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The final phase of the pull is the release, when the hand moves from 9 o’clock back to 12 o’clock, precisely where it started this .85-second underwater, almost circular, journey. Since the hand/arm are now moving in the forward direction again, the objective of this phase is to slip the hand and arm out of the water with the least amount of frontal drag possible
Underwater Pull Series – Phase I
Filed under: Videos | November 5th, 2011
There are two reasons why the hand/arm create lift in the first phase of the underwater pull. Discover why lift is important and how long we typically spend in the “lift phase” for both hip and shoulder driven freestyle in this Analysis of the Underwater Pull by Gary Hall Sr.
What is The Race Club?
Filed under: Aqua Notes | May 27th, 2011
I recall sitting at lunch one day at the Olympic Trials in 2004 with Peter Carlisle, Michael Phelp’s agent, and he asked David Arluck and me what The Race Club was all about. David gave him a rambling answer and then it dawned on me that he really didn’t know. Nor did I.
“It is a great logo, though, don’t you think?” I chimed in. We all agreed on that.
I became a little more involved in The Race Club in 2006, when its focus was more directed to helping elite athletes reach their Olympic goals, and I had just moved to Islamorada. After sending 17 swimmers to Beijing in 2008, for the first time, I took a long breath, leaned back and really started to understand what The Race Club could become and what it could offer. That is when I became fully involved and very excited. Read the rest of this entry »
ISHOF Fran Crippen SafeSwim 2011
Filed under: Aqua Notes | May 14th, 2011
On the weekend from Friday May 6 to Sunday May, 9, 2011 the International Swimming Hall of Fame hosted the Centennial Celebration of Fort Lauderdale’s Famous Beach and International Swimming & Diving Heritage. As part of the effort to promote safety in open water swimming, ISHOF and the Crippen family introduced the 1st Fran Crippen SafeSwim event in celebration of the late, great swimmer who passed away in a race in Dubai last October.
I drove up to Fort Lauderale on Saturday morning to take part in the 1 Mile Race. The course was setup as a straight one mile ocean swim both starting out of the water and finishing out of the water on the beach. One would think that after the Swim Miami only about a month ago I would have known better and learned how important of a role strategy and actually having a race plan is in open water swimming.
So let me tell you about the mistakes I made that Saturday morning. The one thing that was different from Swim Miami was the beach start and finish. The running start had me get all excited and made my racer instincts go crazy. Running in the ocean behind Olympian Peter Vanderkaay made me take a chance and after the first few dolphin dives I was swimming as hard as I could to keep up with Peter and the lead pack taking a right turn at the first turn buoy swimming towards the finish. It didn’t last long and even drafting off their feet wasn’t an option anymore…they had taken off. It should be obvious to anyone that a guy who swims about the same yardage a week as someone like Peter does in a single workout shouldn’t try to out swim that other person. Read the rest of this entry »
Loving Lima
Filed under: Aqua Notes | December 19th, 2010
Last month, I went on my second Race Club Camp away from our home in Islamorada in the Florida Keys. The first was in Buffalo, NY last summer. This time, I went to Lima, Ohio. Lima is a small blue-collar, Midwest town of about 50,000 people, located midway between Dayton to the south and Toledo to the north. Driving around town, one would not mistake Lima for anything other than a Midwest town, but after digging a little history from my hosts at the local YMCA, I found that Lima has some pretty interesting history all its own. For example, I did not know that Lima is where the famous jailbreak of gangster John Dillinger took place in the 1930’s. Nor did I realize that the primary donor of the YMCA was also the owner of the largest pork rind factory in the world. I always wondered where pork rinds came from. By the way, if you don’t know what a pork rind is, you obviously have never been to a truck stop before.
The history of Lima flowed and ebbed with America’s growth. First, there was the boom of the oil industry with Rockefeller’s Standard Oil setting up refinery business there. Then, after the Great Depression, it followed the rust belt, with emerging automotive-related businesses. Today, it actually boasts having the largest plant for Proctor and Gamble in the world, with enough employees to count as a small city. There have been some notable people from Lima, including founding member of the Beach Boys, Al Jardine, actress/comedian Phyllis Diller, sportscaster Bud Collins and Nobel Prize laureate in physics, William Alfred Fowler. This trip was not for Lima sightseeing, however. It was all about getting Lima’s swimmers faster. There was only one place to do that in town and that was the local downtown YMCA. Read the rest of this entry »
Where Is The Next Michael Phelps Coming From? Buffalo?
Filed under: Aqua Notes | August 16th, 2010
The other night I watched one of the most interesting races of the summer USA Swimming National Championships, Phelps vs Lochte in the 200 IM. This time Lochte got the win, although admittedly Phelps is not yet showing his best form. What was most noticeable to me, however, was how far ahead these two rivals were from the rest of the field, finishing several seconds ahead of third place. It begs the question, when two such talented swimmers are in the prime of their career at the same time, who will replace them when they retire?
Swimmers like Phelps and Lochte don’t come along every day. I can’t imagine anyone winning nine gold medals in the Olympics, but I didn’t think Spitz’s record of seven Olympic golds would be broken, either. One thing I am sure of is that there is an abundance of talented swimmers in America working their way up the ladder, dreaming of taking over the roles of Phelps and Lochte.
Most of the credit for creating this pipeline of talent should go to USA Swimming and the thousands of affiliated swimming clubs across America. It is not that the schools, YMCA’s and summer recreation leagues don’t have a role. They do. The real development of talent, however, is largely due to America’s swim clubs. Read the rest of this entry »
Race Club Fiji Circuit Training
Filed under: Videos | June 18th, 2010
Circuit Training with the athletes of the Race Club Fiji.
Déjà Vu … All Over Again
Filed under: Aqua Notes | March 4th, 2010
… as the great philosopher, Yogi Berra once said. Walking into the Joe Perkins Natatorium on the campus of SMU last weekend for the Republic of Texas Masters swim meet, I felt like I was walking into a time capsule. Not much had changed there in the 43 years since I swam my very first AAU National Championships in 1967. Jim Montgomery, a teammate from the 1976 Men’s Olympic Swimming Team, and head coach of the Dallas Area Masters Swim Team, had invited me to give a clinic to the swimmers.
There are certain events in our life that remain vivid in our memories. What we were doing when we watched in horror the events of 9/11 unfold before us, where we were when JFK was shot (for those of us old enough to remember) and for me, sitting in the bleachers awestruck over Mark Spitz breaking American records in this very same pool. It was as if it had happened yesterday, and frankly, other than moving the blocks from the shallow end to the deep end, the place looked identical. Read the rest of this entry »
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