Had my first swim coaching session with Chris at Triccentral.co.uk and I wanted to share some screen shots of the video session from the endless pool to show how valuable this tool is.The session was great and Chris’s coaching style suited me down to the ground. Straight to the point and advice backed up with a clear in-depth knowledge of his field.
Here is a four way shot of my 4 week old crawl stroke (remember I only learnt to do this stuff 4 weeks ago!):
Stroke before coaching changes
Chris was quick to point out 3 key changes we needed to make, 2 of which can be seen from these stills. Firstly my legs where sitting way too low in the pool and he advised that this is usually the symptom of poor technique in other areas of the stroke so ensure we looked for the root cause first. The second thing he pointed out was my the angle that my arms entered the water. This is way too low in the water and could be causing issues with leg position and certainly causing my arm stroke to lost 25% to 33% of its power because its total range of motion in the water was greatly reduced.
The third thing he spotted was the position of my head whilst breathing which can be seen below:
Head position during breathing (pre-technique change)
The head is turned but sightly tilted from the natural neck axis which you can see from there is lifting most of my head out of the water and I could feel a definite drop of my leg position in the water when breathing.
Chris gave me three drills to work on. Firstly we address the breathing position of the head which once I saw this on video, helped me visualise and feel my head position. Chris advised when making changes to focus on one area at a time. We drilled this for 5 to 10 minutes and the results are below:
Head breathing postion after technique change
It is clear to see from this still that after that change the head position is much lower in the water during breathing. Great result!
On to the arm entry angle and depth which in my opinion was a bloddy disgrace 
Chris helped me visualise and feel the hands entering the water with the top of my palm skimming the surface of the water. We drilled this and then backed it up with the classic “catch up” drill which helped me really stretch my body and arms out in order to achieve the right arm entry angle and gain maximum power in the arm stroke. Here’s the results:
Arm entry angle after coaching
This looks so much better and the power of the stroke took huge strides forwards the better I got at this. This drill had also helped my legs sit higher in the water as can be seen from the final image below split four ways…
Final strok after coaching changes
You can see the giant strides I took in this one 45 minute session. The endless pool was fantastic and the coaching was even better. I’d recommend Chris in a heart beat. Well, I’m off to the pool to continue the progression. You never know, I may be a swimmer one day! 
