Different Strokes, Different Folks

The other night, I was working with 2 different girls with the same stroke problem.  Both of them barely bend their left elbows at all in freestyle and both of them consistently breathe only to their right.   One of the girls swims with her left arm wide, almost grazing the water, while the other girl does more of a typical straight arm entry.  With both girls, I emphasized how important breathing every 3 strokes would be to improving their stroke.  I told them that breathing to the left almost forces them to swim with a higher bent elbow.  As a disclaimer, in no way do I think I am as qualified as the expert coaches at The Athlete Village are to help these girls with their strokes, but breathing every 3 seemed like a good place to start.

Anyway, the point of this is that one of the girls listened, asked questions, slowed her stroke down and did everything I asked.  She really wants to get better and actually seemed to have made some improvements by the end of practice.  The other girl seemed only to be able to focus on getting to the other end of the pool as fast as possible.  This is pretty standard practice for her; she wants to swim fast and does try to swim fast all time.  I appreciate the fact that she wants to be fast, the problem with that is that she is 9 years old and really does need quite a bit of work on her strokes—work that can’t be accomplished going full speed.  I’m not sure how to get through to her; I tell her the same thing just about every practice and it doesn’t seem to sink it.  Maybe she just needs another year to mature, I don’t know.  It’s clear that both of these girls love swimming and both want to get better, they are just going about it in different ways.