RE: Technical question about hand pitch

__steve__ — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 04:39:32 GMT

I remember reading Maglischo (Swimming Fastest) mention something to the effect that every outward and inward arm stroke movement has a respective hip rotation, such that the arm as you mentioned, catches and pushes water back straight, and horizontal as possible. I try to think about, and apply all this while swimming and, unless I isolate the movements independently with drills, I have a difficult time making it click as there's too many variables to acknowledge and be aware of while swimming. Also, I recently found in a productive way that sometimes coordination or control can be limited to flexibility. Regarding this, there is a feature I found helpful in the current Swimmer about flexibility training and stroke biomechanics (p24). Was looking at the examples of Scott Tucker above - his joint bending ability (right shoulder in the first and left in second) looks next to impossible. He also appears to rotate less, and to make it more extreme, I believe he uses a straight arm in the air. Nonetheless, his ability to have such range of motion in the early parts of arm stroke sets him up for an effective insweep power. :)