How I Transformed My High Elbow Catch | Freestyle Technique Tips

hey brenton here from effortless swimming in today's video i'm going to share three things with you that made a big difference with improving my catch which effectively improved my speed as well now as you know the catch is the most important part of the stroke that we really want to get right and if you haven't seen our videos in the past about the catch i'll just explain which part of the stroke it is it is this part from here so we call the catch that's the start of it from when you're at full extension down to this position around there so i like to call that the catch so that is all we're talking about now the reason this part of the stroke is so important is because that's going to set you up in a position to then be able to generate some propulsion and have a good amount of surface area to work with in order to do that so that is the catch now the three things that really made a difference for me was when i got filmed a number of years ago one of the things that i noticed was that my hand was way up near the surface so when i was reaching forwards my hand was right up here near the surface now that created a lot of extra drag which i could get rid of if i got my hand down deeper but i thought that in order to have a good catch you need to be up near the surface where you start it and as you go through the catch i thought high elbow meant elbow right near the surface that's not the case but that's what i thought a number of years ago and so the two things that are happening there is that my hand was up really high which is not a comfortable or a strong position to be in and it slows you down so one of the things i had to do was get the fingertips down to underarm depth a lot quicker or a lot sooner now you can see here it doesn't get there immediately but it does not take long to get down to that depth there so that's one thing that has made a big difference in increasing my speed is getting the fingertips to underarm depth there so i like to call that the starting catch position and if you know that your hand hovers up too high or you go too deep there then a really simple drill you can do is side kicking drill so kicking on the side with one arm out in front one on by the side and just kicking in that position and when you do that make sure that your hand is at this step here because most people when we're running clinics is most people tend to have their hand way up here near the surface because that's what kind of feels a bit more natural even though it's not the optimum position to be in now when it comes to the actual catcher itself we want to get to a position that we call a high elbow catch but the way that we determine that or define it is when you finish the catch which is right here if we draw a line from your shoulder to your fingertips is that elbow above that straight line now i can't draw it on this app here but you can see that elbow would be just above that that imaginary straight line from the shoulder to the fingertips now that's a high elbow catch i used to think that a high elbow meant close to the surface but it's not the case it just means is that elbow above that straight line now it doesn't mean that the more extreme you go with that position as in if this elbow is way way out in front it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be a better catch because a lot of people that i work with uh adult triathletes or open water swimmers they don't necessarily have incredible mobility through the shoulders and so for them to get to somewhere really extreme with that with their arm in this position it's not going to be strong comfortable or sustainable so getting to a position a little bit more like this where you can see where my arm is there that's going to be better for most of the people that that i would typically work with which is adult triathletes and uh and open water swimmers so um that's all we need to get to is somewhere in that sort of range now one of the things that um was happening with me there is that because i was very close to the surface i thought i was getting a high elbow but actually compromised the position because it meant i was too shallow through this part of the stroke so by for me going a little bit deeper with my catch and just setting it up in a way to get there that made a big big difference now the third thing that really made a difference for me was using the catch as the setup phase of the stroke as in don't go for the power there because one of the things that i was trying to do early on was that i thought i had to pull hard and fast in the beginning to swim fast but the thing is going from there down to there that is not a strong movement if you think of your shoulders position looking up you wouldn't be able to sort of pull much weight in that position particularly compared to as you move a little bit further under the body so through through here but one of the things i was trying to do was kind of rip hard at it but it's wasted effort so what i did instead was i used it as the setup phase of the stroke so all i wanted to do was get somewhere in that high elbow range so i really backed off the power there gave myself a lot of surface area to work with and then i just looked to accelerate a little bit through the stroke so from here just gently accelerated through the stroke and then exited past the hip there so i'll play it through you can see how it goes a little bit slower through the setup phase then a little bit quicker at the back and for me what that allowed me to do was it allowed me to apply power in the power phase where you're a little bit stronger which is through here but it also allowed for much better timing because one of the things that you may have seen in some you know some other videos is when you try and pull very hard and fast out the front it will throw your timing out makes it very hard to be front quadrant which is essentially if we were to draw a line in in front of your head would there be a hand or an arm in front of you at all stages through the strokes that's what we call front quadrant always something out in front of your head now you can see i'm i'm front quadrant here i've kind of got a three quarter catch up type of stroke and for me that typically works best but if i was to pull through really fast because i'm trying to pull hard straight away then i wouldn't be front quadrant now the thing that that changes is that typically when you're not front quadrant is you won't time the stroke very well so we won't get the foot kicking down at the start of the catch we won't get this connection through the uh the catch in the pool with the rotation of the body either so it basically just allows you to use your body to uh to swim so they're the three main changes that really made a difference for me now in terms of all right what might it be for you well if you look forwards when you're swimming and you see that your hand is up too high then it might be something to adjust i'd say 10 of the swimmers that i coach have a high elbow catch so getting somewhere in this sort of range is a really important thing to do that not many people are there yet so that's worth practicing i'll link to a video below in the description that will give you some drills and give you some good ways to go about improving that and if you have a look at our core principle number four in our effortless swing membership that's where we've got all of our drills that will help you achieve a high elbow catch position which is really the number one thing that we want to work towards in swimming and then if you know that you try too hard through the catch if you pull too hard then obviously that's going to compromise the timing and that's going to be wasted effort in a way so that's just one of the things where you can really just back off the power a little bit through that front end of it so they're the three things that made a big difference for me now if you find this video helpful and useful feel free to share with someone who swims as well and also if you haven't subscribed to the channel we're able to get to 200 000 youtube subscribers by the end of this year so hit the subscribe button and the notification bell and you'll get notified every time that i upload another video so thank you for watching leave a comment below i'd love to know your thoughts and maybe some of those things that you've been working on with your catch and i'll see you next week with another [Music] video you

Channel: Effortless Swimming

Views: 100,565

Rating: 4.9658704 out of 5

Keywords: THIS Is Why It's So Hard To Get A High Elbow Catch!, What Is High Elbow Swimming? | 4 Tips For Freestyle Swimming Technique, high elbow, high elbow swimming, freestyle technique, front crawl technique, frontcrawl technique, high elbow freestyle swimming, how to swim, how to swim front crawl, how to swim freesyle, swimming technique, learn to swim, triathlon, triathlon (sport), tri, ironman, triathlon skills, iron man, triathlete, Why Is Nobody Talking About This? | High Elbow Catch

Id: -s1PuBa2iTA

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 05 2020