Transform Your Catch In 17 Minutes

The freestyle catch is one of the most confusing parts of the stroke and that's why a lot of people tend to avoid it or they just do it completely wrong. In this video I'm going to share with you exactly how to go through your catch and freestyle because it's where most of your propulsion is going to come from and if you don't do it right not only will it mean that your swimming probably won't progress much over the next 12 to 18 months but it also means that you're leaving a lot of And I have seen so many videos on this topic, I've read so many books on this topic and I've coached almost 10,000 people in our freestyle clinics here in Australia and so I've seen exactly how it's done well and how it's not done well and mistakes that a lot of people make. So let's jump into the freestyle catch, how it ties into your stroke and how to make sure that you do it well so that you are swimming with grace and speed and efficiency the next time you go to the pool. And if all of this sounds like a lot of information, we've condensed it all down to our five-day catch challenge which more than 15,000 people have done so I'll link to that in the description. Now when we think about the catch in freestyle, it's just one part of the stroke. So if we look at the different phases of the stroke, we have the catch which is from here down to here on our arms at about 45 degrees, then from here all the way back towards the hip I would call the pull or the press phase of the stroke and the exit as the hand is coming out past the hip. And then we've got the over water recovery. So there's different parts of the stroke and the propulsive phases of the stroke are the catch, the pull and press and the exit and the non-propulsive is the recovery. Now our aim with the catch is to ideally anchor our arm in the water and have our body move past that point. So we're not trying to pull our arms through the water necessarily, we're trying to anchor them so they stay in almost the same spot while it's our body moving past that point. And that's not going to exactly happen like that, but that's what we're trying to work towards. It's almost like if you imagine a ladder on the bottom of the pool and that ladder has rungs on it and every time you set yourself up and you perform the catch, you're anchoring on that rung of the ladder and you're moving onto the next arm and you're anchoring on the next rung forwards. So that's what we're trying to achieve with a good freestyle catch. So let's start with the beginning of the catch. This is where we are rotated onto our side to 30 or 40 degrees. Our arm is extended forwards and we're long from our fingers all the way through to our toes. And this is where we're going to be longest in the stroke and this is where we're going to be the furthest on the side. So typically our hips and shoulders will be at about 30 or 40 degrees if we're looking front on and measuring that with the surface of the water. The next step is we need to make sure we get our fingers slightly below our wrist, wrist slightly below our elbow as we're going to begin the catch. Because if we have the opposite where the fingers are above the wrist, wrist is above the elbow, not only does that create a lot of drag out in front, but we can't actually press back from that position. And where our propulsion is going to come from is our hand and forearm pressing backwards on the water. That can't be achieved if the elbow is dropped. So we need to start in that position and we typically find that the fingers are about the same depth as your underarm in that position. Now to get to that position we also need to make sure that our scapula has slid up along our rib cage and it's almost like we're somewhat shrugging the shoulders. Not shrugging them up here, but shrugging them up this way where the shoulder can actually move up next to our cheek here. So a good catch if you look at any footage of a really good swimmer, you'll find that their shoulder is next to the side of their face, next to their cheek. So it's not covering their ear and it's not down low, it's just slid up alongside their cheek and that allows you to achieve that position. And that's a crucial position to get into because it's that position that will connect up the arm with the rest of the body. Because the mistake I often see made there is people either don't extend forwards and they just they stop here or they let their shoulder drop down and then it really disconnects that scapula from the body and then we don't really generate much power from it. The other important thing here is that the catch and particularly this extension phase through here as we're going to start the catch, this is the slowest part of the arm movement. So when we're swimming freestyle, we're slowest out in front, we're quickest out through the back. So think of it as slow to fast, but we're not trying to stop. We never want to pause and lose all of our speed there. It's going to nicely flow into the next part of the stroke but we are traveling the slowest in that part of the stroke. Now as we go through the catch itself, there's a few things that we need to do here. The first thing is to initiate the catch, our hand's actually going to move slightly away from the center and along with that our elbow, and this is the important part, the elbow is going to slide out to the side as well because that's going to allow us to open up through our underarm and allow us to get what we call a high elbow catch position. Now high elbow doesn't refer to the depth in the water, that's going to depend on the swimmer, but high elbow refers to the position where we really want the elbow to be higher than the hand in the water, but the way I would picture a high elbow catch is if we draw a line from your shoulder to your fingers, if your elbow is higher than that line, if you're looking from the side, that would be a high elbow catch and that's going to give you more surface area of your hand and forearm pressing backwards on the water and that's the thing that's going to help move you forwards. So that is what a high elbow catch would typically mean. Now as your hand is coming slightly away from the center and the elbow is going out to the side, that is going to open up through your underarm and you can see at this position we're still able to connect our scapula, our shoulder blade, to the body when we do this. Now if we don't do that, let's say our elbow stays very narrow, so we're here, that sets us up in what we call a dropped elbow catch where most of the surface area is going to be pressing down and that doesn't move us forwards very much at all. So that's why it's important to get that elbow out to the side, fingers point away, and then we're setting up with the catch. And this is often where it can get confused when people are trying to learn it. They either will think about almost bending the elbow a lot instead of just letting that elbow slide out to the side. And another mistake that people will often make here is they sometimes will think about pulling straight back. But in order to set up this catch, the hand will move downwards in the water, the elbow will move down a little bit, but it's not going to move down too much at all. So we're not trying to pull straight backwards, it's almost like we're trying to roll over this imaginary ball out in front and that's going to set up that position. Now to make sure that we're getting as much propulsion from this movement as possible, we need to make sure the palm of your hand is facing backwards. If the palm is turned out to the side or turned inwards, then the direction of that force isn't going to be backwards. So it's not going to be as effective. And we also need to make sure that our hand and forearm is together. If we bend the wrist too much here, we've effectively halved our paddle. So we need to slightly elevate the wrist, just pop it up slightly so that's we never want to drop the wrist or bend it too much in that direction. And through this movement, we're not putting a lot of force on the water. Firstly, because if we go for broke straight away, we're only pressing down, which is not that effective. And secondly, in this position overhead, we're not that strong, especially compared to under here, which is more the power phase. So it might feel like a 3 or a 4 out of 10 in terms of the effort. We're not going for zero, but we're certainly going to go for a 7, 8 or 9 in the catch phase. We will build up that power and intensity as we go through the rest of the stroke. And that's quite often where a lot of mistakes will get made. When someone is trying to overpower the catch, not only does it put your shoulder in an awkward position that's very uncomfortable, that is where a lot of injuries can come from. Because applying a lot of force through this movement here really tends to load up the front of the shoulder. And quite often, a common mistake we'll see here is people will initiate the catch with their elbow, where they're pulling back straight away with the elbow. Instead of letting the hand travel down and the fingers point down while the elbow bends and folds, they're pulling back with the elbow straight away. So we need to delay that step just a little bit so that we can set ourselves up in that high elbow. Now, if you're looking at videos of your let's say you've sent in videos to our coaching membership or you're analysing your own underwater footage, we find that a good catch for middle to long distance swimmers will have this angle of 100 to 120 degrees at the elbow when they're in that high elbow catch. So if you are looking at footage of yourself swimming and your angle is 160-170 degrees at the elbow from the front, then you're probably going a bit too deep and straight or you might also be dropping your elbow through the catch. Now the other part of that too is your rotation. So as we are reaching out in front and we start our catch, that is when we're going to be on our side 30 or 40 degrees. Then as we're going through the catch here, we're starting to rotate back to the other side. So once we finish the catch, that is when we are almost back to flat as we're switching onto the other side. So we're not just going to be doing this move in isolation, we're going to be tying that in with the rotation of the body. So as we're going through this catch, we're starting to rotate back onto the other side. The next phase of the stroke is the pull or the press phase and this is really the power phase of the stroke. This is where you'll be putting in the most effort, but again we're not going for a 10 out of 10, you might go for a 6 or a 7 out of 10. So in the pull and the press phase of the stroke, this is once we've finished our catch and then we're going all the way back to the hip. Now as we go through this part of the stroke, we need to have a few things happening. Hand and forearm needs to be facing backwards and we also need to make sure that we're not pulling back too early with that elbow. We need to make sure this is all going together and if we look from the front, a position or a term that we came up with for where we want the arms to be is the power diamond. So as the hands are coming underneath the shoulders, your arm will look like half a diamond as the hand's about to pass under that shoulder. You see that with the very best swimmers in the world, they always get to that power diamond position and what that means is that through their lats and their back and shoulder, they're very strong through there and it's well connected with the rest of the stroke. Now someone who isn't really getting that position will typically have the arm too straight, so we need to make sure that elbow's still out to the side, the elbow's pointing to the side there and the fingers are pointing mostly downwards and it's almost like if you were to get yourself up onto a ledge, then that is where you'd have your arms. It's a very similar position because that's going to be the strongest part of the stroke or strongest position to be in. Now as you go through this part of the stroke, this is when you're pretty much starting to get on to the other side. So we're not trying to stay flat through this movement, our body will be rotating along with it. Now the other reason why this is the power phase of the stroke is this is when we're starting to travel past our hand. So we've done the hard work of setting up the catch and then our body has almost moved past our hand and our arm, so we're getting past it there and that is when we can obviously be a lot stronger through the stroke and we're able to accelerate a little bit more through that part of the stroke as well and that's why it can feel like we're going from slow to fast because it's easier to move through that part of the stroke because we've gotten our body past that point. Now at this point you can bring your hand close to your center line and we do want it to start to move somewhere in towards the center. Now it shouldn't cross the center, it doesn't need to brush the center, but it should start to move inwards through here. So the first part we are in line with the shoulder and then we come away from the center slightly and then we're going to come in closer towards the body through that back part of the stroke. Now quite often I'll see with people they go through the catch and then they continue to go out wide but they lose that connection with their arms, with the body, if they do that. So that is why from this point we actually need to start to come in closer towards the center and almost close this window or this gap through here as we're starting to finish the stroke. Now as we go through the exit, the exit is when the hand comes just past the hip. Normally we're exiting just near our upper thigh and a lot of people will ask do I have my thumb brush my hip as I do it. It's not a bad way to teach or train that movement but the thumb doesn't have to touch the thigh necessarily. But in the exit we want to make sure we finish the stroke and release the where we've still got a little bit of bend remaining in the elbow because if you push back as far as you can and your elbow gets locked out that is when it's hard to get the arm over the top and we get stuck. So we need to keep that a little bit of bend in the elbow as we finish it and that way we can release the water and come over very easily and comfortably. So we're pushing back, we're not trying to force as much water out the back as we can, we're not trying to muscle that part of the stroke but we will be accelerating through the back end a little bit there and that helps us transition nicely into the over water recovery. And through this movement we're still keeping the hand and the forearm pressing back all the way through and you will find that naturally the hand just turns into the body the last little bit of that to help it come out of the water. That's fine but we don't want the hand to turn into the body too early which I see with a lot of swimmers that I'm coaching at clinics and camps is they turn in too early but keep that palm facing back because that will give you more surface area which will give you more propulsion. And once you finish the stroke at the back the recovery over over the top of the water we want to make sure that we're not trying to come too close to the body. So if you think of what's a sustainable and a comfortable way to bring our arm over the top well if we use our rotation to help us come over the top of the water then we should get our hand out to the side elbow pointing up to the sky and we just bring the arm over in quite a comfortable way where we're nice and open through our underarm as we come through. Now a lot of people will think they need to have this high elbow recovery and they need to do this but if you look at where that shoulder is and where the arm is that's not sustainable or comfortable. So we release out the back bring the arm through where it feels like the elbow is causing the rest of the arm to come over the top and then we can place it in front and then we would start the process all over again. Now if we think of the path that the hand should take through the catch and the pull if you look at it in this video here with the hand we'll start in line with the shoulder when we extend it out in front it will come away from the center slightly and it will come in towards the center and then just as you're coming out past the hip it's going to come slightly away from the center again. So it looks a bit like a skinny s shape pull through. Now you will hear a lot of swimmers and a lot of coaches talking about trying to pull through almost completely straight naturally we're going to have some curve you are never going to be completely straight there because we're basically our hand and our arms trying to find this still water for us to be able to press back on as we move past it. So we're always going have some left to right movement but it's not like they used to teach 40 or 50 years ago with the big s shape pull. We want to make sure that we're doing a little bit of it but only just enough to help us find that still water to keep the pressure on the hand. Now there's a number of ways to learn how to do this the way that we do it in clinics and camps and in our online coaching I do like to use quite a few drills to help people get used to this movement and inside of our online coach membership we've got all of our freestyle drills that you can do for the catch and this can help you learn how to do that movement without thinking too much about it. But if you want to keep this nice and simple get our five-day catch challenge below which 15 000 swimmers have gone through and that's a great way to learn this step by step without overthinking it. If you enjoyed this video check out our 33-minute breakdown of freestyle technique in this video above and let me know in the comments which part of the stroke you think is going to help make you faster than yesterday.