My understanding of both of those drills is that they are teaching you to get your elbow high in recovery. The only real way to drag your fingertips is to stick your elbow in the air, same as what’s being achieved in broken arrow.
You’re trying to avoid leading the hand entry with your elbow, which will cause you to slap the water with your forearm, and put you in a terrible position for the catch. Google Joel Friel “death move.”
It is confusing though, some people toss their arms way up in the air in recovery and some glide along the water with their elbow high but fingers just a few inches above. I used to try to do the latter gliding thing, but now I just throw my arms pretty high up there, I think it’s just a more natural movement for me, and not worrying about a careful recovery lets me really focus on what is important to me, finishing the kick to drive rotation and catch.
It’s like golf. There are universally correct positions at key moments in the stroke, but a variety of ways to get there.
Good point about avoiding leading the hand entry with your elbow.
I think that the point of these drills is should be to slow down the recovery rather than have some sort of arm-bending technique. Instead of worrying about what your hand/elbow/arm is doing outside of the water, try focusing on what is happening under the water. The point of fingertip drag drill is to maintain your body position and catch (and thus your momentum).
With any drill, and swim drills in particular, you really need to know/understand the “why.” Drills are not actually mimicking good form but rather a purposeful exaggeration. Otherwise, its not a drill, just good swimming
Almost always the essence of a drill is that what you are doing with one hand or arm or body part is really just a trick to make some other part of your body do something. For example, I was taught the fingertip drag drill was really about keeping my hips from wiggling. (E.g. A high elbow/close to the body arm recovery minimizes the torque from swinging your arms out and sets you up for a sound hand entry. Dragging your fingers forces you to do this but in and of itself actually dragging you fingers is not good form). Another one is anything with head position. That’s almost always really about your hips.
I have been adding a bit more of distance and speed into the routine…
Please keep in mind how terrible I am…
this morning did
3x200 to wu (buoy only, paddles only, nothing),
3x50 drills (one arm L, one arm R, catchup)
100 kick
3x100 “all out” (2:03, 2:00, 2:02) with full rest (over 60s)
50 kick
6x50 all out (53, 54, 55, 56, 55, 56) with full rest (less than 60s)
50 kick
4x25 all out (23, 24, 24, 25) on 1 minute
50e
(1700 total… for the day)
I am slowly trying to add more long non stop swimming…
hope to do 3x250 next week and add 50 each week (similar style to today) while adding more 100s into the mix…
One thing that is somewhat puzzling is that Garmin thinks my stoke is breaststroke instead of free style…
the 200’s were detected as suck, while the 100s 50 and 25 were detected as free style… no idea why it would do that…
Now, I am looking for more drills i can use that could help me get the “feel” for the water…
Which one would you guys recommend…?
Nice work Joel. Good to see you are getting varying speeds. based on the times you posted. I have two go to drills i always use at warm-up. i like front sculling, use a buoy at first. If you are doing it correctly, you should be moving forwards . The other is with fins arm out straight with body rotation, 6 kicks then flip. the rotation helps tremendously with rotation.
My swim is progressing, but I am starting get limited by my pool size, i get to speed but because it is so short i lose momentum/rythm. Did 9x 100s at every 2:00 - very consistent at around 1:42. Did 4x200s @ every 4:00, very consistent at around 3:30.
@STP In complete agreement that drills are exaggerations to lead to adaptions. My eldest is playing softball and I observed this last week at a camp where the coach was having the kids do these strange motions without gloves or balls. A day later at a game she was correctly picking up ground balls where only 2 days before she wasn’t. She had no idea why - it was the exaggerations of movements.
So i have officially plunged on a wetsuit. Was debating for awhile - I need transition times to pad my run later. Xterra hd 70% off, so pulled the trigger. Real reason I was hemming and hawing is last year in September we had a lot portuguese-man-o-war in our waters, some have already shown up early this year, I just rather protect the body and swim a little faster with the suit. Maybe the time padding is equivalent. Lots training getting out of it in the weeks ahed
I am going to need a 2nd backpack to carry all my new swim training tools
The coach I wanted to work with isn’t able to do it. I’ll keep looking. In the meantime, I’m working on my own. I bought a Finnis belt with a ball bearing that sits in a tube over your butt and you can hear it clanking from end to end when you rotate your waist enough. That has helped me get a feel for how much rotation is enough. Another belt with 2 fins on the side that help strengthen your core as you rotate, and also makes you rotate at the proper time so your pull phase doesn’t clip the fins. Another head gear with a rod that goes from the back of your head down towards your spine, so if you lift your head up too far, you can feel it hit your back.
I was worried I was not rotating enough, but now it seems that it is plenty, which is a relief because I was feeling out of balance trying to over-rotate.
Keeping at it. Believe it or not, no matter how much I’m complaining, I think I’m actually improving.
I saw some footage of my swimming from last week at a Tri club session…how that technique gets me 1h06-1h09 for 3800 I will never know! I guess it speaks to the low bar relative to real swimmers we have.
@Joelrivera
Don’t do more drills because you think you need better technique - have only one thing to work on in a swim session, maybe two.
I have four sessions per week and each has I different focus for drills 1st is catch and pull, 2nd is stroke rate, 3rd is a club swim so whatever the coach says, 4th is kick and flip turns.
If I try to work on three or more things I end up doing everything badly
Lol, THAT’s the movie I was looking for! I was thinking of the scene with the golfer wearing a contraption looking like a bunch of coat hangers, and I was thinking it was ty webb from caddyshack
I actually use a snorkel a good bit. When I do kick sets, I use it to help focus on a long, straight, flat, and taught body position. And listening to the tower26 podcast, coach Gerry regularly has swimmers do sets with an ankle strap, pull buoy, and a snorkel.
No experience with ankle buoys, but I use an Eney buoy, which has a hollow chamber that allows you to fill (or partially fill) with water to add resistance and force you to work on core engagement. And I use an ankle band/tether when I pull that ensures my feet and lower legs are immobilized (maybe that’s also what the ankle buoy does).
For fins, depends on what you mean by “longer”, but I think shorter fins are better for building swim fitness. In general, you want short, stiff fins that provide resistance and let you build swim-specific strength.
Click bait tldr:. I bought the Swim Smooth book and took 10 seconds off my 100m in 2 sessions. This happened this week.
I had low hanging fruit - my average 100s were 2.10. I have been swimming for around 3 years. I just really paid attention to the technique tips on the book and applied them. I was looking at 1:1 coaching as I didn’t really believe I could make gains from a book but others said they had. I’m only half way through. Maybe I’ll get another 10 seconds from the second half
. The other is with fins arm out straight with body rotation, 6 kicks then flip. the rotation helps tremendously with rotation.
Have you ever watched Tin Cup?
. Ive gotten as far as a snorkel and I lost that after it’s first use.
