Why Do Sprinters Use A Straighter Arm Pull?

Noa Markou just asked us a great question on Instagram:

I read your article (www.feelforthewater.com/2012/08/bent-it-like-becky.html) and would greatly value your opinion on the following. It states that an elbow bend of around 110° offers the most propulsion. If that is the case, why do sprinters who need maximum propulsion catch with straight arms? Thank you for any feedback...

That's a great question thanks Noa! Let's unpack:

Firstly, you are right to say that we recommend a bend at the elbow of between 100 and 120° to give you the most effective propulsion. Here's double Olympic Gold Medallist Rebecca Adlington demonstrating this position, her stroke being right in the sweet-spot with an elbow bend of 110°:

Becky is a distance swimmer specialising in longer distance events such as 800m.

As you point out though, often sprinters focusing on short races such as 50 and 100m pull through with a slightly straighter arm than that (although not completely straight as your question suggests). Here's Mr Smooth himself Jono Van Hazel showing that slightly deeper "sprinter" pull through:

Why does he do that and what's right for your own swimming?

One reason sprinters such as Jono pull through with a straighter arm is so that by doing so they can produce high levels of propulsion whilst moving extremely quickly through the water at 50 seconds per 100m pace or quicker. The straighter arm is like using a bigger gear on the bike, for a given movement at the shoulder the forearm and hand moves more quickly to keep up with the high speed of the water moving past the swimmer.

Although this straighter pull technique can produce more propulsion that doesn't make it better. Inevitably it involves pressing down more on the water at the front of the stroke (see below) which wastes a lot of effort. It also dramatically increases the load on the shoulders meaning you have to be extremely strong in the shoulder muscle groups - so much so that even elite athletes struggle to sustain a deep powerful pull through for more than 100m of swimming.

But there's another related benefit of a deep pull to sprinters we should mention. To get quickly into this position involves moving the hand quickly downwards through the water from the front of the stroke:

That press downwards creates lift, bringing the front of the swimmer higher in the water. Normally we say that's a bad thing because lifting you up at the front sinks you at the rear, creating lots of drag. But over short distances sprinters are able to combine this with an incredibly powerful leg kick which overcomes that downward pressure on the legs to the extent that the rear also lifts high, bringing the whole body higher in the water.

That might sound awesome but don't deliberately introduce this to your own swimming unless you are a sprinter yourself. If you are typical adult swimmer - or high level distance swimmer - you simply won't be able to kick powerfully enough for long enough to employ this technique. And you'll use an incredibly large amount of energy trying to do so.

So why do Swim Smooth recommend a slightly shallower pull through at 100 to 120° of elbow bend? The first reason is that biomechanically it takes the load off your shoulders so that you engage your chest, lats and other back muscles. These are some of the largest muscle groups in the body such that they can sustain the effort over a longer period of time.

Secondly, bending the elbow earlier in the stroke means a much smaller press downwards on the water, meaning less lift at the front and so less sinking of the legs at the rear. The result - much lower drag.

Bear in mind that this is still a very powerful way to pull through the water, the best distance swimmers can sustain 55 to 60 seconds per 100m pace over long distances using this technique and moderate kick power. That's the sort of speed most of us can only dream of!

So to answer Noa's question in a nutshell: although a deeper pull can give more propulsion over 50 to 100m, by using a little more elbow bend you will be able to produce plenty of propulsion over long distances.

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Should You Rotate *Less* When You Breathe?

One of our coaching maxims at Swim Smooth is if something's going to go wrong in your stroke it will go wrong when you breathe.

Here's a common example of that (so common in fact it's very likely to be present in your own stroke to a greater or lesser extent):

The correct amount of rotation in the freestyle stroke is 45-60 degrees through the shoulders and hips:

Here's Eben doing just that:

Unless you have been focusing developing a lot of rotation in your stroke*, it’s unlikely you’ll be rotating much more than 45 degrees, at least on a normal stroke.

Now see what happens to Eben's rotation as he goes to breathe:

Immediately his rotation has increased to around 66 degrees - beyond our recommended maximum of 60 degrees and enough for him to start to lose balance in the water. This over-rotation is caused by his strong desire to stretch to inhale a clear breath of air.

One problem with this over-rotation is that it causes you to unconsciously part your legs to stop yourself flipping onto your back, creating a large scissor kick at the rear of the stroke:

Another is that since it takes slightly longer to rotate further into this position it also adds a delay into your stroke timing, harming your rhythm. You probably won't appreciate this loss of timing but you will feel the improvement once you reduce your breathing rotation.

Try Rotating Less When Breathing

So the next time you swim run a small experiment and focus on rotating slightly less than normal when you go to breathe. Become aware of what your shoulders and hips are doing on breathing and non-breathing strokes, and try and keep the amount of roll about the same.

*Through the 1980s and 90s swim coaches put a lot of emphasis on increasing the rotation in the stroke as much as possible, on every single stroke. If you swam through this era (or have read any swimming books heralding back to that time) then you may be over-rotating on every stroke, not just breathing strokes. As you can see above that's clearly a bad thing for your swimming - in modern swim coaching we teach you to rotate enough (45-60 degrees) but no further!

Think "Sneaky" Breathing

You may notice that rotating less far on a breathing stroke means you have less time to inhale. In fact you might only have time for a "sneaky" breath between strokes. Embrace this - it's how good breathing technique should feel: a long smooth exhalation into the water and then a sneaky inhalation to the side.

Unilateral Breathers

If you only ever breathe to one side when you swim ("unilateral" breathing) then over-rotation is extremely likely to have developed on your breathing side. If you feel the benefits from reducing your rotation when breathing then you know you're onto something good - so make introducing bilateral breathing a priority to help balance out your stroke.

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Meet The World's First All Female Channel Medley Relay Team

Last week, Swim Smooth Manchester coach Lucy Lloyd-Roach and her team broke the world record as the first ever all female English Channel Medley Relay Team. Lucy, Mel, Claire and Sarah started out from Dover at 11pm on 31st August and completed their channel swim in 12 hours and 17 minutes - an incredible effort. Each member of the team completed 60 mins of either, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly or freestyle, had 3 hours of "rest" on the boat and then got back in the water to do it all again. 

When we heard about this fantastic achievement, we couldn't wait to catch up with Lucy. In episode 25 of the Swim Smooth podcast, we hear from this awesome foursome about their training, channel crossing and recovery from such an incredible challenge:

Claire, Mel, Lucy and Sarah - The World's First All-Female Medley Channel Relay Team

Listen on Apple podcasts here: podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/swim-smooth/id1441577778

Or other platforms here: anchor.fm/swimsmooth

We hope you enjoy listening to their journey as much as we did!

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Do You Need To Train To Train?

Here's a good way to think about your training, particularly if you're getting back into your swimming (or any other sort of exercise) after a lockdown lay-off:

We all want to get to a fitness level we've not hit before, to set some big fat PBs. To get to that level you're going to have to do some hard training - executing some great sets and sessions consistently over a solid training block (of perhaps 8-10 weeks).

The thing is, you're not fit enough to execute that training right now and even if you could somehow do each session you'd never recover well enough to absorb the work and for your body to make those adaptations you are looking for. You'd be in pure survival mode.

So, you should be thinking: What training do I need to do to get myself to the level of fitness I need to execute that training block successfully?

Call it "training-to-train".

Keep focused on what you can do right now

Of course if you are coming back from a long break from training (say a pandemic lockdown) then right now you might not even be able to swim a training set without breaking down. So you might need three of even four levels of preparation:

I need 4-6 weeks training to swim proper sets again. Then 8-10 weeks of full sessions to get to a decent base level. Then 8-10 weeks training to build to PB fitness. 

That is "training-to-train-to-train".

This way of thinking means you are really clear on what you are trying to achieve at any moment in time. It gives you both a short term goal (keeping you "in the now") and a long term objective (which is very motivating).

In the good old days coaches used to lay out a periodised plan with a base phase (lots of low intensity work), then build phase (increasing intensity), then event specific work (focused on race pace).

Training-to-train is similar but we're not talking about dramatically changing the types of sessions along the way as you would in a base -> build -> race progression. You can perform very similar sessions for each phase but gradually the sessions get longer and the paces increase slightly with your fitness level. In a way you're always in a "build" phase with the ideal mix of training and technique work to improve as quickly as possible.

See our extensive training plans in the Swim Smooth Guru for the perfect mix of sessions and tools to track your fitness accurately: www.swimsmooth.guru

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