Swimming with a Straight-Arm Recovery

Bill, thanks for your thoughts! And congrats on all the media success since I last saw you!! Couldn't have happened to a nicer person - and your ability to inspire is amazing. We are lucky to have you in this wacky USMS community. :-) On topic, I should have mentioned that I don't actually use a straight-arm recovery regularly, I was just intrigued by the article and tried it out a bit. My wide recovery concerns came from that initial playing around - BUT I think you answered my convoluted question anyway (you're good) as I believe I wasn't emphasizing the up & over motion as much as an around swing. I can see the "up and over" picture much more clearly thinking of Janet Evans' stroke than, say, Inky's for some reason. Now I have to go try it out again. ;-) Thanks again, Sandie PS...the description of JE's freestyle as almost a modified butterfly by Nancy Schlueter was also really fascinating - she would certainly have been the right person to recognize it. Very interesting approach. Thanks for such wonderful food for thought!!!

I discovered a book "Swimming for Seniors" by Edward J. Shea in which he states--A lack of flexibility in the shoulder joint often determines the senior swimmer's preference for the raised-hand during recovery i.e. straight arm recovery. He goes on to describe specifically how to make this recovery and has illustrations to demonstrate it. Published by Leisure Press 1986.

While swimming against the strong current, in the open ocean after a tropical storm a couple of months ago, I experimented with the "windmill" technique and found it far superior to the "bent arm" in making progress against the current. The additional torque generated makes body surfing more successful too. clyde

Normally, I have a pretty close to the classictrditional textbook fgreestyle stroke (thanks to my awesome coach). 6 beat kick, bilateral breathing, high elbows, accelerate pull through the stroke, bent arm recovery... Since I'm new to swimming my arms and shoulders are not vry strong (yet) so it's easy to overwork them and get sore... chronically sore. In last few months my coach is having me mix the straight arm recovery probably 20-30% of the strokes to relieve the overworked muscles and to relax the shoulders. I think that with certain body styles atraight arm recovery may be more beneficial then the classic stroke. In my case it helps me remember to rotate more, the additional hip snap adds energy to my kick. Mixing in straigh arm recovery also pushes and reminds me to use the bigger back and lateral muscles more. It seems to easy to fall into using just the smaller arm and shouler muscles on the classic bent arm recovery, and overwork them. Wth straight arm recovery there may be a pitfall of wanting to continue the straight arm into a straight arm pull, which is not so good for the shoulders or the propulsion. So, for a beginner like me carefully adding straight arm recovery has been beneficial. As for the body stylke, I don't have strong arms and shouders, and my shoulders are slightly rounded forward which I think causes me to have to work (stretch) little more to have a high elbows bent arm recovery, as opposed to someone who doesn't have rounded shoulders. The end result of introdushing the straigh arm recovery in my case is to eventually be able to mimic that motion with the arm relaxed from the elbow down (to fingertips)... this would result in a bent arm recovery, but with a shoulder rotation that seems little more comfortable for the shoulder. That's been my experience with the straight arm recovery so far.

Straightarm recovery has been getting a lot of time in magazines recently. I was wondering if anyone has converted their stroke yet? I've been trying it. It seems to me that it allows me to plant my habnd deeper into the water for the catch, fewer strokes per lenght. I also seem to roll more, especially on my nonbreathing side.