Lets see if I can phrase this right , so anyone understands my question:
It just don’t seem effective to me to put the arm in by the ear (or right in front of the head) and then extend under water. Your hand is pushing in the opposite way of where you are going each stroke, right? Why is this better than putting your hand in higher up.
I was thinking about this and experimenting a little while swimming yesterday: It seemed to not cost much more energy to flick the hand a little more forward each stroke. I am not talking about the big-splash-fully-extended-arm-slap here, just trying to avoid extending your arm forward into the current. I still maintain a glide and front quadrant timing.
What am I loosing? Buoyancy for a split second?
My balance seemed the same regardless of where the arm entered the water.
I followed the Total Immersion DVD and book where Terry Laughlin advocates inserting the hand right next to your ear.
There were drills for imprinting the exact spot by the ear:
One drill is where you pulll your hand up to your face , until you see them in your goggles and then return the arm back again.
Another is to stagger (dip your hand in the water) right by the ear a couple of times before doing each stroke.
One drill was called the “ear hop”.
It seems the logic is that by pushing your hand forward underwater after the early entry helps pull and stretch the rest of your body thus rotating the hips and creating the lung forward.
If you watch the DVD’s you will notice that when they are actually swimming, as opposed to the drills, their hands are entering well ahead of their heads. Entering at the goggles is part of a drill.
I followed the Total Immersion DVD and book where Terry Laughlin advocates inserting the hand right next to your ear.
There were drills for imprinting the exact spot by the ear.
with Total GoSlow, he probably had you pick your ear before the entry.
I wouldn’t put a lot of energy into thinking about arm insertion. You’re better off thinking about what’s going on under the water.
One of the things that strike me most in watching the stroke of someone without a swimming background is that they look like they are thinking a lot about how the hand & arm enters the water. It’s misapplied energy.
I have no idea how and where my hand enters the water. All I’m thinking about is getting my arm up there so I can catch more water to propel myself forward.
Of course someone from a swimming background does this automatically.
I am sure I will stop thinking about it after I get it dialed in right, and repeat a million times.
Until then it bothers me because it seems counter-intuitive.
Ear entry is too early but this is often taught to folks learning because it’s “purposeful exaggeration”. Once the swimmer “owns” the feel of…well of so many things - relaxed recovery, elbow above the hand during recovery, the “groove” the recovering arm should take to get to the entry point, the hips rolling AT THE MOMENT the hand entering, etc, etc. - then the entry point can move forward a bit. There’s a time when your recovery actually gains momentum as if it were being slung into the entry. BUT! Even after it’s all mastered the entry should still be at a point (half way between your lead arm’s elbow and wrist*) where you are extending under the water. I know it feels counter-intuitive but that entry - even with it’s resistance against the water - is the most efficient. You get follow through from the body’s rotation (that you wouldn’t get from a complete extension in the air), and you get to keep the body more level (than you would if the extension were in the air).
Keep after it, you should feel a powerful acceleration when you hit the timing perfectly.
Ian
*that entry point - half way between the leading arms wrist and elbow - is where the leading arm WAS. It shouldn’t be there at the moment of entry as it should have moved into a strong, obvious “catch” so that the elbow is still high (near the water’s surface) but the fingers are pointing down towards the bottom.
Your hand enters pretty much wherever it ends up entering.
The primary thing that should control your hand entry is your body roll.
The secondary thing that should control your hand entry is how your shoulder muscles work with your body roll.
The tertiary thing that should control your hand entry is your elbow.
The last thing your arms should be doing on recovering is leading with your hands.
If your body roll is correct, and you’re using your shoulders in such a way that they do not interfere with your body roll, then there’s a sweet spot for hand entry that’s somewhere between your head and a full extended arm that varies depending on other stroke factors.
So try thinking about body roll, properly engaging the shoulders, and then just letting everything below your elbows relax to see what happens then.
you and the next few posters are all correct. placing your hand by your ear is a bit early and doing so does slightly increase drag. for most beginners it will however improve your rotation which if done properly will outweigh the drag increase of putting your hand in early. if you can still hit your side in time to anchor your hand with your elbow above your fingers and enter with more extension, that is better. most swimmers enter close to full extension, but they have already “hit” their hip and are set for a good propulsive stroke. TI is good for newbies, but once you have basic skills, you need to move beyond it.
The other important reason is your arm is a heck of a lot heavier out of the water than in, and as long as you are reaching with it out of the water, it’s likely to sink you- hence why poor swimmers look like a boat that hasn’t gotten “on plane”. The hand by the head encourages a long, torpedo shaped body that is as small frontally as possible.
No, I don’t think good swimmers need to put hands in by the head, or even close because they are planed off anyway, but it’s not wrong either. I agree with Fla Jill- it just happens when it happens because of roll.
Sure is painful watching people roll the reaching side deep while still reaching over the surface of the water… Yikes.
An additional reason for an early entry, along with those mentioned above, is to maintain a high elbow. Now, this may seem to be of lesser importance than the body roll, for example, but it is the first step towards a good catch. And a good catch means more propulsion and better breathing …
If you enter your hand later into the water, you leave less momentum in your elbow/shoulder, and more in your hand. This wastes energy as you have to then tense your whole arm rather than just to the elbow/shoulder. Good entries can be seen in experienced swimmers who have a high elbow, and their forearm literally hangs off their elbow, with no tension whatsoever. A later entry requires a lower elbow, and means energy is wasted in the forearm.
Furthermore, a higher elbow encourages a good catch, as the elbow is higher relative to the hand; if you enter later, the elbow is inclined to drop, as the momentum is in the hand upon entry, and the swimmer may tend to inadvertently relax their elbow and upper arm.
It is worth noting that an early entry also helps the coordination of the initiation of the glide and catch, as it is easier to know the position of the hand if it is nearer the head - just a function of distance.
This is not a trait unique to TI - maybe they use it, I don’t know - it is simply good swimming.
See what Fla Jill says. Doesn’t matter what your background is-- hand / arm entry isn’t what you should be thinking about. I stand by my original statement, although Fla Jill provides a better explanation and additional instruction.
It’s actually one of the ways you can tell the ex-fish from the casual lap swimmers at the pool. The fish lead arm recovery with their shoulder and elbow. The lap swimmers frequently lead arm recovery with their hand, and screw up what their shoulders are supposed to be doing in the process.
Thanks for the replies and pointers on this issue.
The insight really helped , I think I get it now - at least enough for me to move on in my stroke development .
It’s actually one of the ways you can tell the ex-fish from the casual lap swimmers at the pool. The fish lead arm recovery with their shoulder and elbow. The lap swimmers frequently lead arm recovery with their hand, and screw up what their shoulders are supposed to be doing in the process.
Good info…Jill…so are you saying that
1.I need to use the body roll as the leverage to pull my elbow/forearm and shoulder out of the water in recovery. And…kinda let my hand stay relaxed and almost in the water during the recovery phase?
Also, I had another question. It seems like I have difficulty applying the body roll when I minimize my leg propulsion and try to use the upper body more.
Do I need to use some upper power (traps&rhomboid, etc.) in the pull phase? Or, should I rely more on the body roll and not my upper body muscles for the power?
If I am using the body roll more, do I still need to fully extend my arm to catch? It seems like when I am using the body roll, I tend to extend my arm 80 or 90% of its full range.
Your body roll rather initiates the recovery part of the stroke as your hand is coming out of the water. Once your hand is clear of the water, the best way I can describe it is that you want to be thinking of shurgging your shoulder and at the same time thinking about showing the world your armpit as you shrug.
The idea is that what you’re doing with your shoulders compliments what you’re doing with your body roll and doesn’t alter what’s going on with the other side of your body.
Then you’ve got the elbow. There are a ton of swim drills out there that teach a high but bent elbow on recovery. Because of the way the shoulder and elbow interact on recovery, it’s an easy way of getting a feel for what your shoulders should be going.
As for the forearm, it’s pretty much a free for all. Some people feel most comfortable with bent arm recovery with fingertips almost dragging the water, while others have less elbow bend to the point where they look like they’re windmilling. Whatever yuo feel most relaxed with.
The hand actually enters at a point that’s far enough past your head so that you’re entering at a nice shallow angle (deep angle makes you wiggle on the short axis in a bad sort of way for freestyle) but not so far out that it interferes with your body roll.
Yes, you do want to be using your upper body more on the pull.
That’s one of those things that varies from swimmer to swimmer.