The “Fake” Catch

What could I mean by the fake catch? I have spoken a little bit about this in our online coahing program this week as well. Quite a few swimmers enter at an angle like that rather than keeping their hand flat there. The reason why some swimmers do it is because entering like that means that they enter and then push out. It will feel like they are catching the water. It is true they are sort of catching the water but not in the right way; not in a way that is going to make them faster. This video for the next few minutes is about the fake catch and how you can go about changing it to get it into a real catch.

If you are entering at that kind of angle and you’re entering and then pushing out you will feel like you are holding the water there and you will be holding it because your hand is slowing down before it goes into that catch. What you need to do in order to swim faster is to enter the water at that sort of angle and then extend forward and feel the water as you are extending forward rather than pushing out to the side.

Something else we have been talking about in our online coahing program this week is injuries. This is one of the ways that you can get an injury in freestyle is by entering with that sort of angle. It puts pressure on your shoulder where you can get injured whereas this sort of technique reduces your chances of injury.

There are a lot of advantages for entering correctly; one of the drills that I recommend is finger tip drag drill. It is quite a common drill you have probably done it before where you are dragging your finger tips on the surface of the water as you recover. We are working on a nice high elbow recovery and that is going to make sure that you do enter correctly; doing a fingertip drag drill it is very hard to enter like that if you are dragging your fingers through the water in your recovery.

If you want to start catching the water properly rather than just entering and pushing the water out then start doing some catch up freestyle in your warm up and that will help you improve your catch.

That is swimming news for the week I will see you next week.