Here’s What Fast Swimmers Do With Their Arms

There is so much to think about when you're swimming freestyle. And I quite often get asked, what should my arms be doing through the different parts of the stroke? In this video, I'm gonna break down in detail what should your arms be doing through the different phases of the stroke cycle. Now, the first thing is the hand entry. So when we're looking at the underwater part of freestyle, it always starts with the hand entry. And typically you'll see the fingertips entering first. So we see the elbow up, the fingers first, entering in that sort of position. Now, not all the time, some swimmers do reach out further than that, but the majority of middle to long distance swimmers will enter in this position. Now, the reason that it's good to enter in that position with the fingers first is when you then extend forwards and reach out, you're gonna have some bubbles on your hand. That is normal. When you finish reaching forwards though, and by the time you start your catch, we'll typically wanna have most of those bubbles gone. Now, it's not super important. It's not the be all and end all, but it does help if you've got rid of most of those bubbles by the time you're moving through this power phase of the stroke. So by entering fingertips first, that allows those bubbles, that air to leave the arm as you're reaching forwards. So we've got fingertips first entry. Now, one thing that I've found really helpful, and the swimmers I've taught this to said the same thing is, in that position, think about just straightening your arm. So once you've entered, just straighten the arm out in front. Don't think about sliding your hand in and having everything follow the fingertips in, just straighten the arm. Now, when you do that, you'll actually hear your elbows slap down on the water a little bit, as you can see in this video here. Now, when that elbow slaps down, it's not like you're trying to emphasize that and intentionally do this big slapping noise or anything like that, but that's the sound that you hear when someone enters in the correct position and they've got this nice assertive reach out in front there. Now, once you enter, I want you to reach forwards, extend out in front. And at the same time, you're also going to go onto your side a little bit. You'll see here with the swimmer that she's on her side, she's at about 35 to 40 degrees on her side. And when she's reaching out, she's stretching out all the way through her body, from her fingers all the way through here to reach out and be long in the water. Again, we're not trying to go as far as you possibly can, but reach out to about 90, 95% of your capable reach out here. And you'll also see that this shoulder is coming forwards up near the side of her face as she does it. That helps you get a little bit more reach and length in the stroke. Now, when you finish reaching forwards, it's ideal to have the fingers below the wrist, wrist below the elbow at that point. So it's very slight downwards angle from there. Now, the mistake we quite often see is that people either be drifting up so they have their fingers above their wrist, wrist above their elbow. They'll drift up and put the brakes on and slow themselves down. Or alternatively, some people come in, they go way too deep. They end up with their arm actually down in this position here, which again just creates too much drag. So if you're doing anything more than 200 meters, we wanna be reaching straight out in front, like you're reaching for that wall out in front of you. Now, after that, after you've reached forwards and you've rotated on your side, the next part is the catch. Now, in the catch, this is the setup phase of your stroke. And it goes from here down to here. So that's your catch. The aim of your catch is to get a high elbow position. And that's just a position where you've got all this surface area here that's facing back, and that's what's gonna help move you forwards. Now, quite often a high elbow catch gets mistaken as the elbow should be up near the surface of the water. That's not what it necessarily means. The way that we define it is if you have a straight line, if you draw this line from your shoulder to your fingers, that elbow should be somewhere above that line there. That is a high elbow catch. So you might think of that as more like an elbow forwards position rather than a high elbow position. So elbow forwards. Now, the benefit to that is that's gonna give you a big paddle to work with that's gonna help shift you forwards. So you can see all that surface area pressing backwards. That's what helped moves her forward. Now, what we don't wanna do there is the opposite of that where the elbow would be low. So imagine her arm is this green line here. You can see that her paddle that she's using, most of it's gonna be pressing down instead of pressing back. So it's just not that useful if she's doing that. So that's what we're looking for with the catch. Now, one of the keys with that is for a split second, if you can get your upper arm staying in a similar position while your hand and forearm moves down. So you'll see this upper arm here doesn't move a whole lot until the fingers have pointed down then it can all move back together. So if you can have an element of that, so the hand and forearm moves down but the upper arm's not moving a whole lot, that is what will help set up a good catch. Now, when it comes to doing that well, mobility is a factor, strength is a factor. That certainly plays a part. But I find that most people can at least have some element of that in their stroke if they know, if they train it, basically, about doing some of the right drills which I'm gonna share with you later on in this video. So that's our catch. Now, from here, this is what we call the pull phase of the stroke from here. And then we typically call this the press phase or the exit out the back. Because you go from, say, pulling on the water to pressing at the back. It's a different movement through there. Now, if we think of the power phase of the stroke, it is from here to here. When we measure that with the EO Swim Batter, this is where the peak forces are as you're coming underneath your body. So there is no need to overpower this front end of the stroke. That's the set up phase, this is the power phase. And when you're not trying to overpower the catch, it's easier to get into a good position. So this is our pull, and then this is our press phase out the back. Now, one thing that I find very helpful to know is that with the majority of elite swimmers, and I'm discarding sprinters here because sprinting, it's often a little bit different, but with the majority of middle to long distance swimmers, if we were to measure or track the fingertips through the catch in the pool, it almost looks like a light globe or light bulb on the side if we track the depth of it. Now, I haven't shown that exactly, but you can see that's roughly the depth that she's going at. What she's not doing is this big, deep circular motion like this. So we find that it's deepest through the start of the stroke, and then it comes up and moves shallower out the back. So if you have footage of yourself swimming, or if you're sort of thinking about, all right, where are my arms? If you feel like it's a very circular motion, you might be too deep at the back of the stroke. So that's something that we also look at there. Now, that's the side view. Let's take a look at the front view and see what happens in this part of the stroke. A good entry is gonna be in line with your shoulder. You can notice that the hand enters in line with the shoulder, reaches forward straight out in front of that shoulder, and you can see what a great line she's got through the body. Very narrow, very streamlined when she enters in line with her shoulder. We call that swimming on train tracks, where the entry should be in line with that shoulder. Now, from this position here, this is our catch. Now, two things should happen when you're going through your catch. The hand and forearm should move down, and the hand and the arm's gonna move away from the middle of the body a little bit. So you'll see that the hand starts here, but then it starts to move outwards slightly. Now, not a huge amount, but slightly outwards. So by the time she finishes her catch, this hand, it's wider than her shoulder, narrower than her elbow. And again, that's where you'll find most of the elite swimmers end up, at the end of their catch, in that position there. So point the fingers down, upper arm's come out to the side a little bit, that's pointing down. Now, the main mistake that we see swimmers make is they pull through with a straight arm. Essentially, they're down like that. There's no bend at the elbow. They're too deep, they're too straight. So being able to move in that position that you can see Kia in here, that is the challenge, that's the goal, that's what we wanna try and work towards. And that just comes with time and practice. And I find in particular, just practicing the right drills in order to make that change. Now, this position here, one of the things that's quite good to look at if you've got any underwater footage of your self-swimming is the angle of the arm here. With a good catch, we'll find it's gonna be somewhere between 100 and 120 degrees when we look at this angle at the elbow. Kia's at 116 degrees, she's within that range there. So that's a tick of the box in terms of her catch position, what she's in it. Again, most people tend to be a bit deep and a bit straight, so they're looking at 160 or 150 degrees. Now, from here, then she's going to move to the pull and the press phase of the stroke. And you'll see what happens here. From here, her hand then starts to move inwards a little bit where it comes in a bit closer to the center of the body. Starts to come in and then it will finish a little bit wider of the hip there. So this pull phase, you'll start to come in towards the center a little bit more. And one of the key positions that we like to look at is what we call the power diamond. Now, from the front here, you'll see if we were to draw that line there, you'll see it looks like half a diamond. And if she had both arms in that position, it's going to make a diamond shape like that. So we call that the power diamond because that is the most powerful phase of the stroke if you can hit that power diamond. Again, most people, they're either too deep and straight, there's no half diamond happening, or quite often people are out really wide as well, so there's no diamond. So we want this half diamond shape happening as you come under the body there. Now, from there, the hand then goes back and presses back past the hip. Now, you don't need to touch the hip on the way back, but if you have a tendency to finish really wide, which we often see, then it can mean that you might just need to aim for the thumb to brush the hip. But you can see she finishes pretty close to it, but you don't have to touch the hip or the upper thigh through that back part of the stroke. If we look at the top view here, you can see the path that the hand should take. And I find this is what really shows you exactly where you should be through the stroke. So from on top, the hand should go slightly away from the center, it should come in a bit, it'll go like that at the back. So it's not a completely straight line, but it's not a big curved S shape at all. It's like a skinny S. So she comes out and goes in and then comes out a little bit at the back through there. So do you necessarily need to think of an S shape pull? Not necessarily. It might feel like it's pretty straight, might feel like it moves side to side a little bit here and there, but we find that with most middle to long distance swimmers, it's got a little bit of a curve to it, but not a huge amount. Again, sprinters will sometimes have a relatively straight path of the hands, but there is always some side to side movement. There's a few additional things that can help you get these things to happen in the stroke. And in a moment, I'm gonna share with you a drill that I've found to be really simple to do once you get the hang of it. And it has a good translation from doing the drill to the swim stroke really well. Now, the first thing here is the timing of the stroke. So in swimming, our movement should be slow to fast, meaning we're slower at the front, we're quicker at the back. So you should be going at about a three out of 10 in terms of the speed through the front part, and more like a six or a seven out of 10 at the back. So if we play this through, you'll notice that with Kia, slows down a bit through the reach and the catch, and then accelerates through. But you're not going from one out of 10 to 10 out of 10, it's three to a six or a seven. So we don't wanna rush the stroke, we don't wanna spin the wheels at all, but it should be slow to fast. And you can see that here with Kia from the side. The other thing that can help as well is that you've always gotta keep the hand in motion. If you stop and pause and glide for too long, and there's a big pause where you're not moving anywhere with the hand, then you're gonna lose your momentum, and you're gonna slow yourself down. So always keep the hand in motion. If we look at this here, and even just put it in slow motion, you can see how she's always keeping the hands moving. She's never stopping. Now, if you look at some swimmers who are maybe a bit taller, bigger arm span, they might have a very slight pause of the hand in front, but it is very slight, it's very minimal. So I think it's best just to keep that hand in motion, even if it's just a little bit. Now, another thing that's important is that swimming's all about rhythm. And to get good rhythm, it's kind of like a dance. It's getting into this groove that you've got this nice flow and rhythm happening with it. And part of that is just the rotation. So in freestyle rotation, we need to do it, but we don't wanna overdo it. So I think, if you think about just rocking from side to side, or leaning from your left side to your right side, rather than trying to roll all the way onto your side. So you can see here, she's going to about 35 degrees if we measure that angle of her maximum rotation through the shoulders with the surface of the water there. So 36 degrees. So rotation is really good. We don't wanna stay flat because then we're not getting the full use of our body and working together with the catch and the rotation and the kick and the pull. And we're not getting that power through the hips, but we don't wanna go too far either. I see a lot of swimmers just going way too far and rotating to 90 degrees, which you don't need to do. The drill that I think is really beneficial is one that we came up with a couple of years ago. It's called YMCA drill. And this is where you're going to kick for five seconds in the four key positions. Now those key positions are the start of the catch here, the high elbow position, the power diamond, and then your exit. So kicking for five seconds in each of those positions. If you do that with a snorkel on with some fins on, and then you go into some swim after that, that's a really good way to get the feeling of having your arms in those ideal positions. Because if you're just thinking about your stroke and trying to change it, it's possible to change, but I find you need to break it down and slow it down and just isolate some of those positions and movements in the beginning to get the feel for it and to get it completely right. And you can see here, you've got all the time you need to be able to get these positions perfectly. So just take your time with it, even if you wanna just look at your arms and make sure they are in those perfect positions before you do too much of it. Because some of the mistakes I see with this drill is people are often too deep with the drill or they've got their arms too far back in that power diamond. So just look at what your arms are doing, make any adjustments, and then progress with that drill and start to do a little bit more of that in your session. So that's one of the drills that I think is really helpful. If you enjoyed this video, let me know in the comments below, share it with someone who you know is looking to improve their swimming. And if you did enjoy this and you'd like to get some more information on how you can improve your freestyle, jump into our Effortless Swimming membership. That's where I'm working with a lot of people to improve their stroke. Thanks for watching. If you're looking for another video, check out this one here on a deep dive on the full parts of the freestyle stroke, the full phases from above the water, from the side, all those sorts of things. Check it out in this video.