Today one of my teammates, probably the fastest swimmer on our team, was telling me that I should think of aiming my hands toward the bottom of the opposite end of the pool rather than of reaching forward before catching. When I watched him swim, it still looked like he was extending forward, so I'm not sure if the move is just subtle or "a feeling" or if it is really a change of arm angle. When I tried to reach down, I felt like I wasn't getting full extension, but he said it looked better. I don't want to go through what feels like a fundamental stroke change unless I'm sure I understand what I'm supposed to be doing. Can someone enlighten me? Thanks!
You don't necessarily want to spear the water at an angle exactly. It does seem that at the full extension your hands are still only 4-6" or so deep. It's more a matter of letting the hands naturally drop down deeper in a kind of natural way with the body roll--don't push down exactly, just let them drift with a little bit of pressure at most--before initialting the catch. You really don't want to use effort to push water down, hence the need for patience. Ideally, your other hand is still finishing its pull while the forward one is effortlessly dropping.
We've all seen swimmers thrashing in an attempt to go faster, and using an enormous amount of energy trying to move water, albeit in the wrong direction (i.e., pushing straight down the second their extended hands hit the water). It's easier to see what NOT to do than to see what you should do. For what it's worth, in my own (hardly perfect) freestyle, my leading hand is probably at least 12 inches beneathe the surface, and my wrist angled slightly so that my fingertips are pointed towards the pool bottom and my palms are perpendicular to the surface, before I initiate the hard pulling phase. As your hand moves parallel to your body, try to keep the fingertips pointed down towards the bottom, adjusting your wrist from an initial bent-down angle, to flat with your forearm midway through the stroke, to a bent-up angle towards the end of the stroke. This will keep the surface area of your hand pushing water horizontally throughout.
In sprints, I think all bets are off with the catch--you almost have to power your hand into optimum pulling position quickly, and maybe this does involve spearing the water a little more sharply than with distance swimming. It would be good to watch some sprinters underwater in slow motion to see if there strokes are significantly different in this regard than distance swimmers.
To sum up:
1. a bit of patience to allow the speared hand to drop
2. adjust your wrist continuously through the pull phase so as to keep fingertips angled towards the bottom of the pool as much as possible throughout the pull so hand surface maximizes horizontal water movement
You don't necessarily want to spear the water at an angle exactly. It does seem that at the full extension your hands are still only 4-6" or so deep. It's more a matter of letting the hands naturally drop down deeper in a kind of natural way with the body roll--don't push down exactly, just let them drift with a little bit of pressure at most--before initialting the catch. You really don't want to use effort to push water down, hence the need for patience. Ideally, your other hand is still finishing its pull while the forward one is effortlessly dropping.
We've all seen swimmers thrashing in an attempt to go faster, and using an enormous amount of energy trying to move water, albeit in the wrong direction (i.e., pushing straight down the second their extended hands hit the water). It's easier to see what NOT to do than to see what you should do. For what it's worth, in my own (hardly perfect) freestyle, my leading hand is probably at least 12 inches beneathe the surface, and my wrist angled slightly so that my fingertips are pointed towards the pool bottom and my palms are perpendicular to the surface, before I initiate the hard pulling phase. As your hand moves parallel to your body, try to keep the fingertips pointed down towards the bottom, adjusting your wrist from an initial bent-down angle, to flat with your forearm midway through the stroke, to a bent-up angle towards the end of the stroke. This will keep the surface area of your hand pushing water horizontally throughout.
In sprints, I think all bets are off with the catch--you almost have to power your hand into optimum pulling position quickly, and maybe this does involve spearing the water a little more sharply than with distance swimming. It would be good to watch some sprinters underwater in slow motion to see if there strokes are significantly different in this regard than distance swimmers.
To sum up:
1. a bit of patience to allow the speared hand to drop
2. adjust your wrist continuously through the pull phase so as to keep fingertips angled towards the bottom of the pool as much as possible throughout the pull so hand surface maximizes horizontal water movement
