In championship freestyle, a very common mistake is to lift the elbow instead of swinging and circling motion. And we want it swing in front of the body, you don’t want your elbow behind your body at any time. Let me demonstrate this on Steven here. OK, Steven, you have posture line and balance here. So straight at you legs, you directly on your side, your eyes on the bottom, you got a long neck here, and your elbow is right here. OK.
A common mistake is that people will lift there elbow and they want to stay on their sides so they take their elbow behind their elbow like this. Now that if he continues on this path right here and I push his elbow forward, I will break his shoulder. That is where shoulder injuries come from. Lot of people thinks it come from the pulling. It is not from pulling, it is from the recovery side of the body, where they jam like this, or is because they are swimming flat like this. And you recover by lifting your elbow. I’ve got high elbows, but if you flat like this, that’s painful isn’t it Steven. (Steven )”Yes”.
And if I carry through there on the side, I will break his elbow, because, I mean excuse me, shoulder. Because it is jammed right there in the shoulder area. Now , get back on your side Steven, swimming position. Now look at this, look the difference. Keep your leg straight here, leg straight, posture line and balance. Now circle this elbow forward here, just relax. Let it go, let it go. Look how far forward this elbow comes here. Right here, his palm is facing him a little bit , that’s more relaxing. Now, when you feel the stretch on this side of the body, that’s the signal for him to start the hips down and vault by his anchor point on the line.
So, relax now. The elbow is in front of the body, forward here, feel the stretch caused here, take the top side of the body down on to the balance line, and his is ready to rotate to the other side. This is important. Elbows in front of the body, is not over the body, this is jamming, and certainly not behind.
Another mistake is that people come back here with their hand, all the way back here and then lift their elbow. Look, from here back, all Steven has is a handful of water. I’d much rather him have his handful of water,where his elbow was circling forward and not where he emphasizes trying to push it back. Now he’s gotta go from straight line into a circle, which takes a lot of energy. He is a lot better if he just circular here, out and front like this, circular. See what I mean?
So circle that elbow up. You see, here is the exercise. A lot of people make this mistake. I am really gonna push through, so they push through back here, the arm get straight. Now he has to lift and bend his elbow, or you have to swing here. You could swing through with the straight arm. But if you’re gonna circle this elbow here, palm in a little bit like that, right there, keep your rigs in , flat back, right here , feel the stretch at your side. Avoid push all the way through. You don’t want to be liner, you want to be circular here, circular.
You know when your hand travels back like this, and you finish with the palm up. What you done in the last part of your stroke here is that you push you body down into the water. Now you’re looking somebody swim freestyle up and down instead of on the line going forward. This is waste of energy, this kind of thing right here. Waste energy, in fact is negative energy, it slows you down. You want to eliminate as much resistance as possible. You want to balance your energy forward as much as possible.