In an effort to correct a "dropped elbow" problem with my stroke, I have been swimming a lot of laps with closed fists--to a point where I can swim almost as fast doing this drill as normal swimming. I do find I have to concentrate hard on extending the arm on both the beginning and end of the underwater portion of the stroke--maybe something about not having the fingers extending as usual from the hand makes the stroke feel shorter.
This drill definitely helps keep your elbow high and forces you to use your forearm and back muscles for propulsion. I've found it also seems to reduce post-workout twinges in the shoulder/rotator cuff area.
My question is: Would doing a lot of fist drill laps have the potential to create some other bad habit, perhaps in compensation for the lack of hand surface, that I might not be aware of? I try to keep everything else about my technique the same. Thanks for any thoughts on this.
It's either frightening or amazing that you can swim fist drills as fast as regular swimming. I would say your drilling has paid off and it might be time to return to regular swimming more often.
Well, keep in mind that at age 57 I'm not the fastest swimmer in the pool to begin with. Still, I find that if I maintain good body position and a decent kick, I swim with closed fists pretty easily and without much drop off in speed. The drill actually forces you to keep up a good pace or your hips start to sink. Since one of the big benefits of using this drill a lot has been the improvement in post-workout shoulder pain, I'm reluctant to return to "normal" swimming right away.
hey, bearcat; congratulations on your finding some, maybe most, of the rewards of fist swimming. When you say you swim almost as fast, are you not experiencing almost an exact ten per cent difference in both time and stroke count? No more sore shoulders after the swim either?
10% drop-off sounds about right, once you get used to the drill.
Gareth: I do find that it is hard to get a good feel for the water on the push phase using closed fists, so I'll try your idea of opening the hand mid-stroke. I can appreciate that this might be harder than it sounds (I'm always surprised how it's difficult to think and swim at the same time).
You can also use Fist swimming to correct stroke imbalances and to work on "flow control".
Swimming with your dominant arm closed in a fist and the weaker arm with hand open can help to improve the stroking pattern of your weaker arm. This works for all 4 strokes. Try a ratio of 4:1, swim 4 times as much with your weaker arm than your dominant arm.
Swimming 2/2/4 with either one hand in fist or both hands in fist is good. 2/2/4 is 2 strokes left arm only / 2 strokes right arm only/ 4 strokes both arms.
You can also try swimming where you do the 1st half of the stroke with hand closed in a fist and you open your hand at mid stroke, this helps to work on your "push phase."
This can also be reversed to where you do the entry, catch and 1st sweep ( pull phase ) with open hand and then close the hand into a fist for the rest of the stroke.
The last 2 drills are not easy to do well. There is another drill where you start swimming with a closed fist and progresively open your hand 1 finger on each length.
I find that fistgloves are good, and I have some, but you can't do transition drills of moving from fist to open hand if you are wearing them.
Wow! It seems we have a little interest in lightly closed fists in swimming drills. I'll try not to be boring, but my notes show that I have been doing this in every workout since 1972 when I discovered that it was the only way to prevent my hands from becoming completely numb, i.e. from "falling asleep" when swimming distances over one or two hundred yards or meters.
It is always the first thing I do when I jump in. Fifty of each stroke with fists, alternating 25's of butterfly and back strokes!
Quite by chance, this morning I changed things a bit, swimming 25 meters short course, breathing with each catch-up fist stroke.
Each stroke was held with both arms extended forward until I stopped dead in the water until the next stroke was taken. I did this for four lengths, starting left hand first, then right hand first, etc. This way I compensated for the possible advantage of going faster one way over the other. My stroke count mainly showed that as I warmed up my strokes got to be fewer per length. They were in order, 27, 23, 17, and 19.
Next I decided to try something different, fist-catchup-onearm only. With the count being 18 with left only, and 19 1/2 with right only. (the 1/2 because it was so short a distance). At this point my lane partner went home leaving me the chance to have a calmer lane, and my strokes were 16 left, and 17 right.
I should add that all this was done with crawl stroke wuthout any kind of leg help, not even a pull bouy at this time. Not only do I always my 200 warmup without kicking, but also at the present time with the burden of recovering from hip replacement surgery.
I completed my workout with 4x25 meters each of the other three strokes with fists, then openhanded 8x25 butterfly and a 50 free sprint. Warm down with 150 fists free. Time to go.
Lookout yez don't get wet.
I put a little bit of fist swimming into my workout today and had a major revelation about my shoulders as a result. I realized how much I'm "leaning" against my shoulder joints instead of using the muscles in my torso and back to support myself at different stages during the stroke. I've been out of the pool now for about an hour, and my shoulders usually have a little weird twinge down inside them right about now. But today there's no such feeling.
I've used fist swimming with butterfly in the past to force myself to use my core muscles a little more and improve my stroke, but never for any length with freestyle. I think this is something that will now become a regular part of my workout.
By the way, I still want to laugh when I swim butterfly with closed fists. It seems so aggressive and angry.:D
If you swum fly with BIG paddles then you would not have to share your lane with anyone !
Your pool problems could be over !
The downside is that you could be up for " aggravated assault " !
