Endless pool experiments

Recently, I was lucky enough to have a go in one.  

It was a narrow channel of faster water and there wasn,t a clear line on the bottom of the pool to fix on.  

https://youtu.be/zRUJ-wgfPy4

This wasn,t my best effort but we weren,t well organised for filming.  The highlight for me was to do 10 strokes at a pace of 1:08min/100m!

Mrs Cott was excellent and we both adjusted stroke timing quickly to avoid the dreaded catchup hesitations.  The pool owner demonstrated some proper stroke vs catchup and the latter showed the surge effect.

We know Woody is the Master of the Endless Pool and maybe he will have something for us.

cottmiler wrote:The highlight for me was to do 10 strokes at a pace of 1:08min/100m!

Wow! Do you think holding 1:08/100m for 10 strokes is easier in an endless pool than it is in a regular pool? Never swam in an endless pool, but when I see videos like this

(sorry I'm not allowed to post external links or emails for 7 days, anyway the video is Adam Walker swimming at 43SPM and holding 1:03/100m in an endless pool)

I hardly believe that his pace was really 1:03/100m. Running at 18km/h or faster on a tapis roulant is easier than doing it on the road or track. On the tapis roulant you can cheat by doing long strides at relatively low cadence and actually jumping instead of running. Could it be something like this in an endless pool? By watching the above video it seems to me that in an endless pool you could partly cheat if you have a very good streamlining: in order to hold 1:03/100m at such low cadence (43SPM) in a regular pool he should have a super propulsion together with streamlining. Maybe not even Sun Yang could hold that pace at 43SPM.

Salvo

I,m sure that you are right about the pace because I don,t think I can normally swim that fast. How disappointing.

A running machine needs to be at 3 degrees incline to be equivalent to the road, I believe.

My videos will have to wait a week too for security reasons I suppose.

Here is the video I was referring to:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Qk8-id7xsk

By the way, that endless pool looks so beautiful!

Salvo

Missing videos from original post:

https://youtu.be/o9KlNmXS8-c

https://youtu.be/7WKexYLKN1U

Hi Everyone
I'm not an expert on endless pools but did have lessons from Ti, Swim therapy and a free session at the Manchester Tri show with Adam Walker. Seeing Adam swim mesmerised me I must have watched him for a couple of hrs. He usually has endless pool sessions at the tri show held in Manchester in march http://triexpo.co.uk . I think they have a show in the south too. Adam usually runs a competition to get a free lesson with him for his demo it would be worth entering cos he does quite a few demos. Certainly for me who started swimming late in life he along with Jai Evans are the ones that have got me swimming more with my whole body. Cot you should treat yourself and Mrs Cot to a lesson or clinic with Adam or at least go and watch him at one of the shows.
Anyway I find it harder in an endless pool as i seem to try and fight the water and get too close to the motor unit rather than staying in one place.
Tho if I had the space and money I would love to have one with a camera set up.
I haven't had a video for a while but their are a few from 2011 to 2015 on you tube with various coaches. This one is my last endless pool lesson with swim therapy https://youtu.be/Tn7GMilT4Js

Having taken some video in the pool today and subsequent examination, I noticed an error which this video by Swim Therapy explains really well:

https://youtu.be/Piw92TC-YFc

It,s about how the head,s position affects the steering of the body down the pool.

I have been noticing some head wiggling myself lately (especially when I'm fatigued), so this is very interesting to me too.

Woody, I'm going to try to get to the Triathlon Show London in February - mostly because I need a new wetsuit, and they're going to have a testing pool and all the big brands there. Will be interesting to see some swimming demos too.

Dont you have the stroking arms in more still water, not flowing backwards so fast as in the middle?
That way you have much better traction with the arms as in a normal pool. You can stroke slower with the same forward force.

Good point.

Jono v H centres the pulling arms much more than I seem to.

I also think that my wide hand entry leads to me fishtailing owing to asymetric pull action

its impossible for normal people to have a high elbow when you stay narrow at the start.
You can compensate the steering effect of starting the pulling far outside the centerline, by more core tension keeping the whole body long and aligned, and by pulling to your center from the wide entry which solves the steering effet at the root.
Same as paddling a bit toward yourself in a canoe if you want to travel straight forward while paddling only on one side of the canoe. All within certain margins.
This is standard slight S pull technique. Sheilas stuff, you know.
I think your paddling technique looks pretty good here. Its always a personal compromise between flexibility strength and whatever.

Paul Newsome has put out this series of drills from work in his endless pool.

I was particularly interested in Episode 14 on his "Unco" drill!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLYcon0_LG98B3sqLTSWzy7DOV7aJkZ8R_

I think I've seen him do it a lot better without the top shoulder being so involved.The endless pool is such an unatural environment.

woody wrote:The endless pool is such an unnatural environment.

I never swam in an "endless pool" (funny name!), only 4 times in this proper flume channel
http://tenerifetoptraining.com/en/flume-2/
They say it's much better since the current is constant (apparently very different from an "endless" pool).
But still I don't think anybody would use it for a normal training session (even if available). One can observe the swimmer very well, and one can easily vary the speed, these are the advantages.

It seems everybody needs to get used to it. And apparently you are never faster than with normal swimming,  but it takes some practice to just get to your normal speed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXroNbtLzyw&index=6&list=PLYcon0_LG98B3sqLTSWzy7DOV7aJkZ8R_
In the video above he is talking about one of his famous household stories "nice and high body position" using popeye breathing, for godsake is this a nice body position:
http://www.maratonyuzme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/paul.jpg

I am gonna use this as one of the worst body positions i ve ever seen to my students to make them avoid from sinky legs while thinking the popeye breathing like Paul does, and teach them the right body position by using the core instead of the rubbish bubble bubble breath mantra.

By the way, once he had written me that "go do some something productive" ,  in the videos on his channel I havent seen something new and productive, he has been telling the same useless stories as swimming ideas for more than a decade.

One more time I recommend you not to take into account of a salesmen's(marketing superhero's) ideas, who has no professional swimming career. Dont let him determine your swimming progression/destiny.

All the best.

Don't think Paul has viewed his own video the surface shots look fine but the underwater look like they are taken at a different time maybe to demonstrate something else with a pause in his stroke as if to emphasise a kick start. Certainly not enough care taken in what videos he releases for public viewing.
But he personally has done a lot for my swimming when. I was struggling with and he did it for free as a result of posting my struggles on the forum back in 2012.

I am all for your boat posture Nightcrawler.
As long as you keep the lower back flat and connected there is no  problem to lift the legs and upperbody up a bit.
In your mind you probably think that you are like  a round boat underside, in reality you are probably just straight.
Even if your shape is a bit curved it probably wont harm your streamline. Everyting is better than hanging legs.