For me what has worked over the last year....

Lots of Single-arm drills, and catch-up drills with an intense focus on watching the stroking arm, ensuring early high elbow.

Proper entry position helps. I was told to think "Y" as in YMCA. I'm sure shoulder mobility would help, but I don't have any of that.

I also tend to think about lifting my elbow up, rather than rotating my forearm down. Both things happen at the same time, but if I focus on the elbow the forearm seems to take care of itself. Also, focusing on keeping the wrist in line with the forearm (at least once it is verticle), helps me.

ETA: paddles also helped. I don't know your's specifically, I have speedos which have straps for finger and wrist. I only use the finger strap. If you screw up at any point of the stroke from entry through exist the paddle comes off your hand and you have to swim back to get it. Instant feedback on any errors. I need to get smaller ones, because I can't "stroke normally" with the ones I have, though. My stroke rate gets much slower, because I just can't pull that hard.

Ultimately, it just takes time to adjust to the new sequence and motion, and train your brain/muscles to do the right thing. Until then, you will want to revert to old habits. Make a vow to never do that. I think its better to get out when it goes to shit, and come back tomorrow.

ETA2: FWIW, I'm not claiming to have some beautiful EVF catch. Although, my swim coach does say that I have a "good catch". Just relaying my experience over the last year as I went from a pretty bad set of dropped elbows to wherever I am now. No one had anything negative to say the last time I posted video.

thanks. that is helpful. the finis agility paddles don't have straps, just a thumb hole, so they will fall off or move around more if maintaining pressure on them so they're supposed to help promote EVF. I have used the finis freestyles which help with my crossover. when I use the paddles I always try to follow up without them to produce the same feel.

Do you do any band swimming at all? You really have to develop better mechanics to get thru the water with a band on and it may help develop those mechanics naturally without thinking about it. You can take an old bike tube and make a make shift band, otherwise Finis makes one as well.

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Have been googling all sorts of advice on improving the high elbow catch today, and one tip that came up a few times was heads up swimming. Any experience trying that?

The best way to improve swim catch bar none -

Swim MORE. And sometimes HARDER.

There is no trick, especially for slower swimmers. You cannot 'technique' your way without hard work to an excellent catch - the whole essence of an excellent catch (which I'm still working toward - but have made a lot of progress over the years) is that you can pull a lot of water, hard, and repeatedly without fatigue. That takes a lot of work over time, same as running and cycling.

Do be aware of principles such as avoiding the dropped elbow, maintaining early vertical forearm, lack of dead spots/gliding, etc., but the truth is that for slow/BOP swimmers, none of this really matters compared to the weakness in the arms/lats for maintaining enough forward propulsion. To prove this point I'm not even a good swimmer, but I can swim with a 100% dropped elbow using one arm, and having the other arm literally tied behind my back, AND breath by popping my head straight forward out of the water, and I can beat the BOP of triathlon swimmers with that terrible technique (yes, I actually tried this during a triathlon club swim just for kicks! I looked ridiculous, with a bent wrist doggy paddle stroke and a crazy one-armed stroke rate, but I could beat 'em!)

Focus on the most important stuff as a BOP/BOMOP swimmer and don't micromanage the small stuff. Your mission as a BOP/BOMOP swimmer is to swim as much as possible, and incorporate as much intensity as possible without straining your shoulders - and do it with a LONG term approach (not the swim tons for 2 weeks, the quit approach.)

I do this regularly in short sets like 25s and 50s, head out of water all the way a la Jonny Weismuller or the Tarzan stroke.

At least for me, it does nothing for improving the catch technique. If anything, it makes it worse for me, as with the head up, you can't help but press some water downwards to keep the head up, which means your forces are directed the wrong way from the ideal catch.

I do this for other reasons - and I don't do a lot of them.
1. Simulates sprint efforts of an OWS including high turnover and neck/trapzezius strength for serious sighting. It takes a lot of energy to keep that head up!
2. Prevents x-over and reinforces not crossing the midline. It's literally impossible to x-over the midline doing this.
3.Some use this for hand entry position practice

Agility paddles with a center mount snorkel so you can actually SEE what you are doing.

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I take your point. And I swim as much as logistically manageable (working towards 10k-12k/wk), and as hard as my upper body will allow (using USRPT to focus the hard)...while still improving week over week (not backsliding).

But, I took the OP as questioning how to adapt to the EVF position so that it becomes more ingrained. Which is still the same answer ("swim more"), but with the additional caveat of "...with an EVF." More with dropped elbow will only engrain more dropped elbow. Every coach I have ever talked to about it says the same thing, "Don't practice bad technique. When you can't hold it together anymore, stop....come back tomorrow." So, maybe that "more" translates into 5-6x per week at 1200-1500 yards, and slowly grows into 4x @ 2500-3000y.

When my catch feel starts to feel a little lost, I pull a set of Speedo Biofuse Finger Paddles out of the bag. They've been discontinued, but I still see them once in a while online. I'm sure there are similar paddles from other makers out there.


For reinforcing early vertical forearm, "fist drill" is my go-to. I count strokes, trying to get down to no more than 1+ the # I would take with hand open.

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"They're made of latex, not nitroglycerin"

I agree with your concept, but I don't think it actually applies to BOP swimmers - because these are swimmers who quit well before they are too tired to execute decent-enough pull strokes in the water.

I will take a beginner swimmer who is dedicated enough to bust tail enough to struggle through final laps with flailing EVF due to fatigue, than the beginner swimmer who stops the moment their form gets slightly bad, and thus avoids the required hard work to really improve.

The reality is that BOP swimmers aren't strong enough to flail bad EVF for more than a few laps, so the argument that they're practicing poor form doesn't really apply to them. In fact, I would ENCOURAGE them to swim to that level of fatigue - they would make monster gains and readily get out of the BOP if they regularly busted tail so hard that they were too tired to do even a half-decent EVF!!

(I def agree with the coaches though for better swimmers, esp FOP swimmers trying to actively refine their strokes - that's a difference scenario than the BOPer who's trying to improve.)

Get some StretchCordz and work on your pull outside the water. You can focus on just the pull without worrying about body position or breathing. Linel Sanders has incorporated these into his warmup.


https://www.amazon.com/StretchCordz-S101GR-with-Paddles-Green/dp/B00K036RCC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1531766316&sr=8-2&keywords=StretchCordz

not in awhile. tried it a few times and it wasn't great but maybe I should give it another shot.

I just started doing this recently

I consider myself a BOP swimmer. My best Oly swim was 31m last September. So, I'm curious can you define a paceXvolume that you consider the dividing line here? Eg, Last December at the end of my swim focus I was swimming 30x100scy on 1:34 pace with 20s rest (after an injury sidelined me for 3 months, I'm trying to get back to that now).

Would that put me in or out of what you consider BOP here?

You've got to be kidding me.

This is the kind of ST hyperbole that I freaking hate around here.

Point me to the results of any legit HIM swim where a BOP result (bottom 20%, to be generous) equaled a 31 minute swim.

I will say that in the vast majority of HIM swims I've seen, a 31 minute swim gets you into the top 20%, if not top 10%, which is solidly FOMOP, if not FOP outright. (Triathlon Taren with his 4:40ish HIM swam a 31 in his recent HIM, so if you wanna call him BOP, you need to change your frame of reference.)

I did say Oly, not HIM. So, 1500m not 1900m. I was in the bottom third,if I recall correctly. So, that 31m swim was 1:53/100y pace.

I promise, it was not any kind of backdoor brag.

Doh sorry. I for some reason thought you said HIM, even though you clearly said Oly. My bad.

Still, 31:xx, typically isn't a bottom 20% result, and is usually closer to a dead MOP result except in a slow overall swim. 1:53/100yd pace for OWS race is definitely solidly MOP.

This was very helpful advice, fair play.

my only IM, chattanooga, I was 1:05 and somewhere in the vicinity of MOP not sure how close or below. HIM Chattanooga, Augusta, and Wilmington I was in the 30-33 minute range for those. All with current swims but I guess everybody had the current so it equals out. So, at least at HIM distance I tend to be close to MOP. I've definitely found at sprint I am BOP

HIM ≠ Oly

Edit: too slow!

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Of course it hurts. The trick is not minding it hurts.

I went from this:



to this:



I don't know how long it took me, but the pictures are about 1 year apart. The SDSU swim coach and I have a friend in common, and through him I asked him if he could do some underwater analysis of my stroke (first image), and the main walk away from that 1-hour session was that my catch sucked ass.

He only gave me 1 drill (or more like a drill progression): sculling. He taught me a sculling progression through 4 stages of the stroke: extension, catch, pull-through, and finish. For a few months I remember doing about 400-600 worth of this progression as 25 scull, 25 swim, always with a snorkel. The hardest one for me to do was the catch sculling, which is basically sculling in that "high-elbow" position; I could feel it was right at the edge of my range of motion, and my fore-arms would get very tired. But eventually it got a bit easier.

I still do sculling every single swim workout, I'll do at least 200 worth of that progression (25 scull, 25 swim), and now I've added fist-drill some times, or I'll pull with my TYR paddles but holding them with a closed hand, so that the majority of the surface area is on my fore-arm. I also have the sensory mitts, which I some times use during the sculling progression, and it makes it very very hard.

I always respond to questions about catch with this Jonnyo video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1KReTEXiBM) . Why? (Sadly, I am not getting a commission.) It is because seeing this video was a "no duh" moment for me. The elbow is a hinge -- it only bends in one direction -- if you want the forearm to bend down, you have to point the elbow up. The shoulder is not a hinge. It can rotate. To get a good catch you have to rotate your arm at the shoulder so your elbow points up. If your elbow is pointing to the side, no amount of will power can get that forearm to bend down.

This in no way suggests that others' suggestions won't help. I agree with all/most of them. But for me, I could never make anything work until I saw this video.

Thanks for that video. I have seen that before. It’s just me getting it to work in practice.

You can do all the drills in the world at a very slow pace and it's not going to help much. It's your strength and conditioning (fitness) in the water that is holding you back. The best advice I can give you is swim more, a lot more and harder with a group with a qualified (different from certified) coach on the deck.

Hope this helps.

Tim

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