6 Years Ago He Swam Like This, Now He's Front Pack Of The Pro Field

hey brenton here from effortless swimming in today's video we're looking at a friend of mine who has turned pro in the last couple of years as a triathlete and about four or five years ago he was swimming around 26 30 for his half ironman swim a pace of around 122 123 per 100 and now he's down to uh 23 20 was his last half iron man swim which is around about a 113 pace and um and up with the front pack so i want to show you what's happened over those five years where he's been able to improve his technique obviously fitness and experience makes a huge difference as well but let's have a look at some of the technical changes from some footage from 2015 compared to 2021 some recent footage of a friend of mine simon hearn who is a pro triathlete located up in queensland [Music] this is footage from 2015 which we recorded when we were working together back then and he was still a good smart you know top couple in his age group when he was competing in half iron man as an as an age grouper now i want to show you some of the things that um that we noticed that we'd worked on and that he'd worked on from 2015. so the first one you might notice here particularly from this view was the head position the head was quite high in the water now what we want to aim for there is just to try and get this head in the water a little bit more so either half or at least part of that bottom goggle should be in the water because you can see with that kind of head position it's quite high probably going to increase the drag a little bit and sometimes that can cause the legs to to drop so i quite like aiming for part of that bottom goggle to be in the water so that was one of the first things that's not going to change your speed in a massive way but it's certainly one of those things that's worthwhile just just adjusting now one of the things with the catch that we that we noticed was if you look from the front view here which we will play through now have a look at where the hands and the arms were going they weren't very particularly left one it wasn't very direct with where it was going through the catch there was a big out sweep so you'll see that upon entry let's zoom in here upon entry right that's good it's in line with the shoulder reaching forwards which is good but then notice how wide that hand was going and with that hand going wide he'd then move through the catch and again go even wider so a big out sweep and if you're thinking about where's that really pressing it's pressing out in that direction it's not doing a very effective job at moving him directly forwards so you could see that he's out there the other thing too which you might know if you've watched these videos before is that's pretty yeah it's not very strong out there ideally the hand when that goes on the inside of the elbow so narrower than the elbow which would be about here it's a lot stronger that way you set yourself into your back and into your lats so much better in that position and obviously when you're pressing back here it's a little bit more directly under the body so you can just be much more effective with what you're doing there so that was one of the sort of standout things that we wanted to do and often i see this happens quite a bit you know people will be up here because they think that a high elbow means elbow near the surface like a shallow catch but that's not the case as we've seen from other videos and i'll put a link to one above here that you can view which will explain the higher by catching a bit more detail if you're not exactly sure what a high elbow catch is so we want to work towards that high elbow position but it doesn't mean shallow like a shallow or a high elbow in that position there and then you can see he was finishing pretty close to hit which was good but this left arm just wasn't getting a whole lot out of it now on the right hand side nice position to start the catch in again was going a little bit too wide here with that with that arm nice in sweep and was finishing reasonably well there somewhat close to the hip so the right arm is probably getting a little bit more a little bit more from it now if we were to look at the top view here which we'll play in slow motion you can just see how much that left hand was drifting out there and if we're thinking about drag that is not a super efficient position to be in so that that's another reason why we just want to keep that hand in line with the shoulder as you're reaching and extending forwards just to reduce that drag and um and keeping in line with the shoulder that's that's one of the reasons the right one was obviously pretty good through there now from the this side we can have a look at the catch so i mean he was actually getting a high elbow catch on that left side you know high elbow means if we draw that line from the shoulder to the fingertips the elbows above it so the hand and forearm was somewhat vertical which is what we want but as you could see the position was kind of weak and it wasn't that direct where it was moving through the other thing you'll notice is with the right hand what i um what we saw that he was bending the wrist a little too much so if we look at the wrist there quite a bit of bend now most that surface area then ends up being just the hand but by keeping the hand and forearm together as one paddle so straight you have so much more surface area you're working with to press back with yes certainly still getting some a little bit of propulsion from it but no way near as much as if the whole thing was working together and keeping straight through that catch phase of the stroke so we wanted to work on keeping that together and the other thing that sort of would help him with that was going a little bit uh deeper with the catch because from here look he's just sort of a little bit too shallow through that early phase so moving through there so let's have a look at his stroke now all right what does it look like now and how does he how has he gotten down to a 23 20 is his recent half iron man swim to be a front pack pro triathlete so you know swimming really well so let's have a look at this stroke now so from the side you can see here that on this left hand side great position here this is really nice we've got the fingers below the wrist wrist below the the elbow as he moves through the catch that hand and front moves down a little bit while the upper arm stays in a pretty similar position so this is a really nice setup of the catch and we knew that he was getting a higher by catch looking from the side you know prior to this but when we look at the front you'll see it's uh it's a much better position so wonderful catch hand and forearms together that's a real strength in his stroke you can see as he goes from here through to here we get this nice sort of power diamond if we're looking from the side and what i mean by that like the power diamond if you've seen our videos um is like a quarter of a half triangle which i'll show you but here you'll see the shoulder the elbow and the hand is almost lined up so you've got so much surface area that's pressing back holding that water and then pressing back past the hip and you'll see the elbow exits now as the hand and forearm is again just still facing behind him and it's pressing back pressing back pressing back so that's really nice now on this right hand side here as he moves through it you'll see there he's going quite a bit deeper than where he was last time and now even though it's not quite a high elbow like he's got with his left arm he's got a lot more surface area that he's working with through there and i'll show you the other side here we go this would be a better shot of it so you can see there so still perhaps a little bit of wrist bend all right we could probably straighten that out a little bit but this is actually a lot more surface area that he's working with compared to before now i'll show you what that looks like from the front yeah so here we can see all right the hand entry in line with the shoulder reaching forwards how much better is that position compared to where he was all right this is picture perfect um catch from the front so at the end of the the catch which is about here if we look at that angle you'll see he's at 117 degrees which with an elite level catch we want it to be 100 to 120 he's got that so that's a great position hand is now narrower than the elbow so it's on the inside of the elbow so he's much stronger and if he's pressing back here the body is you know almost is in a much better position to to benefit from it so compared to out here so much more effective and again that that's that power diamond that i was referring to so if we were to draw that line there if you had both arms there that would be a diamond shape so that's the power diamond that we that we refer to if you're not too sure about all this all these these terms if you if you look inside our membership have a look at the five core principles and core principle number four is developing an effective catch and pull let me go into this in a bit more detail and how you can go about making these changes in your in your stroke and developing this in your freestyle so on the right hand side there so got that part of the stroke so in terms of the catch you'll see all right perhaps a little bit deep there with the arm so we haven't quite got that angle yet so 150 and we'd be best off being around about somewhere around about there so we'd want to go a little bit shallower so we can still certainly improve it but that back end is really nice finishes off well so the only like the main focus here that i'd look to do or focus on would be that right arm catch not going too straight with it and too deep in that early phase but that said i mean you see some swimmers um you see some sprinters actually go that little bit deeper and straighter probably not that deep and straight but a bit deeper and straighter because you do get you know pretty good hold of the water down there it can be a very strong position and you've got a lot of surface area working for you so you can see there that you know not everything needs to be 100 perfect but if you get some of these fundamentals right obviously he's got body position head position all that sort of stuff and then get a good catch i mean you can be a well front pack swimmer and if you put in the work obviously as well so these are some of the um adjustments that simon's worked on over the last couple of years and he's now swimming incredibly well you know without necessarily a competitive swimming background as a teenager he um you know started started tries and then sort of picked up the swimming a little bit more so it's great to um to see this and to see what what it can take to get to the front pack in swimming and we see this you know quite a bit when people work on these things and they've got the right approach to it and they're patient with it then this stuff can really make a big difference so if you'd like to uh to learn how to improve your own freestyle we've just released the eight-week faster freestyle course inside the effortless swing membership so i'll put a link to that below that's where we've got a video each week we've got a warm-up you can do with particular drills to improve different parts of the stroke and then three workouts for the week to follow and we've got lots of people going through that at the moment and improving their their freestyle so check that out in the link below hope you enjoyed today's video and if you've got any questions put it in the comments below and i'll get back to as many of you as i can

Channel: Effortless Swimming

Views: 47,161

Rating: 4.947619 out of 5

Keywords: triathlon swimming, freestyle technique, how to swim faster

Id: RrA3lHLHuEk

Length: 10min 37sec (637 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 26 2021