I Helped A Pro Triathlete Find More Speed... It's Unbelievable

Justin Reel is a pro triathlete who sent his video in to take a look and see what could he do to possibly get faster. Now Justin's already a very good swimmer. He's got the speed, great body position. He looks really good when he's swimming here. So quite often with pro triathletes when I'm working with them, a lot of times it's some one percent changes or there's one key thing that we want to focus on. And looking here at Justin's stroke, body position's great. He does look a fair way forwards. Now I wouldn't definitely say, all right, you should look further down. It is a little bit above the typical range that we'd like to see. So I like to think zero to 45 degrees with where the eyes are looking. And he might find that with a slightly longer neck, slight tuck of the chin, looking a bit further down, he might feel like he has better control and strength through the core. But he does sit nicely in the water. So the hips and the legs are high. And if you've got a wetsuit on, you kind of can get away with looking a bit further forwards. So I wouldn't say for sure change that, but it's worth experimenting with and seeing how that feels. There's a number of pro triathletes I've worked with who have that tendency just to look ahead. And I think sometimes it can come from training in squads or groups where they're always kind of looking to make sure they're not going to run into someone, or it comes from open water swimming. So something to experiment with. The main thing that I'm looking at, though, would be the catch. To me, that's where the biggest opportunity is here. In Justin's stroke. And you can see with both arms that as he goes through the catch down here, the arm stays relatively straight. He doesn't really get the elbow to bend and get out to the side until about here. Now, he does get quite vertical with the arm, and he has a good sized paddle to work with from this point onwards, which is really nice. And on this left hand side, you'll see here, like he's got a good sized paddle to work with as well. So I think he still obviously gets good propulsion from it. But if he's able to do that a little bit earlier in the stroke, then that to me would be where he'll find probably the biggest improvement in his speed. And so if you're looking at this, a little bit of a drop of the elbow, that angle of the arm isn't ideal because it's pushing a bit more downwards than backwards at that point. And it's not until he gets back to here that it starts to go a bit more vertical. So how could he improve on that position? Well, the thing that stands out to me here, and this is actually quite a good stroke, this one, he gets into it earlier. But the thing that stands out to me is with the shoulder, that shoulder tends to stay forwards a little bit long through the stroke where he's not allowing himself to get this elbow to bend out to the side early enough, possibly partly because that shoulder just sort of stays out there. Now, obviously, when you're reaching forwards and extending, we need to rotate through the hips and shoulders. We've got to allow this shoulder, particularly the scapula or shoulder blade to extend forwards up here. And then as we start to initiate the catch, we need to let that elbow come out to the side there. Now you'll see with my shoulder, I'm not like up here still because that's a bit awkward. I've allowed that shoulder to just sort of come in near the cheek to get that position. So one way to think of, right, how can I set up this catch easily? I like to think of shoulder should be near the cheek through here once you're going through the catch. Now, as soon as this goes lower than that, we tend to drop the elbow. So shoulder near the cheek. Now that doesn't mean touching like this. Certainly does not mean covering the ear, which I've seen mentioned before. I don't love that position. Shoulder near the cheek, not touching, but just next to it. And so the way you can practice a drill like that can be a single arm scoop drill. And with single arm scoop, kicking on the side, one arm by the side, we're just doing this little scooping motion. But you keep that shoulder near the cheek and that can help you get used to that sort of position. But I think more than anything, you'll notice here how that shoulder has dropped down quite low, particularly on the breathing side. And you can just see how that's the less effective stroke is whenever he breathes. And so by keeping that shoulder up a little bit higher near where the cheek would be at that point, that is one way to get into that catch a little bit earlier and a little bit better. And same with this here. You'll see how this shoulder's sort of moved away already. So keeping that shoulder just up there. Now, that's a little bit more of an advanced thing to work on for most people. If you're a beginner, there's probably other stuff you need to work on. But in terms of someone who's a pro triathlete already swimming really well, then it's these nuances and the one percenters that can really make a difference. And I've seen that with a lot of pro triathletes. Little changes like that can really start to add up.