Why You’re Missing the Freestyle Catch – and How to Fix It Fast

You've watched countless YouTube videos on how to master the high elbow freestyle catch. In the water it still feels like you're sleeping. Instead of grabbing the water and accelerating your body past your arm, your pull feels weak and disconnected. And you're not alone. The freestyle catch is the foundation of a powerful stroke. If you nail the catch, the rest of the pull becomes automatic. Miss it and no matter how strong you are, the stroke will fall apart. I'm Eetu Karvonen and in this video I'll show you exactly why your catch isn't working. By the end of this video you'll finally understand what's holding your freestyle back and more importantly how to fix it starting today. And here's how we'll break it down. First we'll talk about the true function of the catch, what it should feel like, how most swimmers have misunderstood the function of it and how to stop making the most common mistakes. Then I'll walk you through three key drills that will help you lock in a connected, powerful catch fast. So let's start pulling. Now I know you've all heard the classic cues for freestyle catch. Reach forward, keep your shoulder by your cheek, bend your elbow to point the hand and forearm backwards. But what if I told you, those cues, as commonly thought, are just not helpful. They might actually be hurting your freestyle. Yes, the goal is to get your hand and forearm facing backwards and yes, at some point the elbow will be lined up vertically with the wrist. But when swimmers chase a specific position, instead of understanding the function of the catch, things start to break down. And here's the functional truth. You're not trying to push water back over the longest possible distance. You're trying to anchor your hand into the water and move your body past that point. And there's a big difference between the length of your stroke and your distance per stroke. One refers to the distance your hand moves and the other one is about how much your body moves forward in space with each stroke. And that shift in mindset alone can unlock massive improvement. So let me repeat, you're not sweeping your arm through the water, you're planting it and using that fixed anchor point to drive your body past it. And if you overreach in the front and then force the forearm into a textbook early vertical shape, you've just created one of the weakest unnatural positions for force production. And no, you can not learn how to produce more force from this position through practice. Because in this stretched and bent position, your lats, the real engine of the freestyle pull, are mechanically disadvantaged and you end up pulling mostly with smaller, less powerful and less enduring muscles. And it is often impossible to switch the lats on during the pull once it would be anatomically possible for them to start producing force. And that's why the swimmer who's not swimming with picture perfect high elbow freestyle is beating you. So let's rethink the whole pull from the top. Recover your arm, extend it over the water and enter fingers first and let the arm naturally drop under the body's line, following the natural shoulder rotation down. As your torso rotates to the pulling arm side for about 30-40 degrees, your arm pad naturally angles slightly downward and not directly forward. Once the arm is straightened, it should be angled again about 30-40 degrees downward in relation to the water surface. And now you begin the real catch by gently swirling your fingers from the outside in while simultaneously rotating the upper arm internally and flexing the elbow, which shifts the elbow slightly outward. And here's the art of catching the water. There is no way for me to explain verbally, at least as a native Finnish speaker, how to do this precisely. But what you are looking for is a sensation of the water loading across your hand and forearm and a connection lighting up through your lats. And some useful cues here are creating a hole in your armpit while feeling a bit of a stretch in your lats. This is the true catch position, which feels stable, natural and primed to start producing accelerated power into the water to move your body forward over this anchor point. Because you are not forcing a position, you are connecting the arm into the water. Now if you look at elite sprinters, it is easy to agree with me here, although many of them choose to bypass on the elbow bend completely and just pull with a straight arm, which also works for a limited distance. But in the case of distance swimmers, you might see more of a gradual in the front shaping of the catch, but I think this is purely cosmetic. With a lower tempo, you might need to park the arm in line with your body and then slowly start shaping the arm to go over the barrel. But that is just the setup. In the end, they'll end up into the same position we are talking about. Because that is where the active range of the pull starts and if you are applying pressure before you are truly anchored, you are not generating speed, you are instead leaking energy and exposing yourself to an injury. And in fact, since teaching this function first catch approach, the swimmers I coach have experienced almost zero shoulder issues, because they are no longer straining in the wrong positions. Ok, enough theory, let's turn this into practice. Here are 3 drills to help you feel that anchored, connected, under the body line catch every time you swim. So let's get to work. The first exercise on the menu is what I call dog paddle catching. This drill strips everything else away so we can focus purely on building the connected anchor with the arms. It doesn't exactly reproduce the desired movement mechanics, but it teaches you the feel of that swirling action of the hand and arm and more importantly how to connect our arm into a lats and preferably whole body. And you are not going to be moving fast here. And instead of focusing on the aesthetics, understand that this drill is about the feel. If you have a snorkel, use it and fins might also make it easier to focus on the right thing. So here's how you do it and some cues for you to focus on. Start by kicking flat on the surface of the water, keeping your body relaxed and extend your hand slightly forward, angle just a bit downward. Now gently rotate one side of your body and extend the arm on that same side in the direction of the rotation. Let your arm follow your body's natural sideline. That v-shape you form when one shoulder dips slightly. That's the path where your arm wants to follow and that's exactly where we begin modeling the catch. From there, press your hand just an inch or even less sideways. That small action causes the upper arm to rotate slightly inward. Let the elbow bend and naturally move to the side. And if you keep your upper arm stable while doing this, you'll feel it, your lat switching on. The water under your palm and forearm will feel like it's frozen in place. Now, this is where most swimmers start to immediately pull backward. But don't do it. That's not the goal. The goal is to feel the connection from your hands, through your arm, into your torso and advanced swimmers might even feel that connection stretch all the way down into their hips or legs. Everything is coiling and gathering tension, ready to go. But instead of pulling, you simply release the arm back to its starting position and repeat the movement again for the same or opposite side. So keep everything slow, controlled and deliberate. And you can absolutely do this drill on its own because it's not demanding metabolically. You can rack up tons of reps to hardwire the right pattern, but I strongly recommend mixing it with some short bouts of full stroke freestyle swimming. And here's why. When you show your nervous system what the right catch feels like, even just a few times, and then go straight into swimming, the transfer can happen almost immediately. Your body starts to figure out what you're aiming for. So feel the connection, let it load, don't rush it and follow it up with swimming to lock it in. The next drill starts to incorporate some full pulling action, but with a very specific focus. It's called one arm freestyle with wrist patterns. The goal here is to shift your focus away from just the fingertips or the hand and instead start using your entire arm to feel and apply pressure into the water. Of course, you can do this drill without paddles, but if you have a pair, I recommend holding them so that they cover your wrists, not just your hands. Just let your fingers curl loosely over the edges to keep them in place. What this does is exaggerate the feedback at the forearm, especially around the wrist, which is exactly where you want to feel the most pressure in your pull. Because here's the thing, our palms and fingers are so sensitive that most swimmers only notice the water pressure in their hands. But if you want through propulsion and better catch mechanics, you have to train your brain to feel the whole arm engaging with the water. And that's what this drill teaches. So here's how to do it. Start with the working arm extended forward and the non-working arm resting at your side. Kick flat on the surface. Then, just like in the dog paddle drill, begin to rotate your torso. Let your shoulder and body rotation gently press the extended arm into your field of vision, meaning it should naturally dip slightly downward. When you reach the end of that rotation, that's your setup point. From here, begin your catch with an inch-by-inch focus, so don't rush it. Feel the arm swirling slightly inward, feeling the elbow shift to the side, and once you sense your body fully connected and ready to drive, accelerate the pull all the way back to the hip. Let the arm swing cleanly out of the water, and that's one rep. Now, for the second repetition, let the arm recover naturally, fingers first, over the water, and allow the shoulder to roll back into the water. And you'll notice something interesting. If you don't consciously control the arm entry, the arm will swing right where you want it to, slightly forward and downward, aligned with your shoulder and body rotation. And that's your setup again. So catch, and repeat the accelerated pull. What you're looking for in this drill is two things. First, the shape of the arm that gives you the best loading sensation, the feeling of pressure traveling from your hands into your lats and even your hips. And second, the position that gives you the best anchor point or leverage, the one where your body can rotate past the arm smoothly and powerfully. This means that as you initiate the pull after the catch, the shape of the arm really doesn't change at all. Instead, you hold the arm perpendicular to the forward direction of the body and let your body and arm move seamlessly toward each other. I recommend doing multiple repetitions on one side or even full lengths using just one arm at a time, because this will deepen your awareness of how the body and arm rhythm connects. Once that feels locked in, switch to the other side and repeat. Then, the last drill is an oddball, but done correctly, a very experimentally informative exercise. I call it the Weissmuller Freestyle to Freestyle, and it pays homage to the great king of the jungle himself, Johnny Weissmuller, the first man to swim the hundred freestyle in under a minute. And how did he do it? Not with perfect lines or modern technique, but by letting his natural athletic instincts take over. Because here's the thing what many coaches and swimmers completely forget within the early vertical forearm discussions. It's the fact that any extra time spent gliding and forcefully shaping in the front, by default, increases the infracyclical velocity fluctuations, meaning the slowing down of your velocity when we are not actively producing propulsion through the water, but instead contorting our arms into some predetermined shapes. And this drill forces you out of that habit. By lifting your head and upper body out of the water, like Weissmuller did, we essentially remove the possibility of gliding idle in the front. You have to catch immediately to keep the body high out of the water, and because your torso is tilted upward, you're almost forced to find the correct shoulder and arm angle to start a proper catch. Now, of course you can cheat here by just pressing the arm down while holding it straight, so some level of control is needed. The idea is to use the same guidelines we already talked about, initiate the catch with connection and control, even while swimming like Tarzan with your head and shoulders out of the water. But here's the best part, after 10-15 meters of Weissmuller style swimming, you drop your body back into a modern swimming position, low in the water, eyes looking down, but keep the same continuous rhythm, and something kind of magical happens. Without thinking about it, during this next bit of swimming, all the remnants of excessive stretch high elbow catching is gone, and the swimmers instinctively start the catch at exactly the right place. Maybe it's the ghost of Weissmuller helping us out. Who knows, but the drill works. That said, don't expect Olympic magic to fix everything, you still need to focus on the connection, feeling the pressure load into your arm and body before you accelerate the pull. But as a corrective drill, this one is incredibly useful for undoing all the overcomplications of freestyle catch mechanics. But one quick warning, don't let this turn into water polo freestyle, that's different stroke altogether. In this drill, your head and chest are elevated, yes, but your shoulder rotation stays exactly the same as in modern freestyle. So rotate through the long axis of your spine, just like you would with your face in the water. This drill also works well across a range of speeds. The first two exercises are best done slow and controlled, but this one, Weissmuller to free, is great for building power and speed at higher intensities, but also for developing catch continuity at relaxed paces. It teaches your catch to be robust and adaptable, and that's what makes your catch more automatic and more effective under pressure. Now you got the knowledge and you got the exercises, so head to the pool and start experimenting. Let go of the early vertical forearm dogma, stop trying to hit a picture-perfect shape and instead start feeling more power, more control and most of all, freedom to move the way you like.