Footage Self Assessment Guide
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Have you been told to stop crossing over, keep a high elbow, or prioritise your catch?
Every coach says these things, and they’re not wrong. But they’re symptoms, not causes. Most swimmers can’t make them stick because they sit on top of a handful of core biomechanical variables that never get addressed.
We’ve found these variables have an order. Build them in sequence and the facevalue focus areas come alive: you can finally work on them, and the usual errors start to disappear on their own.
That means swapping a swimming lens for a biomechanical one, comparing each movement against the forces and physical outputs that shape it.
This guide shows you how to analyse your own stroke from underwater footage, so you know which variables to develop first.
How to use this guide
Footage and setup
The best footage for self-assessment is filmed underwater, side-on. Most of your stroke happens beneath the surface, where you generate propulsion and control balance and stability. The pool deck only shows what happens above the water, and we need to see the part of the stroke that actually drives you forward. •Swim squad video analysis: Dan already has your footage. •Not recorded yet: Check our filming guide to get set up, or get in touch. •One-on-one: Book directly with Dan for individual video analysis. •Outside Perth: Get in touch to arrange remote video analysis online.
Where to start
The assessment sits in the next section, so you can jump straight in. If you'd rather sharpen your lens first, head to Let's Get Clever at the bottom of this guide for the key biomechanical theory behind how we view and control the stroke. We've kept it out of the way so you aren't buried in theory before you've looked at your footage.
How the assessment works
We work through the fundamentals in a set order: balance and stability, then propulsion, then leverage. This follows the physics of the stroke. It doesn't work in isolation, and leverage only pays off once you're stable and have propulsion to build on. As we go, we rule out your non-priorities, so you spend your time on what's actually holding you back. This is not a stroke correction checklist — don't read through looking for faults to collect. Think of it as stroke development: building the right things in the right order, not hunting for errors. The errors tend to resolve on their own as the foundation goes in. Work through each section in order, apply it to your footage, and find the level where things aren't yet in place. One warning: most swimmers arrive with feedback already in mind — from a coach, from YouTube, or from something they've noticed. Resist skipping to that section. The feedback may be right, but the missing piece is almost always the foundation that has to be in place before it can hold. Finding where you sit in the order matters more than confirming the fault you already suspect.
Building Your Lens
The feedback you normally hear or read, taken at face value, isn’t wrong. It’s the swimming world’s description of what competent swimming looks like, worked out backwards from watching swimmers and figuring out how they must move through the water. It’s our interpretation of how swimming works, built from how it looks and how swimmers tend to move. That makes the lens itself subjective. And what you see in a fast swimmer is the result of something, not the something itself.
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To build a better lens, we work backwards from the result to the core control, not from the swimmer to an interpretation of what we see. For every swimmer, performance or leisurely, the end result is some form of distance over time. That’s pace. Three physical parameters shape it:
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Propulsion: moving water backwards with your mechanics to create forward movement.
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Balance: your stability and alignment at the surface. When it’s lost, your mechanics reorientate to hold you level, and that effort comes straight out of propulsion.
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Resistance: drag. It gets talked about constantly, but for most swimmers it’s overemphasised. Time spent there is time not spent on the orientation that creates propulsion, as the rest of this guide shows.
In the swimming world, what influences these is described in swimming language: the pull phase, the kick, the recovery, the breath. Our brain works in that subjective world. But the objective control is biomechanical movement in water. Simplified, pace is equal to the orientation of your mechanics in the water.
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What stops the face-value focus areas from working. The most commonly missed variables are these two:
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Range of motion: your mechanics’ ability to orientate so they create propulsion and control balance.
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Duration: usually cut short, which limits how much range of motion you can actually apply. Strokes are often too short and sharp, or one phase is rushed, because a fundamental isn’t in place.
Nothing in the stroke works in isolation. Say you’re working hard on a focus area, but the pull phase is rushed or the stroke is unstable elsewhere. Something compensates, like a dropping arm or a collapsing position, not because you’re doing it wrong but because the stroke is reacting to something upstream. The focus area isn’t failing. The stroke is telling you something else isn’t in place yet.
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So there’s an order. Address balance first. Then work with the natural timing of the stroke, so it has full duration, stability and control. Only then add leverage, which is where catch and rotation live. Do it in that order and balance improves, the relationship between balance and propulsion improves, and you do less work to move more water without interruption.
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And it compounds. From there you can orientate the stroke to move a greater volume of water and add more leverage and efficiency on top. A technique tip gives a small improvement, or relief from one inefficiency, and then stops. Building in this order changes how you continue to develop: you learn to read your mechanics and orientate them, and the progress keeps going.
To use your lens:
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Recognise that all your controls come from your mechanics: your arms, legs, torso and head.
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Recognise that the controls must be mechanical too. Instead of perceiving a strong pull or a long stroke, see an arm extending for longer, or a body holding better alignment at the surface.
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Start to view your swimming as mechanics, and describe it that way.
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Build your controls as mechanical controls, not stroke controls. It’s counterintuitive, but build by control of your mechanics, not by feel.
Time To Analyse
Your biomechanic swimming analsysis
Part 1: Balance and stability
Symptoms
If any of the following apply, in your footage or from feedback you've received, this is your section:
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Kick going wide or splaying at moments in the stroke
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Dropping leading arm, or elbow dropping at the start of the pull
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Hips or legs sinking
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Told to get your hips to the surface
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Starting the pull early, or a rushed start to the pull
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A rushed breath
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Bent knee kick
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Zigzagging through the water
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Unnecessary or reactive movements throughout the stroke
What's happening
These aren't mistakes you're making. They're automatic reactions, the stroke doing what it has to do to stay afloat and/or regain stability when balance at the surface isn't right. Think about walking and suddenly catching your foot: you don't decide to throw your arms and legs out for balance, it just happens. The stroke does exactly the same thing. When balance is disturbed, the body corrects for it immediately, without conscious instruction, and what shows up as a "fault" is usually one of those corrections.
When there isn't enough time in the stroke cycle for the mechanics to move through their full range of motion, the stroke cuts short, and instability follows. Most of the errors above are a version of one or both of these things.
Identifying the most common signs of poor balance and stability:
Alignment: The feet, hips, shoulders, and head should maintain alignment at the water surface. The first sign of poor balance is the feet and hips sitting low in the water with the head at the water surface.
Dropping Leading Arm: The leading arm maintains an extended shape and presses downwards on the water for the first 20 – 40% of the pull phase. Often the leading arm can drop suddenly. This is the leading arm seeking purchase on the water due to instability elsewhere in the stroke cycle.
Splay or splice kick: At random moments, the legs spread apart or stop kicking suddenly, even if you try to maintain a consistent rhythm.
Zig-zag, or fish tailing: The body and hips sway from side to side with the stroke (not rotation). This is a sign of a lack of duration to create full range of motion in the stroke cycle. The stroke is likely too short, rushed, or the breathing pattern is disturbing the orientation of the stroke.
What to address
Check you swimming footage to see if you need to introduce any of these components into your swimming.
We recomend ruling out all balance focus areas before developing propulsion and leverage.
Head Position
Like a boxer, when you move the head, you move the body. Wherever the crown points, the body is inclined to follow. A head held too far forward or upward pulls the hips down. Looking at the ground beneath the body puts the torso in a neutral posture and guides the body into alignment toward the surface. Instruction: Look at the ground underneath your body throughout the stroke. Imagine you have a shadow on the pool floor below you; look toward where your chest would fall on that shadow. If you have a glide in your stroke, pair it: allow the arm to hold a subtle press back rather than reaching forward, and keep the head down. Two opposite-direction movements: arm back, head down. This further emphasises the desired posture of the torso and creates a longer moment of stability in the stroke cycle. A note on the breath: a lower head means the breath arrives slightly later, but there is more air available when it does. A head held forward feels like it gets to air sooner, but because of the angle the head sits when it rotates to breathe, there's actually less space to breathe into. Trust the lower position. The breath is there.
Pull Back-end
The back end of the pull phase is like the bottom Jenga blocks in the tower. As you increase duration and range of motion (ROM) through the back half of the pull, you buy more time for the rest of the stroke cycle to settle into more stable positions. This extra duration also supplements rotation ROM, hip rotation, for when we need it; focus on it later. The bonus here is this is also the primary focus area for increasing propulsion in the stroke cycle; 2 birds, one stone. This is the single area that resolves the most balance and stability problems. Instruction: From roughly halfway through the pull, focus on extending the arm towards the surface of the water. Let that take time, not faster, not harder. If you have full range of motion, the arm will finish the stroke with full extension as the upper arm breaches the water surface. More detail on this in Part 3.
Kick (address only if this symptom is present)
A wide, splaying, or excessively bendy kick is almost always the stroke reacting to instability elsewhere, not a kicking error in itself. If you do have a particularly bent-knee kick, emphasising leg extension can help settle it. Think of controlling from the inner seam of the leg, driving from the quads. Natural bends will still occur; allow them, but work toward the feeling of a fully extended leg.
Breath
A rushed breath is a sign of balance instability, and it tends to compound itself: urgency rushes the stroke, the stroke destabilises further, the next breath becomes harder to get. The loop continues until you stop. The way out is through duration, not effort. As stroke length increases, allow the breath to move with it rather than rushing to meet it. If you find yourself gasping for air: focus first on maximising the duration of the inhale, and keeping the exhale long and controlled. The natural reaction when out of breath is to rush the head out; resist this. The head has to move with the stroke, not ahead of it. By increasing the time you spend inhaling, you force your stroke mechanics to find stability even when you're not consciously focusing on them. By controlling your breath and slowing your breathing rate, you also lower your heart rate, which breaks the urgency loop. The rules of the breath are simple: breathe because it's physiologically vital, and don't disturb the pull phase, your primary propulsion phase. The head moves with the movements of the mechanics of the pull, not before it, not independently of it.
Part 2: What to rule out
Symptoms
If you've been given feedback on any of the following, or you've been told these are your main focus, read this section before moving on:
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Crossover entry
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High elbow recovery
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Overreaching or stretching too far during the glide
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Drag, resistance, or becoming more streamlined
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Recovery and rotation timing as a priority
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The order of priorities
There are three physical parameters that produce pace: balance, propulsion, and resistance. Resistance is real, but it only becomes the limiting factor for high-performance swimmers operating at speeds where drag increases steeply. For most swimmers, the gains available through balance and propulsion are substantially larger, and focusing heavily on drag steers attention away from both.
A key finding: when swimmers address balance and propulsion, they naturally become more streamlined as a by-product. The changes required to optimise balance and propulsion create a biomechanical orientation that reduces drag and improves efficiency, without ever making drag a direct focus. We only have so much attention; spending it on streamlining rather than the variables that actually produce pace is a poor trade.
Recovery and entry
The recovery phase, the arm moving through the air, generates no propulsion. The reason it receives so much coaching attention is that coaches stand outside the water and see it. When we watch great swimmers, the elegance of the recovery stands out, and we try to replicate it. But the part of the stroke that drives you forward is underwater.
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The rules of the recovery are simple: it occurs because the stroke is cyclical, and it must not disturb the pull phase. That's it.
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When swimmers stop focusing on the recovery and redirect attention to the pull phase, the recovery tends to fix itself. Crossover entries, odd movements during the arm swing, rushed exits: these resolve without direct targeting by the orientation created by addressing the propulsion foundation.
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Worth knowing: many common recovery drills, fingertip drag, shark fin, work, but not for the reason most swimmers think. Holding the arm out of the water while swimming requires significant body control and stability. Swimmers believe they're developing their recovery. What's actually being conditioned is balance and body alignment at the surface. The benefit is real; the mechanism is different.
Glide and overreaching
Being told to reach forward and get as long as possible isn't wrong; the idea of maximising stroke length is valid. But the way it's commonly coached creates a problem.
The value sought from reaching is stroke length and optimal surface area for the pull, but once the arm is extended, no further length is available without changing the posture of the body. When a swimmer reaches forward into the glide, the orientation of the muscles around the shoulder encourages the arm to drop or press downward through the water rather than hold position. The swimmer feels like they have a long glide. The footage shows the arm dropping into the pull too early and from an unstable position.
The fix is simpler than most instructions suggest: allow the arm to enter the water and hold it stationary for a moment. That is the glide. No reaching. If anything, a subtle hold back. We've found that the simpler the instruction here, the better the result. Remember to focus on the arm once it is in the water and avoid fixating on the entry. The glide can still deteriorate after the entry; however, controlling the glide naturally reorients the entry approach.
Components
The pull phase contains three components: the glide, the catch, and the pull itself, which we split into a front end and a back end.
Order of focus
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Back end of the pull. It enhances propulsion and creates duration for the rest of the swimmer’s mechanics, improving stability and balance. A stroke that finishes unbalanced has to be compensated for on the next cycle, so we address balance here first. At the same time, we start working out how to orient the arm and remaining mechanics to move a large body of water for as long as possible.
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Glide.
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Catch. This comes last because it exists for leverage, and it only matters once the pull is under heavy load from full orientation.
The goal
Move a large body of water for the longest possible duration. As the stroke travels further each cycle, stroke rate drops and propulsion rises, giving more forward movement per stroke for less cardiovascular effort.
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Load
As we gain control of the pull phase, the load on the stroke rises sharply. The body doesn’t recognise “pull phase” or “propulsion”. It recognises load, because more of the arm’s surface area meets more water on every stroke. This can cause a temporary dip in pace while the swimmer conditions themselves to hold the technique. As they get stronger, they can sustain it for longer and at higher rates. Propulsion then increases substantially while heart rate stays relatively low.
Pull back-end
This is the highest-return area of the stroke, and where nearly every swimmer finds their starting point.
From roughly halfway through the pull, when the arm is beneath the body, focus on extending the arm toward the surface of the water. Not faster, not harder. Let that extension take time. The aim is for the arm to create greater range of motion to the point where it exits with full extension, at the point where the upper arm breaching the surface first.
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This is not about swimming with a straight arm. It's about filling the space you have created, with duration, with controlled extension that produces propulsion. The arm will take different shapes through the pull. What matters is the major indicator: at the moment the upper arm breaches the surface, is the arm extended or significantly bent? That's the gauge.
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Why the pull shortens in the first place. Most swimmers perceive the stroke through feel and rhythm. The moment the arm begins pulling on the water, that familiar sensation begins, and the arm naturally starts to ease off load as the stroke progresses to keep that feeling consistent. The stroke shortens not from lack of effort but from the body preserving the feeling it knows. This is why changing it will feel wrong at first. That's correct.
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Two things happen when the pull-back end is right:
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The arm covers more water over a longer duration, which is what produces propulsion.
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The glide on the following stroke automatically lengthens. Due to the mechanics of freestyle, the recovering arm will always tend to enter the water before the other arm has finished pulling. Maximise duration through the back-end and the front arm is forced to wait, that wait is the glide.
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The pull back end and the glide are connected. Work the back end first, and the glide and catch can be developed.
Glide
There is an important distinction worth making: the entry and the glide are not the same thing.
The entry, the arm coming through the air and entering the water, mechanically, is a by-product of arm extension and torso rotation. The arm enters by default, not by intentional orientation. There is no specific technique to control at entry.
The glide begins once the arm is already in the water. That is what we are controlling, not how the arm enters, but what it does in the moment after it does.
As humans, we orient our mechanics based on where we are aiming. Not consciously, but as part of the process itself as we move physically through life. Dictating the aim point and desired orientation at that point tends to automatically reorient how we approach. If something feels off about how the arm enters, the place to focus is the glide, not the entry itself.
Allow the arm to enter and hold it stationary for a moment. That's it. Avoid reaching forward. A subtle hold back, if anything. We've found that simple instruction works significantly better here than complex instruction; swimmers who try to think through the glide technically tend to do worse, not better. Let the pause exist without overthinking it.
The glide is also the foundation for the catch when you get to leverage. A controlled glide creates the space in which the catch can be timed and developed. Don't rush past it.
On stroke rate and glide: the only swimmers who can ditch a glide are performance sprinters. For everyone else, the glide creates a moment of control, buys time for the rest of the mechanics, and sets up the catch.
Part 4: Leverage
Gate in: before working on leverage, you need control over balance and propulsion. Leverage facilitates propulsion , but the propulsion has to be there first. Adding leverage without it is the equivalent of putting a spoiler on a car that doesn't have the power to use it. It looks right; it changes nothing.
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Symptoms
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Under rotation, or inconsistent rotation
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Over roll, particularly on the breathing stroke
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Feedback on the catch or high elbow catch
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Being told the catch is your first priority
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Rotation
Rotation will start to arrive naturally as you improve balance, stability, and duration through the pull. This is consistent , it is a documented by-product of competently developing the pull back end and glide, not something that needs to be forced. Under-rotation is almost always a sign the stroke cycle is running too quickly for the body to rotate fully.
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What rotation actually offers: mobility, as the torso rotates through different positions, range of motion increases throughout the stroke; leverage, as the pull encounters load, rotation helps the whole body engage and encounter more of it; stability, particularly through the breathing stroke; and timing, once it's well developed, the hips become the clock of the entire stroke cycle.
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The common response to under rotation is to emphasise shoulder rotation. The problem: moving the shoulders doesn't guarantee the torso follows. Moving the hips does , when the hips rotate, the entire torso rotates as one. Focus on hip rotation. That is the control.
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As rotation starts to arrive naturally, you can begin to manually control it. Rotation supplements propulsion, which tells you when it has to happen: as the pull starts, rotation should already be engaged. As you develop control, you'll notice rotation finishing before the end of the pull phase. This means the torso is arriving into a stable position before propulsion ends , which sets up a clean, stable start to the next stroke cycle. Whatever stable position the hips have arrived in at the end of the stroke, hold it through the recovery until the next stroke cycle begins. Don't let it flatten out.
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If rotation is getting inconsistent or hard to maintain, the cause is almost always further back: go to the pull back-end and check whether duration has dropped.
Timing
Timing naturally settles as you develop balance, propulsion, and rotation. In most cases it does not need to be directly targeted.
If you do want to work on it: aim to begin the pull when the recovering arm is around the shoulder or the head , never sooner. The focus is on controlling the start of the pull, not on watching or timing the recovery arm. The recovery arm is a reference point, not the trigger.
Breathing mechanics
Once rotation is established, the movement of the breath aligns with it. Time the movement of the head with the movement of the body; you'll receive air around the point that the hips finish rotating. The head returns to looking at the ground before the next stroke cycle begins.
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Don't rush the head out to breathe, and don't rush it back down. The breath moves with the stroke, not ahead of it.
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If you're still gasping for air at this stage, return to the breathing note in Part 1 before working on the mechanics of the movement.
Catch
The catch is the last thing to develop, and the highest return once everything before it is in place.
Without stable balance, the leading arm will drop, and the catch position can't be held. Without a loaded pull phase, there's nothing for the catch to work against, no load to leverage. It only produces what it's supposed to produce when the stroke is ready for it.
What a high elbow catch means: as the arm moves from the glide into the start of the pull, the elbow sits higher than the wrist. The wrist stays lower than the elbow through the first portion of the pull. That is the shape.
How it works: the control originates from the shoulder, not the arm. What you are doing is rotating the upper arm inward in the shoulder socket , which changes the orientation of the elbow. A useful exercise on land: place your arm on a desk or hold the side of the pool, arm extended. Practice turning the inside of your elbow down toward the ground. Notice that the forearm barely moves , it's the shoulder muscles doing the work. That is the catch control. Bring that movement into the water.
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The sequence: the catch exists between the glide and the pull. Three distinct movements that look like one smooth transition from the outside:
Glide → Catch → Pull
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From the glide, the upper arm stays where it is while the forearm presses downward from the elbow. Then the pull phase begins from that leverage shape. Many swimmers try to make this feel like one fluid motion , because that's what it looks like in footage , and the catch is over before they've done anything. Work from how it feels, not from how it appears.
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What to expect when it works: the stroke feels lighter, not more powerful. Load is distributed across the whole stroke cycle rather than concentrated in one burst. You'll feel the cardiovascular demand increase , heart rate rises, muscles fatigue slightly sooner , but the sensation of brute force activation in one area decreases. This is correct.
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If you feel a strong whip or impulse to accelerate to find power, treat that as a signal to check the mechanics rather than a sign it's working. A stroke under full load doesn't need extra activation , adding it tends to cause the mechanics to shed load to cope, and you lose propulsion for the effort applied.
Lets
Get
Clever
Let's Get Clever
The theory behind the assessment. If you've worked through the sections above and want to understand the thinking in more depth , or if you want to sharpen your lens before applying it , this is where to start.
Where pace comes from
Distance divided by time. In swimming, that relationship comes from the orientation of your body mechanics in the water , how the arms, legs, and torso are positioned and moving as they encounter the water, and what that produces.
This matters because it changes where you look. Pace isn't produced by effort, rhythm, or feel , those describe what happened. The origin is the mechanical orientation that produced it. Everything in this guide points back here.
Duration and range of motion
The single most important principle in the stroke, and the least spoken about.
Every joint and limb in the stroke has a natural range of motion. When there is enough time in the stroke cycle for the mechanics to move through that full range, the stroke orients well , balance, stability, and propulsion all benefit. When there isn't enough time , when the stroke is rushed , the mechanics cut short, and almost every problem follows from that.
Duration is the variable that allows range of motion to occur. It is not about swimming slower. It is about the stroke cycle having enough space within it for the mechanics to fully orientate. The most direct way to create duration is through the back end of the pull , from halfway through, let the arm extend toward the surface slowly and with full extension. That creates time, and that time ripples through the rest of the stroke.
Often your mechanics are already attempting the right movements. They're just being cut short by the lack of space in the stroke cycle. Give the movement time to finish before worrying about the specific shape or position.
A note on performance swimmers
It is natural to look at elite swimmers and try to replicate what you see. A few things worth knowing before you do.
Years of conditioning have allowed performance swimmers to absorb things that would cause problems in less-conditioned swimmers. A partially forward head, a high stroke rate, a short pull , elite swimmers can manage these because of the conditioning volume underneath them. For most swimmers who haven't built that foundation, the same mechanics produce different results.
Performance swimmers also tend to swim with a lower stroke rate than most people expect , not because they are relaxed, but because they are moving a large volume of water per stroke over a long duration. What you see in elite swimming is the output of years of conditioning that built that orientation, not a cue to apply directly.
Compare your mechanics to the physics. Not to how elite swimmers look.
Three parameters: balance, propulsion, resistance
Pace comes from three physical variables.
Balance is the orientation of the body at the surface. When balance is poor, the mechanics redirect effort toward staying stable , not toward moving forward. Balance is foundational: it determines what propulsion can actually do.
Propulsion is the forward force generated by the arm moving through the water. The more water the arm encounters and moves, over the longest possible duration, the more propulsion is produced per stroke cycle.
Resistance is the drag generated by moving through water. Drag increases steeply with speed , it rises roughly as a cube of velocity, which is why at elite pace it becomes a meaningful factor. For most swimmers operating below that speed range, the gains available through balance and propulsion are substantially larger.
Focusing on resistance also draws attention away from balance and propulsion. We only have so much attention. Spending it on streamlining before the more significant variables are addressed is a poor trade , and when balance and propulsion improve, body alignment tends to improve as a by-product anyway.
Nothing in isolation
The stroke does not work in parts. Every component is in constant reaction with every other.
When balance is poor, the arm compensates , pressing down rather than back, trying to stabilise the body at the surface. When the pull is cut short, the stroke rushes, rotation has no time to occur, and the leading arm drops to absorb the instability. When the breath disturbs the mechanics, the entire stroke on that side reacts.
These are not technique faults. They are responses to upstream problems, happening automatically , the same way the body responds to losing balance on land without having to think about it.
This is why isolated technique fixes rarely hold. Installing a change into one part while the stroke is compensating elsewhere means the change gets overwritten. Fix the upstream cause and the downstream symptoms resolve without being directly targeted.
The order and why
Balance and stability first. When balance is poor, the mechanics compensate in ways that overwrite every other change you try to make. Secure balance and many common errors disappear on their own , not because they were fixed, but because the stroke no longer needs to make those corrections.
Propulsion second. Propulsion is the primary mechanism that produces forward movement. Optimising it , maximising duration and range of motion through the pull, controlling the glide , is the main work of the stroke. It also feeds back into balance: a stroke with proper duration and extension naturally orients the body at the surface and creates the range of motion that other problems needed to resolve.
Leverage third. Rotation and catch amplify what propulsion can do. The catch creates a leverage shape that allows the arm to encounter significantly more water volume. Rotation adds range of motion, stability through the breath, and distributes load more broadly. But both require the stroke beneath them to be ready. Add leverage to an unbalanced or short-duration stroke and it has nothing to work against. Leverage last is the fastest path to the result , not caution.
Aim to orientate
When the brain has an aim, the mechanics organise around it , the same way walking toward a door doesn't require you to think about your legs. We give the movement a destination and let the mechanics route themselves there.
This is why the assessment works through zones and aim points rather than fixed positions or specific shapes. Most of the micro-movements in the stroke sort themselves out once the overall orientation is correct. Trying to control each one individually leads to hyper-focus on the wrong level, and the aim , the thing that actually organises the stroke , gets lost.
Give the movement a destination. Apply work toward it. The mechanics will arrange.
Application over perception
Regardless of how accurately a swimmer reads their own technique , and in the water, that reading is frequently wrong , applying more work toward the intended movement does one of two things: it either corrects orientation, or it maintains the good orientation that was already there.
Applying work means more emphasis, more duration, more control through the zone. Not faster. Not harder. The movement has a natural endpoint , the pull reaches the surface, rotation stops as the torso arrives into position , so applying work never exaggerates past what the stroke allows. Once the available range is occupied, additional work consolidates it.
This means you don't need to be certain about what your stroke is doing to improve it. Apply the work. It either fixes the problem or protects what was already right.
Intuition in the water
We are built for land. Our sense of where our limbs are, how hard we're working, and how good our technique is , these systems are finely tuned for a terrestrial environment. Put a human horizontal, managing their breathing, in a medium 800 times denser than air, and those systems start handing back false readings.
Proprioception , the sense of where your limbs are without looking at them , goes out the window in the water. Swimmers are certain their arm is doing one thing, and the footage shows them doing another. This is consistent, and it's one of the most important things to understand about self-assessment.
Effort is another example. The feeling of a heavy, powerful pull , muscles burning, water thick , feels correct because in every other context it is. In swimming, that sensation often means the load is concentrating in one place rather than being distributed across the stroke. Done well, the load is spread, and what you feel is more general fatigue, a higher cardiovascular demand, and less of that acute local activation. It can feel like the stroke is getting weaker. It is not.
When the stroke starts to feel smooth, comfortable, and familiar , that can be the warning sign, not the green light. It may mean the stroke has settled back into its old orientation. Awkward and unfamiliar is often the accurate signal of correct new mechanics. Use the footage. Use the indicators. Don't use the feel.
Technical threshold and conditioning
The technical threshold is the pace at which stroke mechanics begin to break down under load. Most people understand this as a technique ceiling , push harder, and eventually the stroke collapses.
What is less often understood is the relationship between technical threshold and conditioning.
Pace comes from how the mechanics are oriented in the water. That orientation determines which muscle groups are loaded, how much, and for how long. Conditioning follows orientation , the physiology adapts to the demands placed on it, and those demands are set by how the stroke is currently oriented.
If the current orientation has a plateau built into it, training harder adapts the body more efficiently to that plateau. Fitness work cannot fix an orientation that doesn't produce the pace you're asking it to. You can be highly conditioned for a suboptimal stroke.
The variables addressed in this assessment don't just improve technique so that you can then condition. They change what the physiology is being asked to adapt to. The orientation shift changes the ceiling, not just the path to it.
Get the full analysis
This guide shows you where to look and what to prioritise. A full analysis applies this lens directly to your footage , identifying the specific variables, in the specific order, that will move your stroke forward.
To book a video analysis or enquire about working together , online, in Perth, or as part of a squad , get in touch.
