This has been an interesting couple of weeks. About 3 weeks ago, I met with a swim coach, and we discussed my swim "technique". He watched me swim, and suggested radical changes to my stroke and my stroke timing, to become more efficient and faster. So, I have had to force myself to break all of my old "muscle memory", and re-learn how to swim, using this new style and technique.

Essentially, my old style was the "egg-beater" style - take a ton of strokes per lap (averaging about 25-27 per length of pool), very low power input and tranfer on each stroke.

The new stroke is "front quadrant based", which means I always have at least one arm extended in front of me, much of the time I will have both arms in front, "coasting" through the water. The other key has been greatly increasing the power input and transfer with each stroke, using my whole are to "catch" the water, rather than just my hand and fingers.

The first week was a killer. I would stop after each 50 yard lap, totally exhausted and out of breath. I fought each stroke, struggling to get my breathing, stroke, rotation and kick coordinated. Last week was better, I could string together 100 yards at a time, and the strokes and rotation seemed to come with less mental effort.

This week, and specifically the last two days in the pool it seems to be coming together. Yesterday I put together a pretty continious 1000 yard set, at a pace of 2' 54 seconds per 100. Today I did a 550 yard set at a pace of 2' 37 seconds. The important thing about this new style is that I'm averaging only about 17 strokes per 25 yards - which is a huge improvement over the 25-27 stokes I used to take to get from one end of the pool to the other.

I tested my "fast" 50 yard time today - 55 seconds, which is still about 10 seconds slower than my previous fastest time - but my hunch is that I will be able to catch (and hopefully surpass) that time by the end of May (and my first real test of the new style at the Auburn Half-Iron).

Here are a couple of links with articles on Front Quadrant Swimming:
http://www.usms.org/articles/articledisplay.php?a=81

http://www.windnseaswim.com/catchup2.htmlhttp://www.windnseaswim.com/catchup2.html