I've been working a lot on my EVF lately, and at least for me, a really key move to allow EVF is to have a wide enough entry and pull - wider than shoulder width, which feels super-wide for me, but ends up with a much more solid and reliable EVF.
I was (re)watching a bunch of swim videos and saw the catch-up drill which I've done countless times in the past. It's the drill where you take a stroke, and then leave the lead arm out until you literally touch the palm of the lead arm with your recovery arm before taking a stroke. It's good for folks who have a poor reach and who may lack full extension on their stroke. (I never had that problem - I overglide if anything.)
In reviewing this, I realized that this very drill was possibly a source of many cross-over problems, including likely mine. If you do this drill, you're often keeping your arms/hands near dead midline, rather than the 10:00 vs 2:00 entry points which are much wider apart. And with arms entering and pulling from the midline, it's virtually impossible to do a correct EVF as the arm just doesn't bend that way when in the midline. Compare to the wide-entry points where the EVF feels almost natural, however you almost can't do the catch-up drill by touching hands with the wide entry method.
Increasing body roll def helps get the EVF without as a wide seeming entry but it still seems to me that the catch-up drill still just builds a bad habit of near-midline hand entry even with significant body rotation.
Any good swimmers care to comment whether I'm right about this, or am I just doing this drill incorrectly?
I was (re)watching a bunch of swim videos and saw the catch-up drill which I've done countless times in the past. It's the drill where you take a stroke, and then leave the lead arm out until you literally touch the palm of the lead arm with your recovery arm before taking a stroke. It's good for folks who have a poor reach and who may lack full extension on their stroke. (I never had that problem - I overglide if anything.)
In reviewing this, I realized that this very drill was possibly a source of many cross-over problems, including likely mine. If you do this drill, you're often keeping your arms/hands near dead midline, rather than the 10:00 vs 2:00 entry points which are much wider apart. And with arms entering and pulling from the midline, it's virtually impossible to do a correct EVF as the arm just doesn't bend that way when in the midline. Compare to the wide-entry points where the EVF feels almost natural, however you almost can't do the catch-up drill by touching hands with the wide entry method.
Increasing body roll def helps get the EVF without as a wide seeming entry but it still seems to me that the catch-up drill still just builds a bad habit of near-midline hand entry even with significant body rotation.
Any good swimmers care to comment whether I'm right about this, or am I just doing this drill incorrectly?