Take Your Pick

One thing I love about the sport of swimming is that it is constantly changing.  To keep up with new techniques can often take many hours of research, reading, and analyzing.  However, the easiest way to learn what new techniques work for you often come by testing them out in the pool.  Some tips and tricks are proven to be faster or more efficient, but some of them are personal preference and may improve Mason's swimming, but not Scott's swimming.

Something that has become increasingly more popular is the straight arm recovery.  It is used primarily in sprinters, while endurance swimmers are still hanging on to the traditional "bent-arm" recovery.

Bent Elbow Recovery

Generally, this is one of the first things that competitive swimmers learn. 

Benefits: keeping a high elbow during the recovery of the freestyle stroke prevents some strain on the shoulder.  It also makes for a very smooth and quiet stroke.

Drills: finger tip drag is a great drill to practice a high elbow recovery.  Every part of your arm from your elbow to your finger tips should be very relaxed while your arm is out of the water (hence the term recovery!) The only muscle that should really be working is your shoulder muscles to help rotate your arm forward.  To check if you are doing this correctly, when you breathe you should be able to see your hand pass right in front of your face.

Uses: any freestyle swim longer than 100yards, or if you have bad shoulders or struggle with shoulder issues

Straight-Arm Recovery

Benefits: keeping a straight arm during your recovery can lead to a quicker stroke.  It also means that your arm is going into the water fully extended so that you don't wast time extending your arm after it goes into the water as in the high-elbow recovery. 

Downfalls: using a straight arm instead of a bent arm can possibly lead to more shoulder troubles as it puts extra stress on the shoulder muscles.  These are mostly muscles that don't get used near as often as the muscles you use during a traditional bent-arm recovery so it is extra easy to feel the extra strain on your shoulders.  Another downfall of this technique is that it uses more energy and cannot be used effectively over longer distances.

Uses: sprints. Anything 100yards or less.

One thing to remember when using straight-arm recoveries is that you need to make sure you rotate your body quickly with each stroke.  You don't have as much time as normal to rotate your body to get a full reach because your strokes are faster and your arm is already entering fully extended.

Tips: if you think you're going to use this, you definitely need to test it out in the pool before a race.

If you watch the video below (NCAA Division 2 Men's 50 Free Championship) from about the 3:00 mark to the end you can see elite swimmers using the newly adopted straight-arm technique.  You have to look carefully, but you can definitely see them using it.  A couple of other things to note are the fact that they don't breathe, each pull takes them a long ways but at the same time their stroke rate is very high, and the fact that their starts and turns are phenomenal.  All of these things combine to make a great race and they all broke 20 seconds in this race.

Next time you get in the pool, go ahead and try these two recovery techniques out and see what you think.  Remember that the straight-arm technique should not be used for anything more than a sprint.  See if it makes you feel like you are pulling more water and increasing your stroke rate.  Let me know what you think!