Most of the speed in freestyle swimming depends on the correct movement of your hands. If you moved your hands like the best swimmers, you would swim much faster. This blog will help you improve the position of your hands and arms.
Better swimming means LESS effort and/or FASTER speed.
To swim faster, your hands must cause resistance in the water. We call this support. Up to this point, the explanation sounds logical and straightforward.
We explain this to Aaron, and he understands it; the hands must cause resistance. Aaron is intelligent and senses that the resistance must be generated on the palm of the hand in order to move forward.
The Importance of Hands
The hands are not the only part of the arms that generate support in the water.
The forearms are also very important for speed. Knowing that, Aaron goes back to his previous technique.
The explanation has to do with the type of lever we use when swimming; the further the resistance is from the fulcrum, the more difficult the movement will be.
If you want to experience this first hand, try to do a pull up without bending your elbows. Just by looking at it you know that it is easier to bend your elbows to pull up.
Aaron decides that to swim smoothly, he should bring his hands as close as possible to his body. He does not use his forearm to create support.
The Best Position of the Hands
To use the forearms correctly, they must be perpendicular to the surface of the water. And here they are completely wrong, parallel to the surface. To improve his stroke, we give Aaron paddles. But he will not use them as they should be used.
For this exercise he grabs them with his fingers so that they are covering the wrist. By swimming like this he will feel the importance of using his forearms for support.
Aaron has only been swimming for two months. He improved a lot of the most important areas in swimming. He can swim 100 meters without stopping. But his goal of 3.8km still seems impossible.
One of the biggest areas of improvement to not get tired is the correct breathing rhythm. Aaron will be able to swim the 3.8km easily with the lessons he has yet to learn, but at this point, he has lost all motivation. He does not want to continue, he says that his goal is very far and that he has no purpose.
To find his purpose we ask him what annoys him the most about the process. He says that at first progress could be seen very easily day by day. Now, he does not know if he is making progress.
So let’s check what’s going on.
We ask him to swim 25 meters and count his strokes. At the beginning of this series of videos he was doing a total of 45 strokes for every 25 meters. Now he only takes 26 strokes! With that he unlocked a new level on the Skills NT table. Now that he is happier, he discovers his new purpose.
Complete the Ironman and defend the honor of all the people with an unusual name. By bending his elbows and using his forearms for support, Aaron improved a lot. His stroke still has a lot of room for improvement, but the most urgent thing is to teach him the correct breathing rhythm.
Did you have a problem similar to Aaron’s? Tell us how this works for you!
Thank you!