Wow. And welcome back in this video. We're going to talk about timing for swimming. This is going to be a really cool video. I know, years ago when I learned this concept, that it really changed the way I swam. So after I learned this concept and I applied it and I figured out how to do it, I became a faster, stronger, smoother, more efficient swimmer. And I hope the same thing happens for you. And I believe it will because it's such a good concept. I learned this concept from Terry Loughlin totally immersion program, and it really is a cool, cool idea, and is called front quadrant swimming. Let me go to the whiteboard and I'm going to draw it all out for you. Okay. Let's see. First thing we're going to do is we're going to start with the swimmer. This is a swimmer happy swimmer, and we're going to draw some water. The water is going to be the X axis and the Y it's going to be for the shoulders. Okay. These are arms and fingers. Okay. You with me so far. Look, I realize that my drawing is about at the grade one level, if that, but bear with me, right? So we have a swimmer. We have water. We have a Y axis cutting the swimmer at the shoulders and we have arms coming up and we have arm underwater. Now we have four quadrants. Okay. So we have one up top one below the water. So these are the front quadrants. Number three. This is a rear quadrant underwater. And this is the rear quadrant over water. Now the, the concept is front quadrant swimming. We're going to call it FQs for short. The whole idea behind front quadrant swimming is this. You want to have one of your arms in this quadrant at all times, that's it pretty simple. Huh? You might be thinking, well, what does that really mean, Todd? Okay. So in this example, here.... Is this swimmer swimming, front quadrant swimming? And based on what I said, as long as there's an arm or hand in this quadrant, then the swimmer is doing FQS. So yes, this swimmer is doing front quadrant swimming. Now what would happen in this situation? Okay. Kind of lost part of the swimmer face here. Okay. So the arm is just about to come into the water, but the stroking arm is right there, right at the shoulders. Is that front quadrant swimming? No. Right. Because there is no arm or hand in this front quadrant. Now let's do another example. These are pretty easy examples. You guys are pretty smart crowd. I know you can do this. So here FQS?. Yes or no? No. Right. Because once again, there is nothing up here. And when the arm is back here like this, that would be known as rear quadrant swimming. A lot of people, especially a lot of beginners and even people that have been swimming for a long time do rear quadrant swimming. Okay. But we don't want to do that. We want to do front quadrant swimming. Okay. So always think about that. Now watch, let me show you just me over the over not water. Obviously. Let me show you what front quadrant swimming for me. Looks like. Okay. So I'm up and I'm coming in. Okay. So this arm, how I think about it is this arm is always in the front of my shoulder when this arm is just coming in. So boom, This, okay. Let me show you what rear rear quadrant swimming, this is a tongue twister. I'll show you what rear quadrant swimming looks like. Now Let me switch back to front quadrant swimming. Now let's go back to rear quadrant swimming. Okay. Can you see the difference? Let's go back to front quadrant. So it really comes down to a subtle changes in timing. And really, I think I've talked to you about this before, but when you are swimming, there's only one place in your stroke in the arm stroke, where you actually pause. You remember where that is? When you're doing front quadrant swimming, There's only one place where you pause. And where is that? Its right here. It's in the front where we have a slight pause and that will allow you to get the front quadrant swimming. If you do not have that pause in the front, you will probably not have front quadrant swimming. What I want to do now is go to the computer and show you some examples of swimmers that are doing front quadrant swimming and rear quadrant swimming. Let's go to the computer and have a look. All right. So let's have a look at this swimmer here. I'm going to go a step at a time to see how he is doing with the FQS. Let me just back up a second. So we are looking at his left arm out here and we want to see where is the left arm relative to the right arm? And is he doing front quadrant swimming? So let me just stop it right there. You can see that the left arm is still in front of his shoulders while his right hand is coming into the water. So that would indicate that he is doing front quadrant swimming. Now we're going to watch the timing with a right arm coming down and see what happens with the left arm. So the right arm is coming down and I'm going to pause it right here so that you can see that the left arm is in the water. And so he is doing front quadrant swimming. We are now going to go to another swimmer. And we're going to look at this lady here and we're going to start with her right arm in the front. And we're going to see how's she doing with FQS So as this arm is coming down, I'm waiting to see, when does this left arm come into the water? And let's just go a frame at a time. And the hand is coming in right there. And this arm is still in the front. So yes, this side is front quadrant. And we're going to watch this left arm. As the left arm comes down, down, down and stop right there. And so this arm is still in the front, in front of the shoulder, and you can see that this right hand is coming into the water. So again, this side is exhibiting front quadrant swimming. Let's watch this right arm one more time. Yeah, pause it right there. That's still in the front. And the left arm is coming in. Just so you can see the hand coming in and that it is still in front of the shoulder. So that is front quadrant swimming. Okay. Let's have a look at another lady and we're going to watch her swim stroke and we're going to go slow step-by-step here. We are looking at her right arm. Her right arm is in the water. And she started coming down And down. So now she's right at the halfway point of her stroke. And I think I can sort of see the hand there, but it is not prominent. So I would say that she, her timing is just a little bit Off. She could wait a little bit longer. Now let's watch this left arm as it's coming down. And the right hand is in. So this stroke is FQS. Now she's Taking a breath and this arm is coming down, which is a common error. So now when this arm is stroking and is at the halfway point you can see that there is no arm or hand in the front. So this stroke is not FQS. Let's have a look at this left arm. Left arm is coming down, down, go slow and see if the hand pops in and the hand is there, but it's very close, right? So it's just, it's just making it in there. I'd like to see her pausing a little bit longer with that left arm so that she does have a really prominent front quadrant swimming. The right arm coming through and here we see that there is no hand or arm in the front quadrant. You can see the shadow of the hand and coming in, but it's not there. So she's stroking just a little bit too soon. So with some minor tweaks to her stroke, she would have a little bit of a longer stroke despite pausing in the front end. Let me show you one more example. And this example here is of a typical windmill stroke. Let me just back it up a bit. So we're going to be looking at the left arm as the left arm comes down. Sometimes when you're swimming and you see all these bubbles, it's an indicator that the arm is coming down very rapidly. So there's no pause at all. The easiest way to get rid of these bubbles is to have your arm extended out in front and leave it there for a second. And then the bubbles are all gone. When we are swimming, we want to minimize the amount bubbles or turbulent water as we're stroking. So this swimmer has a lot of bubbles and turbulent water, which is something that we do not want to have. But now we're watching the timing for FQS, and as the left arm comes down, I want to see when does the right arm come in? So now he's halfway...... past halfway and I still don't see that right arm. So this arm is getting close to his hips. Now that right arm is coming in. So the timing is quite off. Now let's look at the right arm timing. Arm is coming down. As he's taking a breath, he's leaning on the arm. You can see all those bubbles like I mentioned before you can get rid of those bubbles just by pausing. Leaving that arm extended on front just for a little bit longer. So when his arm is halfway through the stroke here and there is no arm or hand in the front quadrant, so this is not front quadrant swimming. This is rear quadrant swimming. Let's see. At what point does that left arm come into the water? You can see this right hand here is getting close to his ribs, closer to the hips. And now the hand comes into the water. So those are some examples of front quadrant swimming and rear quadrant swimming. As I mentioned in the beginning, many beginners swimmers, many, many beginners swimmers. Especially swimmers that have a high stroke number. So if you're taking higher than 28 strokes, you're probably doing a rear quadrant stroke. And it's typically called like a windmill stroke. So you're just, there's no pause in the front. Your arms are just going around and around and around. Front quadrant swimming forces you to pause in the front end so that you can get that correct timing. Now, there are four ways you can think about doing front quadrant swimming. The first one is this, the drill is called 3/4 catch-up what you do is you leave your arm that's out in front. Leave it out here. Do not start stroking until this arm comes to your head. And so this is known as 3/4 Catch-Up. Remember Catch-up drill? You'll leave this arm out while he other arm catches up to it. That's a hundred percent catch up like this, right? Which is a great drill. I'll talk about that in a minute. But three quarter catch-up drill is this arm or the arm that's out in front stays in the front until the recovering arm comes to your head and then you stroke. Leave it. And then stroke. That's the first way that you can get yourself to become a front quadrant swimmer. The second one is..... The second way to get into front quadrant swimming..... this is sort of a thinking way. What I do...... when you are swimming along you pay attention to where is your arm under the water relative to this arm coming in. So you always want to make sure that this arm, that is stroking is just in front of the shoulders as this arm is coming into the water. So it was like, Boom, boom, boom. Okay. Right like that. So you are using your eyes to see.... Where is this stroking arm relative to this arm coming in. So that's a cool way of doing it as well. I'm going to give you different ways because each swimmer is going to find a way that works best for them. So I suggest you try them all to find out which one works best for you. Number three is this, let's go back to my fancy picture. Now let's see. Where's my marker. We have a stroking arm here..... And we have the arm that just coming in. So let's say we have an arm in the front and let's put that arm like this. Okay? So that arm is stretched out in front. Now you do not move this arm, that is out in front until the stroking arm is in this quadrant here. It's in the fourth quadrant and is starting the recovery phase. let me say that again. This arm that's out in front, that's going to be, you're stroking your arm. You do not move it until this arm that is stroking comes out of the water. And once it comes out of the water, it's completed it's stroke, right? The stroke phase. Once it's out of the water here, then you can bring this arm down. That's it? Okay. So you leave it out. Try this side, leave this arm out. So this arm comes out of the water and then you can bring it down just simply by pausing the front end and waiting for this one to finish and come out. That will allow you to have a front quadrant swim stroke. The fourth one is doing a drill called catch up. There are some people that have difficulty keeping the arm out and they go, Todd, I just can't do it. My arm wants to come down. I go, you can do it. I know you can. You may need to go back and practice the balance drills. Remember the drills, we did kicking on your front, kicking on your back and your side. You may need to go back and get that balance position really well. And once you have that, then do catch up. Catch up is this, you leave your arm out and this arm comes up and once it's here catches up to the other arm, then you can stroke. Leave this arm here until the other arm catches up to it. And once it side-by-side, then it can stroke. By doing this drill called Catch Up what this is doing. It's showing you that, you know what? I can swim by leaving my arm out, extended in the front. And it's teaching you, teaching your brain. I can do it. And then what you do is just slowly back off. And then you can get yourself back into like a three-quarter catch-up and it's going to feel really weird. What's going to happen when you do catch up is you're gonna be swimming long and you're gonna be like this. You are going to be pausing at the backend and then you're pausing at the front end. The tip here is that you do not stop back here. Back here, keeps flowing. You only stop in the front end. So it's going to end up like this. This video was all about front quadrant swimming. Get out there and determine whether or not you are doing front quadrant swimming. And let me know if this idea of front quadrant swimming has changed your stroke. Like I said in the beginning of this video, it really affected the way my stroke changed. And it changed for the better. Enjoy front quadrant swimming and I'll see you in the next video. Bye-bye. :)