FFTW Blog Topic: The Conveyor Belt Visualisation

[Adam Young]

A thread to discuss and ask questions about the latest Feel For The Water Blog post:

The Conveyor Belt Visualisation



You can read the original blog post here: http://www.feelforthewater.com/2009/10/conveyor-belt-visualisation.html

[weuer]

Interesting, and it will definitely be helpful for me.

But I thought that only sprinters need to keep constantly moving while distance swimmers just need to accelerate by momentum?

[steve coates]

Was looking at mr smooth this weekend and there seems to be a long delay with the leading arm outstretched in the water before he pulls back?? Am I missing something here?

[Nat the rat aka nuts]

Now we just need the belt in pool...

I will try it, need to work on so many things at moment.
Timing of breathing, stroke length and others... And I thought I was swimming well...
N

[Paul Burgess]

Really useful visualisation.
I re learned to swim using lots of TI Drills sometime ago. Although great for teaching balance and body position, it left me with a legacy of swimming much too slowly with an over emphasis on gliding and streamline and virtually no kicking.
I know I spend much too long gliding with the leading hand outstretched (perhaps even overreaching) doing nothing but contributing to an overall loss of motion through the water until the next stroke actually propels me forwards.

I notice things are changing now with statements such as "perpetual motion swimming" very much being pushed to the top of the latests catchphrases.

The conveyor idea is another good picture to have in your head.

Off to the pool to try an up the cadence and keep the hands and arms moving. No gliding!

Never stop learning how to swim.....

[thomas_dowd2002]

When I learned to swim 30 years ago it was always drilled into my head to GLIDE! Reaching and stretching for the end of the pool and letting myself glide for just a moment before pulling. It is really difficult retraining myself after so many years.

[hirsh]

I'm not quite sure about this one....

While I have found the Mr. Smooth animation a VERY helpful tool, I think the conveyor belt visualization may lead some people to "speed up" their entire cycle too much, lose efficiency and thus fatigue too early.

I have always been taught to "ride the glide" and I wouldnt bee so quick to abandon the tenents of smooth, gliding swimming techniques.

Have a great day!

[Paul Newsome]

I'm not quite sure about this one....

While I have found the Mr. Smooth animation a VERY helpful tool, I think the conveyor belt visualization may lead some people to "speed up" their entire cycle too much, lose efficiency and thus fatigue too early.

I have always been taught to "ride the glide" and I wouldnt bee so quick to abandon the tenents of smooth, gliding swimming techniques.

Have a great day!

Thanks for your feedback hirsh - I think you will find Point # 4 interesting reading on this topic:

http://www.swimsmooth.com/contentious.html

Cheers

Paul

[Griff]

I like the visualisation in principle – these easy-to-understand, practical aids are invaluable to breaking through a performance plateau. Paul, please keep them coming.

I can relate to many of the responses posted. I would like to add “and using the benefit of wetsuit buoyancy to glide slightly”. While I feel this makes me more efficient (less effort for same time and distance) I do not achieve that elusive increase in speed. As a 30min, 1500m open water swimmer (past 4 yrs!!) I know I’m underachieving (particularly when compared with my bike and run times).

The challenge for me in applying this visualisation is not to rush the stroke and start ‘wind milling,’ losing all trace of front quadrant swimming.

Perfect practice make perfect!

[Nat the rat aka nuts]

Tried it yesterday and it worked well
Arms moved faster, but I felt more effortless and actually faster. Not sure if I did swim faster though...
Will see, and I think it did help with my breathing. I tend to breath to late and with the faster turnover I have less time to be late and avoid the delay after pull where I used to do my breath.
Will try it again and see if Paul agrees with my impression.
The Rat

[weuer]

Tried it yesterday too. I found that there is an area in the front where my arm drops without pulling much water, when I'm doing this conveyor belt thing. Hm...

[velvetparlour]

I have always been taught to "ride the glide" and I wouldnt bee so quick to abandon the tenents of smooth, gliding swimming techniques.

seems to me that is the issue up for debate
mr smooth does not ride any glide, but still manages to have a FQ stroke structure - with constant power applied

I think that tools like the conveyor belt vis are meant to be exaggerated, to combat the common exaggerated technique flaws
its more a case of "shooting for the moon"

by conceptualizing at a radically different model you often manage to ACTUALLY make small changes

methinks - works 4 me anyway

[Adam Young]

seems to me that is the issue up for debate
mr smooth does not ride any glide, but still manages to have a FQ stroke structure - with constant power applied

I think that tools like the conveyor belt vis are meant to be exaggerated, to combat the common exaggerated technique flaws
its more a case of "shooting for the moon"

by conceptualizing at a radically different model you often manage to ACTUALLY make small changes

Velvet, I agree with everything you say there and I think you make some excellent points.

Just got 2 minutes for a little input to this thread:

If you glide and it feels good, perhaps the reason you benefited from glide initially is that it gave you more time to compose yourself in the water, getting yourself straighter, engaging your core, improving your body position and giving you time to think about your catch and pull. Certainly the thought of 'lengthening out' is going to give you these benefits. Now you have these elements in your stroke it's time to move onwards and upwards - removing those deadspots to become more efficient and more powerful - the gateway to swimming faster.

Remember a long stroke is good, gliding isn't. The problem with emphasising the glide is:

1) it causes you to decelerate between strokes - which is less efficient
2) it hurts your rhythm and timing, making it much harder to use your body roll to power your stroke
3) it hurts your catch because of the huge tendency to drop the wrists and elbows when gliding

Cheers! Adam

[kogut]

I focused on the belt last night, and found it helpful. I started as a self-taught Total Immersion swimmer - which had it benefits - but left me with an exaggerated glide phase which I've been trying to get rid of. The belt metaphor has been the most effective tool so far.

An odd side effect is that last night it seems to have really helped my kick. Normally my kick doesn't do much of anything (which as a triathlete doesn't overly concerned me), but last night I noticed my legs were really tired at the end of the workout. I think it maybe have helped me develop a continuous kicking rhythm instead of the seizure-like rhythm I had before.

We'll see next time I do the Biggest Loser workout if it shows up in 100m times.

[Paul Newsome]

An odd side effect is that last night it seems to have really helped my kick. Normally my kick doesn't do much of anything (which as a triathlete doesn't overly concerned me), but last night I noticed my legs were really tired at the end of the workout. I think it maybe have helped me develop a continuous kicking rhythm instead of the seizure-like rhythm I had before.

Hi kogut

That's not an odd side effect at all - something we witness all the time with "serial over-gliders". If you have a dead-spot from over-gliding, over-reaching at the front end of the stroke you're going to need a way to literally "kick-start" yourself again. This is where your "seizure-like rhythm" would have come in. What you'll develop over-time though with this new rhythm is the ability to maintain a 2-beat kick as before (which will limit the work you're doing with the legs - as you're quite right, you don't want to be over-kicking for triathlon - far from it!), but just without the whip-kick effect which is more costly than you might believe.

Check out this clip of Laure Manadou to see what I mean (there's only a short UW clip, so you might want to search YT for a few more videos of her - great stroke!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUc2WytHnh8&feature=fvsr

Cheers

Paul

[willthames]

I tried this yesterday, it's quite different to how I normally swim, and I found it quite different, and not at all intuitive (the swimming - the visualisation makes sense).

Currently, I start the catch and pull as my other hand enters the water, so very near catch up. This is as I was taught (about 12 months ago when I first started taking swimming lessons), to avoid my previous 'windmilling' swimming, where I was using too much energy to get anywhere.

I find I swim too fast, and use too much energy, to be able to cope with this - is there anything I can do to make this easier, other than to keep practising it? Is there a specific swim smooth session that would be particularly suited to trying this out (I did session 10 yesterday, I'm slowly making my way through!)

Thanks,
Will

[willthames]

I had another go at this today, it felt a lot more natural - I just did a few 100s during warm up, trying to focus on conveyor belt alone.

When it got to the main set, I found it becoming more naturally part of my swim - I reckon in a session more or two I'll have cracked this change of timing completely. Only question is whether it will helped any other than slightly upped my stroke rate - but I guess we'll see! Certainly towards the end of the session I did feel as if I was swimming really smoothly. I'll head over to the Biggest Loser thread now to report on the rest of the session.

[Paul Newsome]

Any chance of now trying this in the open water Will?

[Nat the rat aka nuts]

Hello
tried it again and agree, I think I kick more or more efficient and feel smoother.
Need to ask Paul or Adam to have a look next time I swim to check if I conveyor belt....
I felt like I did it and felt faster ( higher stroke rate)
It does feel more natural the more often you are trying to use it.......

Now I just have to hope it does increase my speed.... would be nice....

The Rat

[willthames]

Any chance of now trying this in the open water Will?

Brrrr.... Sent the wetsuit back at the end of September, so no open water swimming for me until next (UK) season.

I'm curious why you ask, however!