault I’d worked hard to fix about 12months ago and had no idea I’d started doing it again while I was working on a different part of my stroke.
- Be Positive: Swimming is fun, so look for the things that you do well, and your opportunities for learning and improvement. Swimming can be difficult and frustrating to learn, but with the right attitude and support from an experienced and inspiring coach it can be a pleasurable experience. The opportunities for ongoing learning and improved efficiency (faster times) are endless and this is what I love about swimming.
Get in touch to book a video analysis or join one of our stroke correction clinics.