Hope you don't mind me jumping in occasionally. The freestyle pulling motion is tricky. You all know or should know about the correct pulling motion for any freestyle swim over 100 meters-the high elbow pull or early vertical forearm EVF. Looking at this picture of Katie Ledecky's arm pulling motion (attached) makes me slightly ill. How does she do it? Or better, why does she do it? The simple answer is to reduce frontal drag, not to increase propulsion, nor for more power.
The correct (distance) freestyle pulling motion requires entering the hands directly in front of the shoulder. Fingers and thumb squeezed together, wrists in alignment with forearms. If the stroke rate is slow enough (hip-driven hybrid technique on the breath side) turn the little pinky down after hand entry, while pushing the hand forward (reduces drag by 6.6% at 2.3 m/sec compared to palm down). When initiating the catch, flip the hand back over to palm down (if you have slow stroke rate) separate the fingers and thumb slightly to increase the effective surface area of the hand. The only two forces that will really help you get faster are downward (lift) and backward (propulsion). Lift forces help reduce drag. Propulsion moves you forward. So press downward with the opened hand while keeping the elbow high, hand just inside the elbow. In other words, try to keep the upper arm as close to your line of motion as possible. This requires internally rotating the shoulder while pressing down. DO NOT INITIATE THE HIGH ELBOW PULL WITH AN OUT SWEEP (which I see all too often among triathletes). The out sweeping hand leads to more frontal drag and less propulsion. As the hand presses down with the elbow up, it will reach a point about a foot or so under the water when it will begin moving backward. Try to push it nearly straight backward, just inside the elbow an inch or two, without allowing it to slip in or IN SWEEP. Do as Aaron Piersol used to say about his pull in backstroke- "Grip it and rip it". How hard you press the hand out the back and rotate the hip on the release depends on which technique you are using. You should only do that with hip-driven or hybrid freestyle techniques. With shoulder-driven technique..which theoretically, most of you should be using since very few of you can really kick fast, focus on getting your propulsion through the front and early back quadrant and then release to get your hand back out in front. You need the higher RPM to make up for your lack of kicking speed and distance per stroke (DPS). Your velocity is Stroke Rate x DPS. BTW, if you want to use higher SR, then you better train more and with higher SR. Otherwise, you won't sustain it.
Here are some things you likely don't know about the pulling motion:
1. Lift and Propulsion forces are mostly from Newtonian mechanics, not Bernoulli effect.
2. Hand must be moving backward relative to the water to generate propulsion
3. Forces directed inward or outward with the hand will make you zig-zag and lose propulsion- not helpful
4. The speed of the hand entry of the recovering arm is directly tied to the speed of the shoulder rotation- both powerful coupling motions for your pull.
5. Therefore, focus on driving the recovering hand and arm hard to the water (fully extended). The fast shoulder rotation comes with it. It is the only BOGO I know of in the sport of swimming. Too many swimmers enter their arms like a modern toilet seat with a spring hinge on it.
6. Recover your elbow to an imaginary string going straight upward from your shoulders. If you get your elbow up to that string, you will be rotating your upper body extremely well.
7. Relax your wrist and hand during the early recovery phase (ascent to the string). It is your only opportunity to chill out during the pulling cycle, so give your arm a chance to recover. Every great freestyler does that. I call it the magic of the relaxed wrist.
8. The arm is a class III lever with a mechanical advantage of about 1/30...in other words, it offers no mechanical advantage to a swimmer
9. By using the high elbow pull, we bring the hand closer to the fulcrum (shoulder joint), increasing the mechanical advantage....but it is still is far less than one, and still offers no mechanical advantage
10. While we may increase the mechanical advantage of the pulling arm with a high elbow pull, getting the hand closer to the shoulder joint, we decrease the biomechanical advantage of the pulling arm with that pulling motion- we use more scapula muscle and less lat and pec muscle, compared to a deeper pull.
11. The deeper pulling motion has a biomechanical advantage but the burden of the increased pulling force required to move your hand through the water and the increased frontal drag caused by the upper arm being more out of alignment with your motion (all occurring in the front quadrant) are not worth the trade. The deeper pulling motion will simply chew you up and spit you out. Leave that one for the sprinters.
12. Learn to pull (and rotate your body) correctly using the one arm drill, fins on, other hand at your side. Until you get the pulling motion right, you won't go much faster
13. Remember that of all the ten (or so) critical distance freestyle techniques that we teach at The Race Club, the highest three in priority are 1. High elbow pull 2. High elbow pull and 3. High elbow pull.
If you want to learn more about the freestyle pulling motion and other swimming techniques, check out our book, Fundamentals of Fast Swimming. You can get it on Amazon, our website or just about any other on line book store. Thanks for allowing me to blog a bit.
Gary Sr.
The correct (distance) freestyle pulling motion requires entering the hands directly in front of the shoulder. Fingers and thumb squeezed together, wrists in alignment with forearms. If the stroke rate is slow enough (hip-driven hybrid technique on the breath side) turn the little pinky down after hand entry, while pushing the hand forward (reduces drag by 6.6% at 2.3 m/sec compared to palm down). When initiating the catch, flip the hand back over to palm down (if you have slow stroke rate) separate the fingers and thumb slightly to increase the effective surface area of the hand. The only two forces that will really help you get faster are downward (lift) and backward (propulsion). Lift forces help reduce drag. Propulsion moves you forward. So press downward with the opened hand while keeping the elbow high, hand just inside the elbow. In other words, try to keep the upper arm as close to your line of motion as possible. This requires internally rotating the shoulder while pressing down. DO NOT INITIATE THE HIGH ELBOW PULL WITH AN OUT SWEEP (which I see all too often among triathletes). The out sweeping hand leads to more frontal drag and less propulsion. As the hand presses down with the elbow up, it will reach a point about a foot or so under the water when it will begin moving backward. Try to push it nearly straight backward, just inside the elbow an inch or two, without allowing it to slip in or IN SWEEP. Do as Aaron Piersol used to say about his pull in backstroke- "Grip it and rip it". How hard you press the hand out the back and rotate the hip on the release depends on which technique you are using. You should only do that with hip-driven or hybrid freestyle techniques. With shoulder-driven technique..which theoretically, most of you should be using since very few of you can really kick fast, focus on getting your propulsion through the front and early back quadrant and then release to get your hand back out in front. You need the higher RPM to make up for your lack of kicking speed and distance per stroke (DPS). Your velocity is Stroke Rate x DPS. BTW, if you want to use higher SR, then you better train more and with higher SR. Otherwise, you won't sustain it.
Here are some things you likely don't know about the pulling motion:
1. Lift and Propulsion forces are mostly from Newtonian mechanics, not Bernoulli effect.
2. Hand must be moving backward relative to the water to generate propulsion
3. Forces directed inward or outward with the hand will make you zig-zag and lose propulsion- not helpful
4. The speed of the hand entry of the recovering arm is directly tied to the speed of the shoulder rotation- both powerful coupling motions for your pull.
5. Therefore, focus on driving the recovering hand and arm hard to the water (fully extended). The fast shoulder rotation comes with it. It is the only BOGO I know of in the sport of swimming. Too many swimmers enter their arms like a modern toilet seat with a spring hinge on it.
6. Recover your elbow to an imaginary string going straight upward from your shoulders. If you get your elbow up to that string, you will be rotating your upper body extremely well.
7. Relax your wrist and hand during the early recovery phase (ascent to the string). It is your only opportunity to chill out during the pulling cycle, so give your arm a chance to recover. Every great freestyler does that. I call it the magic of the relaxed wrist.
8. The arm is a class III lever with a mechanical advantage of about 1/30...in other words, it offers no mechanical advantage to a swimmer
9. By using the high elbow pull, we bring the hand closer to the fulcrum (shoulder joint), increasing the mechanical advantage....but it is still is far less than one, and still offers no mechanical advantage
10. While we may increase the mechanical advantage of the pulling arm with a high elbow pull, getting the hand closer to the shoulder joint, we decrease the biomechanical advantage of the pulling arm with that pulling motion- we use more scapula muscle and less lat and pec muscle, compared to a deeper pull.
11. The deeper pulling motion has a biomechanical advantage but the burden of the increased pulling force required to move your hand through the water and the increased frontal drag caused by the upper arm being more out of alignment with your motion (all occurring in the front quadrant) are not worth the trade. The deeper pulling motion will simply chew you up and spit you out. Leave that one for the sprinters.
12. Learn to pull (and rotate your body) correctly using the one arm drill, fins on, other hand at your side. Until you get the pulling motion right, you won't go much faster
13. Remember that of all the ten (or so) critical distance freestyle techniques that we teach at The Race Club, the highest three in priority are 1. High elbow pull 2. High elbow pull and 3. High elbow pull.
If you want to learn more about the freestyle pulling motion and other swimming techniques, check out our book, Fundamentals of Fast Swimming. You can get it on Amazon, our website or just about any other on line book store. Thanks for allowing me to blog a bit.
Gary Sr.