I'm glad to hear someone else say this b/c this has always been my thought as well. I would think that most people, excepting perhaps those who've had rotator cuff surgery, should be able to get their shoulders in the streamline position and hold them there for 60 sec. If you can do this, then you shouldn't have any problems with getting a good hold on the water.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

There has been a lot of discussion on this thread about catch and shoulder flexbility, but I THINK the number one reason why teenage swimmers have better catch and better shoulder flexiblity is simply because they swim MORE and swim more in all strokes. Literally your body transforms to do the sport that you do a ton of. You want to get good at yoga, just do a ton....your body turns into yoga body. You want to powerlift, just lift a ton. When I ran hurdles in high school (before they jacked them up from 36 inches to 42 inches that is) my body could do this:



When I started the swimmer phase of my athletic life 2.5 years ago, I literally could not get into a proper swimmer streamline like this:



I don't feel you can really ever get into a good starting position for the catch without the associated shoulder, chest/lat flexibility to do the above. In my case, my upper body was bound up from years of XC ski poling when you never lift your arms above your nose:



Honestly I don't think any of these sports have any magic stretching or technical drill short cut. You have to do a ton of the sport and incrementally do more of it at higher and higher intensity (doing it perfectly and low intensity almost never translates to holding that form when at the limit and trying to apply high force under oxygen debt).

Part of the reason I started the 100/100 around 12 years ago, is because most of you guys never grew up as cross country or track runners. People take up triathlon and they think you can get good at running running 3x per week. They think you can get good and biking while doing that 3x1 hour per week. And they think you can magically get good at swimming doing swim 3x40 min per week.

But almost zero sports work that way. The way to really improve any of these sports, is doing 7-12 sessions per week for months on end. Fleck calls it putting in a single sport focus block. This can be 12 weeks, 6 months or multiple years.

I knew this from running, cycling and XC skiing (this sport I learned as an adult and got pretty good at a national masters level), where I got good doing a ton of the sport and refined small things every day, but never really I never put that effort in swimming, which honestly was completely stupid as a triathlete, because all that winter biking was largely a complete waste of timing doing a ton of hours in a completely non technical sport chasing power numbers or working metrics, but improving nothing technically that sticks with you for life.

If I could advise most of you triathlete guys on this thread it would be to just ditch the bike for the winter and just go 2x per week 30 min on the bike after your runs....replace all those hours biking with swim time and try to get in 5x per week (I realize the pool is harder to get to than a trainer). That effort in swimming will enhance technical elements and gradually transform your body to be able to swim with swimmer body motions that you just can't do without the proper range of motion and in water spatial awareness.

Just yesterday, I went out for my first XC ski in a year. I have been hesitant to go out as a nerve/disc issue has been making walking problematic, but I decided tot give it a go. As it turns out the nerve was not getting in the way of XC skiing (classic style) that much. After a few strides, got into something close to my old rythm and technique. I smiled at a woman and said, "It's my first time out in a year and only my 7th time in 3 years". She responded, "You're skiing like a pro for someone who has not skied".....and she was right, I had all those technical gains from 2500 km of skiing per year for 28 years, so it just all came back. And the amazing thing was I went out for 20K on my FIRST outing and was not even sore. I am swimming 20-30K per week and have plenty of fitness. I am certain once I get through some surgery and get back on the bike, my FTP will be superior to when I left off, based exclusively on the levels I can crank the elliptical trainer at home....on that thing, level 16 is the hardest, and when I used to hit that level, it felt like it felt on the bike when I biked at 4W+ per kilo. Now I just cruise along at level 16 like it is half IM effort.

OK, long response, but for those who read, seriously ditch the bike, get the swim technical skill.

Fitness = temporary gains
Technique = lifetime gains

I am kicking myself in the butt for not having spent 2-3 years in my 20's swimming 1000K+ per year. Those gains would have been with me for the next 25 years. Instead, I was running and biking like a maniac....sure running there are technical gains, but the lifespan of the runner is limited. Bike has no technical gains....I should have been swimming.

Dev

Interesting perspective Dev. I would frankly love to go do a big swim focus, but I have a hard time with the cost benefit equation there. I have been swimming 3-4 times a week for a couple years. I think if I really focused on my swim for 6 months I could take 8 to 10 minutes off my ironman swim. At the same time, I think I can gain 20-30 minutes on both my bike and run. I have a hard time prioritizing the swim over the bike and the run. I love swimming almost as much as I love biking, so it is not a motivation issue for me. Your case for the long term benefit certainly adds value to the equation that I have not given much weight at this point. In the near term it is just tough when the swim accounts for around 10% of a long course triathlon.

what? i thought it would happen overnight... i can't be bothered to try again!

seriously though, thanks jonnyo in particular and a few others who have made great contributions on this thread and others. i certainly appreciate it and hopefully the OP has benefited too.
one of the interesting things with technique stuff is it often takes a number of different people saying the same thing different ways or focusing on different aspects before you click to the underlying meaning. threads like this are great for that. i tried a new way of thinking about it this morning, focusing on the shoulder rotation, and i think it helped. as you say, it will take a while to bed that in but it felt good and my shoulders are sore now - hopefully a good sign of getting the proper movement going for the first time ever!

Exactly.... like you I took the near term benefit for multiple decades except for XC skiing, where I really put the time in to get good in a technical sense. Those capabilities are now hardwired in. There is nearly zero long term benefit in terms of biking hours given that is technically such an easy sport.

So all the time put into bike focuses only last into the next bunch of months and then they largely evaporate. If you put time into a big swim or proper run focus, then the technical elements stay timeless. For sure, the cost benefit for swimming really seems poor if you look at the near term, especially something like half IM. I'd argue that over an IM, while you may not see huge time gains during a 3.8K swim, you will see the positive impact by the last half of the bike and run by being less gassed during the swim. On a half IM, I've done many years of zero swimming for 6 months and then 2x per week of barely 30 minutes and been within a minute of what I'd be on 4x per week routine and still bike and run fast for me. Like you, the cost benefit seemed really bad if i looked at the time horizon of this coming season.

In any case, I don't think it is possible to make your body operate like a swimmer without developing some of the suppleness of a swimmer. I don't think you can do this with just stretching and drills

Think about the difference in the body composition between an Ox and a dolphin. Go to the weight room and check out the football linebackers lifting and also in the same weight room look at the swim team lift. You can just eyeball that the bodies are completely different even if someone did not tell you which sport they are from.