How to Improve the Pull phase for front crawl

If you only do one swim drill this week, do this....!! Long doggie paddle

How: One arm at a time, from the top of the stroke, bend your arm into an early vertical forearm, with your elbow bent to 90 degrees, and hand tracking from shoulder to hip joint slightly under your body With fins on, Why: It helps you to understand and see what your arms are doing in slow motion. Your hands should track in a virtual straight line in front of your shoulder joint with a high and wide elbow position, down the rail of your body, and finish with your arm straight and hand by your thigh. This front crawl drill will help you to improve your catch and the volume of water you pull through and past yourself. Learn how to do this and identify a 90 degree elbow bend in the catch How to increase your awareness for front crawl in the underwater phases! Doggie paddle is an excellent swim drill to do, and you should do this all in slow motion to achieve the greatest benefit! Your muscles will learn much better on a neuro muscular level how to move, and by doing it slower, you'll be able to maintain perfect technique Benefits: • Enhanced feel for the water • Catch phase mechanics • Achieving an early vertical forearm • Gliding for a better entry and no bubbles • A stronger more controlled push phase One arm at a time, underwater, and from the top of the stroke, bend your arm into an early vertical forearm. Do this with your elbow bent to 90 degrees, and your hand tracking from your shoulder to hip joint slightly under your body. To recover, reverse this motion by sliding your palm up and into towards your body, and extending forwards twisting your hand palm down into the glide as your recover under your trunk. Reach into the glide so that your hips rotate a bit. Repeat on the other side. You do this in 2 ways: (1) When Reaching - reach firmly and very straight to cut water around you cleanly, and (2) when Recovering - Slowly sliding your hand back to the front so as not to incur any major drag. Keep your palm facing in towards your body and close Note the head stays looking down, and simply rotates to breathe. Note also how the recovering-arm almost 'catches up' to the front-arm before you pull This drill aims to teach you an awareness of streamlining and how to cut drag out of the equation. Swim 4x50m as 25 long dog paddle, 25m normal front crawl.10 seconds rest. Front crawl technique fault series # 7 : Crossing over the midline of the body.

In this video you can see the swimmer is crossing over the mid-line of their body in the catch and pull phases. This will cause a snaking action in the body and a scissor kick motion with the legs, as these extra movements try to counter the initial cross over. As Newtons 3rd law states: "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" This is very true here. You can see the body trying to counter the motion from crossing over under the chest. So how do you go about correcting this? Try pinching your shoulder blades closer together, swim with the hands a bit wider so that they track more from the shoulder joint to the hip, down the rail of the side of your body, and then exit by your thigh. Swim Drills to help you: • Wide entry • Pull on a rope • Long doggie paddle • Single arm fist with pull buoy • Sculling window wipers Intrigued...? Would you love to learn how to correct this and more?

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Nick is a level 3 British Triathlon Coach, STA level 2 Swim Teacher, Level 1 Training Peaks coach, and Training Bible coaching Master endurance coach with 25 years’ experience in triathlon, founder and Head Coach for Speedy Swimming.