Finishing Free Hand Stroke

Pushing water up is indeed counter-productive but pushing the water back (extended) and at an angle away from your body can produce important inertia. If your hand position is not correct then the extension of your hand past your navel isn’t important. Great swimmers make better use of their finish than other swimmers and produce important and propulsive drag forces throughout their underwater stroke. If you look at your had as a paddle and you should, the drag force it produces throughout the stroke is all important. You are correct in that, a hand put in a position that does not produce drag is not efficient but that means you need to correct that position. Each competitive stroke can be separated into four different segments or quadrants. The front quadrant is where propulsion initiates; the beginning of the second quadrant and the end of the first quadrant is where power from the stroke occurs; the third quadrant where the recovery is initiated and the fourth quadrant is where the recovery makes the transition to the entry. The first quadrant is critical because it's where you set-up your stroke, if you don't set it up correctly power and efficiency is compromised. “Setting-up” your stroke simply means that you need to achieve an Early Vertical Forearm and contrary to belief, everyone must, at some point, get their forearm and hand vertical during the first and second quadrant of their stroke. The external rotation of one’s forearm or the angle of from the shoulder, elbow, forearm and hand, is dependent upon the physical limitations of the individual (shoulder strength, flexibility, body height, body type and some other factors). But it’s very important to note that every single swimmer using their arms has some degree of EVF and that’s not debatable. The drag force is kept more constant by applying lift forces or movements that go away and toward the midline of the body. For you see, applying force directly backward creates a vortex behind the hand that reduce its drag potential. I know this sounds complicated and I guess it is, but you need to know that your pulling pattern is extremely important to speed. If you can improve your pulling pattern by making it a little more efficient you will swim faster. Good luck Coach T. National Science Foundation announces study results on corporate America: 1. Sport of choice for maintenance level employees - bowling 2. Sport of choice for front line workers - softball 3. Sport of choice for supervisors - baseball 4. Sport of choice for mid management - racquetball 5. Sport of choice for corporate officers - golf CONCLUSION: The higher you are in corporate structure, the smaller your balls!

The drag force is kept more constant by applying lift forces or movements that go away and toward the midline of the body. For you see, applying force directly backward creates a vortex behind the hand that reduce its drag potential. I know this sounds complicated and I guess it is, but you need to know that your pulling pattern is extremely important to speed. If you can improve your pulling pattern by making it a little more efficient you will swim faster. Good luck Coach T. Tom, could you elaborate on this. Do you mean then that you should pull in and 's' pattern? I feel exactly that 'vortex' you are talking about when I swim at high speed. It feels like I am losing purchase on the water and with that comes a resultant loss in power.

The vortex directly behind the hand is caused when water moves around it because it’s being pulled too fast or in a straight line too long. There are different ways you can maintain drag cause by the surface area of the hand. You can move in from shallow to deep and then shallow again (like Alain Bernard) or from outside of the shoulder and slightly to the midline with a very EVF (like Rebecca Adlington), or a mixture of the two like most swimmers. The important think you must work on is altering your pulling pattern to accentuate your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. By trying different pulling patterns (timing your pulls), you’ll find out what pulling pattern is best for you. There are many variances that you’ll need to manipulate (depth, speed, hand position, forearm position, pulling pattern, finger position, wrist bend, extension at the beginning and end of the stroke and how you set up your hand and forearm at the beginning of the stroke). Try one thing and a time. I’d start with keeping the wrist from bending and opening the fingers a bit (increases the area of the hand). Then try some different things. Keep a log of what works and what doesn’t and go from there. Good luck and have fun! Coach T. Two boll weevils grew up in South Carolina. One went to Hollywood and became a famous actor. The other stayed behind in the cotton fields and never amounted to much. The second one, naturally, became known as the lesser of two weevils.

Remember that you are trying to pull yourself forward as you push back on the water. That idea will help you in thinking about what you are doing.

I'll try to be less scary, I promise ~ well, I'll try!

TOM TOM very interested in sharing my theories with you.............but you scare me. coach h

I think finishing back at the thigh with good tricep engagement is good for sprints. I've seen distance done both ways, the hand exiting at the waist which helps keep the arms forward and in the front quadrant which helps keep the legs up and less fatiguing on the tri's. I've also seen the hands exit farther back which helps with rotation while also maintaining a degree of front quadrant.

I recently borrowed from my coach at DVD by Richard Quick ( Stanford U ) where he showed to finish by putting the arm in the saddle ( his words ) and finish his stroke by putting the arm across your naval or stomach. He also indicates the last 30 % of the stroke after you hand passes chest ( stermum) is not not very important. I like this topic. Where is the "saddle"? I assume you meant to type only one "not" before "very important"?