The Laziest Way to Have a High Elbow Catch

If you've been told to keep a high elbow position but you still don't know if you're doing it right or how it's supposed to feel like and you're not getting any faster this is exactly what you need to do. Most swimmers will face one of these three things and that's why you feel like you're pulling the water but you're not moving as much. I'm Dasha a former swimmer and a coach with over 15 years of professional swimming experience and in today's video I'll teach you how to swim with a high Now what is a high elbow catch? As a cue for you a high elbow catch is when your hand and your elbow both face back. You want to make sure that your elbow is at all costs and at all times is above your hand and that's how you know you're pulling with a high elbow catch. Many swimmers yeah depending on what you're doing if it's a sprint distance or a long distance event or open water you're going to have different angle of high elbow catch. Some swimmers are going to have a more wide other swimmers are going to have a more narrow high elbow catch and that's exactly why you can't really describe what's the right and what's the wrong. Some coaches say it's close to your body others say you have to pull a little further from your body. The ideal position for you once again when your hand and your elbow face back and you're able to push off of that and pull all the way back. Now the reason you want to have a high elbow catch is super simple is because the stronger pull you have the more propulsion you have. If you want to improve your speed in the water especially if you swim longer distances or any distances in general just working with your arms and legs as fast as you can is not enough because it's just not sustainable you're going to get out of breath really quickly and what you really want to do you want to improve your average pace yeah average time and the way you can do that is by taking less strokes and moving more and pulling more water and you can do that by improving your high elbow catch by improving your pull and in general your underwater entire stroke. If you want to improve and transform your stroke now go check 30 different swim hacks that I created down in the description below. Now there are multiple reasons to which you probably don't have a high elbow catch. The first and the most common reason is you're just dropping your elbow. This is one of the most common mistakes in swimming so instead of pointing your fingertips down at the bottom and forming that high elbow catch early on you're bringing that elbow close to your body and that means that you're now wasting all that water in front of you and you're not grabbing that water to pull all the way back and instead you're just dropping your elbow which gives you minimal to no propulsion at all so that's exactly why you want to have a high elbow catch. Another reason and these two are actually connected you whether pull with a straight arm or you enter too deep and that forces you to pull with a straight arm. Now pulling with a straight arm is not efficient because a it's slower than with a bent elbow and b you're putting lots of stress and load on your shoulder you can strain your shoulder it's also not sustainable so what you want to do you want to make sure that as you enter you enter really high to the surface of the water and straight away you're pointing those fingertips down and forming that high elbow position early on but making sure that you're doing this together with your entire arm not just the wrist yeah because this isn't a high elbow catch what you really want to do you want to point the fingertips and together with this goes the elbow and that's how you know that both the hand and the elbow face back and you're able to pull all the way back and the last reason you might not have a high elbow catch is because of the over rotation so maybe you just go with your face entirely out of the water to inhale if you over rotate try to do to go all the way 90 degrees to the side and now try on the dry land even to have a high elbow catch it's almost impossible you're going to compromise that high elbow catch yeah you're not going to be able to even form that when you're out of the water and you can also put a strain on your shoulder so again make sure that you rotate but not more than 35 to 45 degrees because more than that you're just going to compromise your high elbow catch you're not going to be able to set yourself up for that catch in order to have a high elbow catch what you really want to do to think about as a cue you want to enter in line with your shoulder and as you enter you want to make sure that the shoulder and the face are close to each other that you have very minimal space in between you're going to point your fingertips down both hand and elbow facing back and from there you want to make sure that you're not dropping your elbow and you're pulling all the way back and now if you really struggle with this high elbow catch you don't really know why you don't have a high elbow catch and what really stopping you go send me your video for a stroke analysis you can find the link down in the description below okay now let's talk about rotation when you try to do a high elbow catch ideally you want to have like from 25 to 35 degree rotation 45 is fine but more than that is just not going to work because you're going to compromise that high elbow catch you're going to pull with a straight arm and it's not an ideal situation so what you really want to do you want to be relatively flat let's say 45 degrees is halfway through and 90 degree rotation is all the way to the side so you want to have around 35 degree rotation the reason being is because you can put a lot of stress on your shoulder or you're not you're just not gonna be able to set yourself up for that high elbow catch and as a cue for you every time you're swimming yeah you want to make sure that you enter the water point your fingertips down and then from there in the mid pool position you will be able to form as we call it a power triangle so a power triangle means that a triangle shape formed from your hand your elbow and your shoulder yeah so as a cue for you you want to make sure that if you have the triangle that means that you were able to set yourself for high elbow catch pull with the high elbow and go all the way back now to have a high elbow catch i have my three top favorite drills really effective and number one is the dog paddle drill the dog paddle drill means that you're going to pull with your arms just like you normally do but keeping your entire stroke fully underwater so you're going to move both arms in that cycle instead of taking them for the recovery you're going to keep your entire stroke underwater i recommend putting the fins and the snorkel if you don't have snorkel that's fine but keep the fins on because this way you're going to stay really high on the top of the water and you don't need to be thinking about anything else other than that high elbow catch that we are talking about so as you think about you can even look at your stroke underwater make sure that you point your fingertips down and from there you're really pushing off of that water making sure that you form that early vertical forearm early on the other drill that i have on the list is a double pull drill so the same concept as in the dog paddle drill but here you're going to pull with both of your arms so instead of going in a cycle like in freestyle you're going to bring both of your arms up front and then from there you're going to try to form that high elbow position pointing fingertips down at the bottom with both arms like you do in the butterfly yeah and from there you're going to pull all the way back forming that power triangle making sure you finish all the way by your side and then after you finish the stroke you're going to bring both of your arms up front and continue and this stroke over and over again so instead of doing the dolphin kick like you do in butterfly yeah now you're gonna do freestyle kick so in this double pull drill i really recommend you have fins and snorkel on the reason being is you don't want to be thinking about anything else other than that high elbow catch and pull so make sure that you have that snorkel on so you don't have to breathe up front make sure you have fins on so you stay really high and balanced on the top of the water and only focus on that underwater high elbow catch and pull and the other drill is the fist drill in paddles you can do this drill without paddles but i recommend doing this in paddles the reason being is when you hold paddles like this and big paddles it's really difficult to drop elbow yeah it's just uncomfortable yeah so make sure that you have both big paddles on and you swim with the fist so close your hand in hands in fists and just swim your regular freestyle really nice drill because it forces you to have the high elbow catch and early vertical forearm early on yep really nice really can practice without uh the fins or with the fins for more balance that's absolutely up to you and again if you're new to swimming you really don't know if you have a high elbow catch or you want to learn the fundamentals go check my six weeks beginner swim program i guarantee you're going to learn from zero to 500 meters in less than two months go check down in the description below go watch this video that youtube is going to recommend go swim practice the drills have the high elbow catch and i'll see you in the next one