As stated, How can I work on this? Any specific drills? I think this is the biggest flaw on my swim technique. I usually feel lots of pain on both shoulders when doing long sets. When I swim I try to catch as far as I can go, with that I was trying to “GLIDE” more and have a better DPS but apparently I’m wrong. Will aprecciate any given help, thanks…
Sounds like you’re over extending (yes this is possible). Don’t try to catch out as far as you can go. Try to catch as far as you can without hyper-extension and pain. You should be able to feel a point beyond which you lose strength and control, don’t exceed this (or don’t exceed it by as much as you are). As your shoulders get stronger and you adapt you’ll be able to stretch out further and further. Never stretch so far that you’re causing pain.
Additionally, if you are catching incorrectly, this will exacerbate the problem (you don’t even need to hyper extend to cause pain if you are not catching correctly). Catch, brace, body roll. Don’t make your shoulders do the work, your shoulders are basically just to brace your arms, your body roll should do the work. This is a much stronger way to swim.
Good luck.
You want to extend through the shoulder not the elbow. You should have a very small bend in the elbow. I wrote on my blog about the proper way to catch the water.
Dude, yes I posted this after reading your blog and realizing this was my problem. You didn’t mentioned anything specific on how to work on it, ex,Drills, thanks
Try working your way through this, this, and this.
Once you’ve mastered those go back to Brian’s blog and see what you get out of it.
In order to correct your problem with an hyper-extended arm that causes a dropped elbow before and during the catch, I would suggest that when you’re swimming you would work on NOT hyper-extending your arm and thus dropping your elbow, which will contribute to improve your catch.
Hope this helps.
Elbow drop isn’t such a big deal, - you’re pretty much pressing down at that point. And, as you’re going forward, - hopefully finishing the stroke with a good push and wrist snap underneath you, - you’ll find that the glide isn’t that long that you’re going to get much resistance from the forearm as you pressing down, - unless you’re super strong and getting a great push off of your hands, and have a really low stroke count. Better to stretch out, with a long stroke, and have a slight elbow drop, - than to shorten up the stroke and not get a good push off of the hold that you have on the water.
Elbow drop isn’t such a big deal, - you’re pretty much pressing down at that point. And, as you’re going forward, - hopefully finishing the stroke with a good push and wrist snap underneath you
Oh brother…
I’m going to reserve things to myself. But you and your comments pretty much suck. I’m not american so english is not my first language, therefore my gramatical errors. But you suck at the simple thing of being a nice person, bastard.
I thought Khai’s post was extremely constructive, especially for a non-native English speaker.