Check out my new recovery video on Youtube:
I’ve been watching it in action at Mandy McDougal and Stuart McDougal‘s Total Immersion weekend workshops, and it works incredibly well. Note that I do not think that this means our old recovery drills and concepts won’t work any more. It seems that this teaching technique delivers faster results and especially with those who seem to have trouble drilling/imprinting a bent arm/elbow led cued recovery. This is very evident in the swimmers who try the classic elbow led recovery but shrug their shoulder first in order to try to get the elbow around. Also the focus on the elbow sometimes leads them to crank it behind them as they try to lift the elbow up.
My personal experience with it has been very positive. I was still experiencing a severe deceleration during every switch – very frustrating to see the black tiles under you pause with every switch! However, after using this style of recovery, I eliminated the severe deceleration and have more constant velocity during the non-propulsive phases of my stroke. I also had watched Bill Boomer’s Freestyle Reimagined DVD and understood intellectually his interesting concept of using the recovery arm in propulsion but never really put it effectively to practice…until now. We’ve always been adding the acceleration due to gravity in our cues, but now I understand how to add the acceleration of the recovering arm whipping forward to add to the forward momentum generated by 2BK/hip drive/body rotation/gravity.
Give it a try and let me know what you think!
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