See clips dated 06-Jun-10

Your head position, breathing and arm movements have all improved. With the breathing, the only thing now is a momentary lift at the start of the breath. If you can suppress that impulse to lift your head out of the water, your breathing (and head position) will be very good - you do get your head back down to breathe, but that quick lifting action is disruptive. All aspects of the arm stroke are improved - the next thing for the arms is to get the catch more quickly, so that there is no stalling at full extension. See the clips and notes below for more details on these points.

Posture
09-May-10

06-Jun-10

Your hips and chest seem to be solidly connected, but your head looks up and this will arch your back, lower your hips, and make it more difficult to get your arms out of the water.

On your final clip you are doing a good job of keeping your head down, and that keeps your body aligned parallel to the surface.

You are lifting too much of your head out of the water to breathe. This should pretty much go away if you keep your head neutral on your spine, eyes facing down toward the bottom, and just rotate your face to the air rather than lifting your chin.

On the final clip you are breathing much better in terms of where your head is while breathing. But on the initial movement of your head during a breathing stroke, you lift your head quickly and high - try to work on just rolling your face to the air rather than lifting your head, so that you keep most of your head in the water at all times.

Your rotation is pretty good in terms of how much you get, but the lack of any glide in your arm stroke works against your rotation.

On the final clip your body rotation is still good. Keep doing that!

It takes too long to get to your extended side-balance position. Drive your hand to full extension under water at about shoulder depth. And then glide for just a moment until your recovering arm is passing your head.

On the final clip you get to the extended position more quickly.

You are not separating your catch from your pull. Get your hand and forearm under your elbow, before pulling back on your elbow.

On the final clip the catch is improving. As you get the recovery and extension working better the thing to guard against is stalling in the extended. That "glide" only lasts for an instant, so practice getting your catch as quickly as possible after getting extended. As you get to full extension begin your catch by imagining that you are grabbing at something just beyond (and below) your fingertips.

Your pull happens too late in your stroke cycle.

On the final clip the pull looks good once you have your catch.

Enter your hands fingers first, closer to the head, and at a steeper angle - think "steep and deep".

On the final clip the recovery has improved - I think you can still get your hand into the water and extended a little more assertively.

You have a very gentle 6-beat kick that is well timed with your body rotation.

On the final clip this is unchanged (and good).