Swim Update - My Form is Good but Catch is Weak (Page 2)

guitarfrk75 - 2013-02-11 11:47 AM  

Touche, my friend! 

If I was feeling mean, I'd say it was still about pushing water around - less with your body and more with your hand! :-)

I will stop over-simplifying now! 

J

TriMyBest - 2013-02-11 1:02 PM

I think you may have misunderstood.

Ideally, your hand wouldn't move through the water, and the water wouldn't move.  Instead, your hand anchors in position against the water, and you pull your body past it through the water.  The more you're moving water around, the more you're wasting energy, and the slower you will swim.

 

AdventureBear - 2013-02-08 10:59 PM Seeing the videos alone, and ignoring any advice given by your coach, these are my comments: 1) Your spearing arm never gets streamlined. The elbow is always bent a small amount from the time you bring it out of the water to the maxiimum extension in the water...it's always bent. The underwater sideways view of your swim showing the angle of the spear...that's not cuasing the problem. That's not the drag that's slowing you down. Imagine the view of a camera overhead looking directly down on top of you..the birds eye view...your arms are never straight in front of you or straight at all. You're spearing them in like a plow and catching water with your upper arm. That angle of spear as viewed underwater side is fine...but only if it's entering in through a single hole and spearing straight forward in the smallest space you can visualize. At this poitn by tring to catch sooner or stronger, you're actually robbing yourself of hte opportunity to get this first part right. Until you feel streamline...you won't go fast no matter how strong your catch is. 2) This recovery & entry is directly tied into teh reason you drop your elbow in the catch or start catching too soon as your coach said. Your elbow never extends, it's already bent when it enters and because of the shallow angle that you enter with you're already at a disadvantage before you even start the catch. 3) Hips low...couple reasons for this, but a big one is again stroking too soon in the front. Yoru lead arm is already under your body by the time your entering arm gets to the water, so at any one time more of your arms (both arms combined) weight is behind yoru lungs. Since your lungs are the fulcrum of balance in the water, moving more body mass ahead of your lungs will help you balance better. So now all 3 of these points tie together nicely. Spear the elbow straight...extend the arm in the water. Leave it there for a moment while the recoveyr arm is catching up...now both arms are in front of your lungs, improving balance AND your lead arm is streamlined so you are moving forward with less resistance from the braking 'bent elbow' entry. So now you're reducing drag in two ways...hips are highr and body is more streamlined. From THAT point you can tehn start thinking about the catch, but from my perspective it's a second tier item to work on. The catch however, is the sexy part of the stroke to focus on, which is why Sheila's book so popular. Yes, it's a great book...but there are fundamental imrpovents you cna make to take 20 seconds/ 100 off your time before you need to worry about that. Sorry this wasn't meant to be harsh...but don't put the cart before the horse. Even if your catch is currently a little slippery, there are still great foundational imrpovements you can make.

Lock_N_Load - 2013-02-11 2:34 PM

After watching your videos my biggest takeaway is point #3 that AB made above.  I think that you are so focused on "spearing" your arm into the water after recovery that the following things are happening:

1.  Your pull arm is already under you when your recovery arm is just entering the water.  So your timing is off.  You need to make sure that your stroke is more "front-quadrant" to use a TI term.  In this way you are long and tall by the time you are engaging the catch.

2. Your catch elbow is dropping halfway through the catch which essentially zapps forward momemtum.  I think this is happening because you are slowing down your pull in order to have a "perfect" entry into the water with your other hand.

3. Your hips are dragging (just a bit actually) because you are not long and tall in the water.

I would stop worrying so much about your "perfect" entry into the water with your recovery arm.  Let it splash into the water in front of you naturally and then reach long.  You also need to work on the timing of your stroke so that the catch happens at a point where your body is long.  I would also focus on making sure that you follow through on your pull without dropping the elbow.  Good luck.

Lock_N_Load - 2013-02-11 2:34 PM

Thanks for the point.  Is the best drill to correct this the so-called catch-up drill??