Hi all,
Unfortunately the video for this is not ready yet, but earlier today I sent a write up to my friend Kell explaining the technique of the UW swim as we coached it to our swimmers. I have copied this write-up below.
Some people do a version of pull and kick at the same time, which works too but is not as overall efficient as the method below. You always have forward momentum with the breastroke pullout method, and you are maximimizing each movement of the body. One could pull and kick at the same time, then kick again as you recover your hands, but you are kicking and using the larger muscle groups twice as much (which you want to avoid) and they have shown that the slight gain of the extra kick during the pull is outweighed by the energy expended. blah, blah, blah
Maybe this will help a little for those of you who want to work on the UW swim right away. I know a visual aid will help, and I'll have this soon, but in meantime...
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Out of the water (in your home and not on the pooldeck to avoid stares), stand up straight with your arms pointing above your head (streamline position), hand on top of the other, arms tucked behind your ears and chin tucked. You should look like a crayon
Pull your arms down like you are making the shape of an oldstyle keyhole. So, as you start to pull down, you are also angling out until you get just past your shoulders (try to keep the pull within shoulder-width). Just after you go past your shoulders, angle the pull in until your hands are side by side, completing the pull with a fast downward sweep.
Recover your hands by sliding them back into streamline (the original position you started in), keeping the hands close together and close to the body.
By keeping the pull 'within' the body, you are minimizing any excess drag.
At the same time you start to recover, you do a breaststroke kick. At the end of the recover, you are back in streamline, so make the most of the kick and position and get a little more glide before starting the next pull (Note: as we tell our swimmers "Pull, glide, kick, glide" - the arm recovery is also happening during the kick. You are either gliding with your arms straight down and flat against your body, or your arms straight out ahead of you and streamlined)
Nxt, try it in the water :-) Remember to keep it slow and relaxed.
They use the same technique in breaststroke starts and turns - called "underwater pullout". You may be able to find a video of this already up on youtube to get an idea. Only difference is they can only do one underwater pull in a start or turn for breaststroke.