My Favourite Drill For A High Elbow Catch

hey Brenton here from effortless to me it's been a couple weeks since our last video and that's because we recorded the virtual clinic recently which is where I got someone to come in and just film exactly what we do in a freestyle clinic so that you as an athlete can see this and see the exact process that I like to take people through to help them swim faster and more efficiently and really change their technique to become a better swimmer so that's now available it's in the link below so go and check that out if you're interested what I want to show you now is what probably my favorite drill for improving the high elbow catch position now to draw you might have seen a little bit of in some of our past videos but in this video it's taken from the virtual clinic so this is just a snapshot of it I really go into detail and explain what to do how to do it and there were some of the mistakes that can be made as soon as go through this drill so check it out this is my favorite drill to improve the catch position taken from our virtual freestyle clinic and if you'd like to check out the rest of the clinic then just click the link below but hope you enjoy this video this is certainly a drill that I've had a lot of success with in my own swimming and also for the athletes that I coach so right here it is I hope you enjoy it so those first two drills very simple very basic drills but really good for working on body position head position and the starting catch position so now we're going on to three drills that are really about improving your catch and your pull through so this is where most summers will often find the most improvement is getting more propulsion from making a better movement or having a better movement pattern underneath the water so the first drill that I'd like to do when it comes to working on the catch is a drill that I call catch kick so you're going to have one on by the side you're going to be flat so don't rotate your shoulders also flat you're going to have the other arm out in front of you where the finger tips are gonna be pointing straight down to the bottom of the pool the elbow is going to be forwards of the shoulders it's kind of like that position if you look at it from here where if you had a perfect high elbow 90 degree sort of catch there it's that kind of position that we'd get to now most of us aren't going to get to that it with their Samir's requires a lot of mobility and strength to do that but if we can just kick in this position get the feeling for what it's like to be there we'll always sort of come come back from it so if we can just have better awareness around what it would be like to be perfect with that catch even if we say go to there where the elbow is still somewhat higher it's going to make such a difference to stroke if you are dropping the elbow so just two things to make sure that you do when you're doing this drill make sure that the arm is or the elbow is out in front of the shoulders so quite it's quite common to see some is just let that arm drift off behind them so keep it out in front and then make sure that the fingers are pointing straight down it's just underneath the elbow there so don't let the hand come out in front okay and it should feel like this arm exactly like a big break out in front of you so that creates resistance which is what we want because when we turn that into swimming that turns into propulsion so we'll go we'll go 225 one with your right arm one with your left arm and if you want to look and look forwards just to check the position that's fine so we'll do this drill with a snorkel as well so fins and snorkel is best for this drill now as we do this drill make sure that opposite arms by the slide the other arms out in front shoulders are completely flat and it should be like before arm the hand is creating this big break out in front creates a lot of resistance and that's what we want to feel like we've kind of got to work a bit to keep the hand and the arm in that position she's gonna come back just going to swap arms now and again you'll normally find that one arm is easier than the other since she's back in that position okay and that that's a really good position out in front the flyer in hand is almost completely vertical or yeah vertical fare so it's acting like that big break and that's a really good way to start to get a feel for that high elbow a catch position all right nicely done so we're going to go through that driller again and this time I want you to just bring the hand underneath the elbow a little bit more so it was just slightly out in front okay all right so just if you want to look forward and just check the position okay now one thing that can help with that is make it feel like this forearm and hand is almost like hanging out in front so really relaxed that as much as possible because if you have too much tension through it puts a bit of strain through the shoulder so just really relax it and bring it underneath you but a little bit more okay one thing that can help too is if you go slightly deeper in the water close to where you'd normally sort of catch the water if it's up too high then again it can strain the shoulders slightly so just if it helps just go slightly deeper but just just kind of experiment with it and see what feels best as long as you have that vertical and the elbow out in front so you see she's now made that change where the fingertips or the hands completely under the elbow and you see the extra drag that's being created there so she's actually slowed down because it's more drag than what you had before and really I think the key to being able to make that change used to really relax the hand and forearm keep it soft just enough tension through it to hold the right shape it's a key with a lot of these drills is if you try and force it too much it's hard to do correctly so you've got to just have the minimum amount of tension in order to maintain the right shape in position they're much better so now it's like the handle forearms just hanging out in front excellent excellent example of this drill spot-on well then I don't know if you could feel it but you you actually slide down because of that extra drag so that's a perfect example of the drill and the other thing that I like what you were doing there too was the fingertips are pointing straight down quite often when swimmers do the drill for the first time the fingertips come off to the side or the picture their hand instead of having the palm facing back behind them it's sort of off to the side so just making sure that you've got those two things so the fingers down palm the hands straight back is is another thing just to check in with so really good so now what I like to do is after doing that drill sometimes we'll go through can be up to sort of six to eight twenty fives so you like three or four on left on three or four and your right arm after we've done that I like to just go into the full stroke so I'll get your weight your snorkel again for this but now after going through that drill you've got some some awareness around what it's like to have a high over position so just so you can translate from what it felt like there into your into your full stroke alright so just put your stalk on for this as well we'll go through 50 freestyle and just just so we can take from that drill into your full stroke what I normally find is after swimmers go through that cache kick drill they start to feel like they can build up a bit more pressure through the forearm the hand like they've got a better hold of the water and it's not going to instantly change a stroke where you can just all of a sudden swim swim better and swim faster but it's really one of the building blocks and one of the the best ways to start that process of improving that high oil high elbow catch position now I'd normally recommend doing this drill nearly every session at least for a couple of weeks to improve that that feel for the water but it's a great great drill for that but that in really nice position I mean when you're assuming you've already got quite a high elbow position but that's one of my favorite drills just for being able to build up the awareness around what it's like to keep that elbow high as the fingertips start to point down there so excellent

Channel: Effortless Swimming

Views: 151,381

Rating: 4.8875504 out of 5

Keywords: high elbow catch, high elbow catch swimming, high elbow catch freestyle technique, high elbow freestyle, high elbow catch drill, high elbow sculling drill, high elbow pull, freestyle technique, freestyle swimming (sport), virtual clinic, effortless swimming virtual clinic, virtual freestyle clinic, effortless swimming virtual freestyle clinic, effortless swimming freestyle, freestyle catch, high elbow pull swimming, high elbow pull drills

Id: jpko4K1EIBk

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 08 2018