What are some good exercises to correct EVF?
I’m dropping my left elbow, but not my right. I try to correct it when I swim, sometimes over exaggerating the motion, but seem to revert after a few strokes…subtle at first, then more pronounced the longer I swim.
I’m doing one armed drills, slowing down to focus on form, and some strength training for shoulders, back, and core.
Thanks!
Do you breathe to your right?
I am in the same boat as you. I breath to the right and find my left arm/elbow dropping and creating a good deal of bubbles before/during my pull.
I am no expert whatsoever, but lately I have been concisely trying to raise my left arm after it enters as if trying to bring it up and skim the surface. I can feel that in my shoulder and hand when I focus. It seems to help with the bubbling, but I still need to take some underwater video to check it out.
Most people that “drop elbow” on one side tend do so opposite a breath side of the breath (or opposite non dominant breathe side … i.e. breath right = drop elbow on left )
Different fixes for different people BUT in general:
Don’t over complicate it … do sets of 25’s to start … deeper achor / catch, good increased rhythm / tempo, hold form, and do sets with proper size / type paddles … keep doing it!
What are some good exercises to correct EVF?
I’m dropping my left elbow, but not my right. I try to correct it when I swim, sometimes over exaggerating the motion, but seem to revert after a few strokes…subtle at first, then more pronounced the longer I swim.
So you know how to do it, you demonstrably can do it, and at some point you stop doing it correctly. I think I know why you revert.
Lack of focus. Nothing is making you revert except not paying attention. You know how to do it, so do it. Unless you only realize the poor form after the workout during video analysis, you know you are making the form error when it is happening. If you take a stroke and you realize you dropped your elbow (and you should be paying attention On. Every. Stroke.), fix it the next stroke. What is stopping you? Takes too much effort to do it correctly? Try slowing down.
You have to get to the point where a technique error automatically signals your brain that you made a mistake and you need to fix it immediately. That takes a lot of practice and focus. I took a stroke during our workout this morning in which I crossed over during the pull (due to fatigue and lack of focus), and knew it instantly and didn’t do it again.
Yes, breathe to the right every stroke.
I find that breathing is difficult when I’m using left arm during one armed drills. I don’t get the same smooth glide as when using my right arm. Seem to bob up and down. 
FWIW, during the drills, I leave the opposite arm stretched out/straight ahead.
Yes, breathe to the right every stroke.
You are lifting your head to breathe and in order to lift, you are pushing down on the front of your stroke to make it happen - very very common.
It’s not exactly an early vertical forearm issue, more of a head lifting issue.
Drills I use - Stick drill with a 2 pound dumbbell instead of a stick. This really makes you keep your hand up as you breathe and not lean on it. Stick drill can be taken too far and there are some pitfalls if you don’t do it corfrectly, I addressed those in an article here. http://acadianendurance.blogspot.com/2008/03/discussion-of-catch-up-and-stick-drill.html
The idea is that you use the stick drill to get control over your arm, so that YOU decide what it does while you breathe. Once you get that you get back to your normal stroke timing.
The other side of it is to stop lifting your head to breathe. I use the FS Kick Drill A (cleverly named) to work on this. It’s a very basic drill but you do the whole thing working on keeping one eye in and one eye out when you take your breath.
https://sites.google.com/site/kpjoubert2/freestylekickingdrills2
When you stop lifting your head to breathe and pushing down early, then you have a shot at using the early part of the pull with your left hand move forward rather than just pushing water toward the bottom of the pool.
Good luck
What are some good exercises to correct EVF?
I’m dropping my left elbow, but not my right. I try to correct it when I swim, sometimes over exaggerating the motion, but seem to revert after a few strokes…subtle at first, then more pronounced the longer I swim.
I’m doing one armed drills, slowing down to focus on form, and some strength training for shoulders, back, and core.
Thanks!
It’s hard to isolate just the catching arm because the whole body is tied together…what occurs out of the water affects what occurs in the water.
Here is a great video that shows dropped elbow and corrected elbow with simultaneous surface video as well. Multiple causes contribute including recovery & rotation. Each of these are less than 5 minutes:
I don’t think EVF is mainly a pure technique issue. I think it’s much more a matter of having the muscular endurance to keep that vertical forearm pressed against the water.
You cannot achieve consistent EVF at pace by just doing easy drills because of this - it’s why you have to swim HARD and a LOT to improve EVF, and why only the fastest swimmers have the best EVF. You don’t see any slower swimmers with a solid EVF. You don’t get great EVF just by slowing down, focusing on technique, and refining motions. That kind of training is great for streamlining and eliminating inefficienct drag, but won’t improve your EVF much unless you’re really dropping like crazy and need a stroke overhaul.
I’ve posted about this before, but this became really obvious to me when I started using a Vasa trainer about a month ago, which showed how early my arms wore out in the EVF position even with low Vasa resistance (lower than water.)
It’s very hard for not-great swimmers to reinforce that EVF since water has so much resistance that you really have to be at least an intermediate-level swimmer to actually do even a semblance of a reasonable EVF. On the bright side, even if you don’t have a ‘perfect’ EVF now, it’ll get better the stronger and faster you get, as long as you keep paying attention to it.
Dave has it right. The elbow tends to drop deeper on the arm opposite the breath side. When taking the breath, the body will usually rotate more to that side. Since the arm likes to come along for the rotational ride, it tends to swing more under the body during the breath, leading to more frontal drag from the upper arm. The shoulder is ball/socket joint, so one can rotate the body and leave the arm behind, maintaining the high elbow position. To do so, the arm needs to pivot within the joint and it takes some concentration and effort to do that…but that is precisely what needs to happen.
Finally, make sure you are not over-rotating to get the breath…that is, leave one goggle in the water and lift your mouth up, rotating back and to the side, behind the wake from your head, in order to get the breath.
Gary Sr.
Oh man!! I was just working with a kid who dropped his arm under body with his right arm when he breathed to the left! It was a hard fix. But with some focus and a lot of drill we got it. I used a mono-snorkel with him but if you don’t have one just try to keep your head low, hold your breath and be really smooth when you breath. And maybe breath on the side that doesn’t give you problems to try to get you used to the correct arm position. I love this video from the race club, they have a lot of really good high elbow videos.
I didn’t do the first drill with the lane line but you could give it a try. But I love all of the sculling drills and the snap drill. I hope this helps good luck and keep those elbows high!!
http://www.theraceclub.com/videos/secret-tip-how-to-pull-underwater-drills/
An easier solution might be to promote breathing “late” in the stroke. yes, it creates more of a catchup stroke style of swimming but it prevents the swimmer from rotating too much early on while breathing and thus dropping the elbow.
d00d (OP),
Agree with the various rotation-related comments. Would suggest that when you do your strength training, make sure you don’t let the big muscles have off all the fun. Make sure to invite your supra- and infraspinatii to the party.
Highly recommend resistance bands and a Vasa if you haven’t tried it. If you’ve had shoulder issues before, consult your doc of course…
Rob
I’m no expert swimmer, but I had the same issue. As I started to get faster & more comfortable, the effect was becoming MORE pronounced - or at least I noticed it more. What I did to correct:
I still don’t have it down, but it is better now. If I try to breathe just to my bad side (right) - I can FEEL my head lift. I try to keep it down, but I just don’t have the skill/muscle memory or whatever yet. If I breathe just to my good side, my body “remembers” my old form and I can feel that arm drop. It goes along with pivoting my body - I would “lean” in the direction of the breath all the time. If I concentrate on swimming straight and just pivoting my head over ONLY for the breath, then my good side breathing & stroke stay in form.
The alternate side breathing was / is torture for me, I’m just not good enough to keep it together (still) for more than 100Y at a shot. I’m planning on sticking with it for at least another month before I go back to breathing on every stroke, probably longer. I really don’t need to get started on long swims/endurance till mid-March I think; relying on the bike to keep my aerobic endurance in shape.
ben