The BIGGEST Swim Mistake You Don’t Know You’re Making

Has your swimming flatlined? No matter how hard you try, you just can't seem to get any faster. Well, it could be a really simple fix. It could all be down to the hands. Now, there are many parts to the swim stroke that help us to move through the water, but the one that I believe has the biggest impact and influence on other parts of swim stroke is the hand positioning and movement. First off, how do you hold your hands when you swim? Don't do this, this, or even this. Instead, your hands should be in a relatively relaxed position. You may even have actually small gaps between your fingers, and this is absolutely fine. These small gaps actually create and form vortices, which don't allow water to pass through and therefore increase the overall size or the paddle for maximum force production. In fact, some very clever folk at the University of Toulouse did some scientific testing on this and found that the optimal finger spacing is between three to eight millimeters, allowing you to exert a 5% to 10% greater force when your hands are in a nice relaxed position versus a tight or cupped hand position. Don't worry though, you don't need to be taking a ruler along to your next swim session. Just focus on keeping your hand nice and relaxed. Now, for the position of the hands, in order to actually move forwards through the water, we actually want to feel pressure through the palm of our hands, and that palm should actually be aiming to face towards the wall at the opposite end, so pushing the opposite direction to that that we're trying to travel in. Now, a little tip here, if you put a small pitch in the hand, it can actually help to get that catch and feel that pressure through the palm. Now, the common mistake is actually just to focus on that, and that is it, and struggle to actually feel any force through that. Now, I can explain and demonstrate what's going on here by trying to get out of the swimming pool. If I put both my hands on the side and leave my elbows dropped down, it's near impossible to get myself out of the swimming pool. Now, if I lift my elbows up into a nice strong position, I can easily apply force and get myself out. This is exactly the same movement in the water. We should focus on a high elbow, bringing the forearm into a perpendicular angle with the surface of the water, allowing us to push forcefully on the water with our hand and forearm. When I said it was all about the hands, all right, it also includes the forearms. They almost act like an extension of the hands and work in conjunction with the hands. Now, a good way of practicing this is actually with your good old paddles. Now, rather than putting them on in the standard position like this, actually push them up your forearm a little bit, and then grip over the top. That's going to lock your wrist out. Now, when you try and catch, it's going to force that forearm to move in conjunction with the wrist and get you into that nice strong high elbow position. Now, generally speaking, 85% to 90% of our swimming speed comes from the force propulsion created by our hands and our forearms, which is why I believe that this part of the stroke can have the biggest impact if we were to fix it, and also the biggest impact on other parts of the stroke. For instance, if we can apply that pressure down on the water and get that purchase on the water, the front of the stroke can actually help to lift our hips and our legs, which is going to then reduce our drag through the water. Also, by activating this movement, we can start to utilize those large muscle groups like the shoulders, the backs, which is going to stabilize the stroke, make things a little bit easier, and also allow us to produce more power with every stroke. Also, by doing all of this and by just consistently applying force through the whole catch and pull phase, we can eliminate some dead spots because basically, we're not trying to suddenly put in bursts of power to get ourselves back up to speed. In addition to that nifty little paddle trick, I've got a few other drills that can help with that hand positioning and movement. Firstly, the simple treading water. Move into deep water or lift your legs off the bottom of the pool and use a side-to-side sweeping motion with your hands and forearms about one to two feet below the surface of the water. Change the shape of your hands and the position of your fingers while treading water and observe which hand position provides the most lift to keep your head out of the water. A nice progression from this is the skull drill. Use a similar back and forth sweeping motion as described above while floating on your stomach. Start with your hands out in front of you in line with your shoulders, then sweep out by about a foot to either side, then back in. Aim to keep pressure on the water through the whole motion and your arms relatively straight. You can put a pool buoy between your legs if you like. The next progression from this is doggy paddle. For this, we're going to only focus on the underwater catch and pull phase of the stroke. Again, you can perform this with a pool buoy should you like. You can also perform it with your head out of the water or in should you like. The aim is to get a good catch of the water, focus on that high elbow and apply force through the whole stroke. This is a great drill for slowing it all down and working on the mechanics. If you find yourself pulling in miles of swimming every week and muscling through the water, might be worth you taking a little step back and focusing on your hand positioning and the movement of your hand through the water. If you found today's tips helpful, let us know how you got on in the comment section down below and how you're progressing with it. If you enjoyed today's video, please give it a thumbs up, give it a like. See you next time.