Please critique

well, ideally, you want the timing of your overarm recovery to match up with the timing of your pull, so that you can ensure smooth and consistent perpetual motion. thus, as pull times get faster, recoveries must equally get faster. the bent elbow recovery promotes smoother entry, for one thing, and, for another, it promotes a quicker approach to the catch point. if you sidearm your overarm recovery, the curvilinear path that your arm takes will take longer to follow, theoretically, than the more straight path followed by a bent-arm recovery. however, it is my opinion that there is a bit of range here. if your elbow is bent too high and your hand kept too close to your body, then the motion will lose its fluidity as the recovery becomes a mechanical transition from unnatural arm positions. thus, it seems to me that the best course of action is somewhere between a sidearm recovery and a very high-elbow recovery. There's been some debate in these forums regarding bent-arm to straight-arm, but for me it is definitely bent-arm with the advantage, but the question is how bent. If your hand is too far out or too far in, you have a slower recovery, so you need to find that golden mean where the overarm recovery path is fluid and natural but not too long a distance to travel, either. In the context of Rada Owen, I haven't seen a video of her, but I would guess that she simply has accustomed herself to a bent-elbow path within that range that is closer to the sidearm side of things than to the highest-elbow. --Sean I was really referring to her underwater catch. As far as the recovery, I'm not thinking so much in terms of the arm position on recovery as much as the speed and momentum of the recovery (shoulder and elbow moving forward). Rotating the body alone doesn't really provide much forward propulsion it seems to me. Given that the catch arm is really supposed to be holding water, there must be a source of momentum somewhere. Let's say that someone very slowly and deliberately moves their recovery arm forward. The only way to get propulsion would be to push backward with the catch arm. However, if there is forward momentum to the recovery, the catch arm can more or less hold water while the body glides past. I think one of the things I really need to remember when swimming is to hold off on rotating until my recovery shoulder/arm has slid forward more. That's what Marsh was mentioning and what I see from the better swimmers. I'm in no way thinking that I should really throw the shoulder mercilessly and risk injury. I just need to think in my mind "more forward momentum". Does that make sense, or am I way off here. I need to get to the pool today and test this out.

well, ideally, you want the timing of your overarm recovery to match up with the timing of your pull, so that you can ensure smooth and consistent perpetual motion. thus, as pull times get faster, recoveries must equally get faster. the bent elbow recovery promotes smoother entry, for one thing, and, for another, it promotes a quicker approach to the catch point. if you sidearm your overarm recovery, the curvilinear path that your arm takes will take longer to follow, theoretically, than the more straight path followed by a bent-arm recovery. however, it is my opinion that there is a bit of range here. if your elbow is bent too high and your hand kept too close to your body, then the motion will lose its fluidity as the recovery becomes a mechanical transition from unnatural arm positions. thus, it seems to me that the best course of action is somewhere between a sidearm recovery and a very high-elbow recovery. There's been some debate in these forums regarding bent-arm to straight-arm, but for me it is definitely bent-arm with the advantage, but the question is how bent. If your hand is too far out or too far in, you have a slower recovery, so you need to find that golden mean where the overarm recovery path is fluid and natural but not too long a distance to travel, either. In the context of Rada Owen, I haven't seen a video of her, but I would guess that she simply has accustomed herself to a bent-elbow path within that range that is closer to the sidearm side of things than to the highest-elbow. --Sean I was really referring to her underwater catch. As far as the recovery, I'm not thinking so much in terms of the arm position on recovery as much as the speed and momentum of the recovery (shoulder and elbow moving forward). Rotating the body alone doesn't really provide much forward propulsion it seems to me. Given that the catch arm is really supposed to be holding water, there must be a source of momentum somewhere. Let's say that someone very slowly and deliberately moves their recovery arm forward. The only way to get propulsion would be to push backward with the catch arm. However, if there is forward momentum to the recovery, the catch arm can more or less hold water while the body glides past. I think one of the things I really need to remember when swimming is to hold off on rotating until my recovery shoulder/arm has slid forward more. That's what Marsh was mentioning and what I see from the better swimmers. I'm in no way thinking that I should really throw the shoulder mercilessly and risk injury. I just need to think in my mind "more forward momentum". Does that make sense, or am I way off here. I need to get to the pool today and test this out.