Howdy Swim fans! Here's another episode of whiteboard Wednesday and on today's episode
understanding TV chat it's an acronym for early vertical forearm now this is a really important
concept not only because it's applicable to all for competitive strokes butterfly backstroke
breaststroke and freestyle but because it can make you faster more efficient and prevent injury it
takes the stress off of your shoulders puts it on your lats and different muscles in your body
so that way you're not as susceptible to injury without further ado let's talk about it now as you
can see in my illustration we have the swimming arm now this is the arm that is extended ready for
the pull phase of the stroke now early vertical forum is exactly that we're talking about the
forearm segment of your arm and trying to get that as vertical as possible as early in the stroke as
you can and if you think about the different steps of the pull and the catch it starts with the hand
entry so you're starting with your fingertips your middle finger is hitting the water first
at about 45 degrees and then once your fingertips slide into the water the next step is extension
so once your fingertips are in the water you're going to extend on a straight line right in front
of your shoulder the entry was about 18 inches in front of your shoulder depending on your height
and you have the extension now the next part is really important and this is the part that most
swimmers do not do naturally it's getting your fingertips to press towards the bottom of the
pool ideally you will get your arm to be facing 90 degrees specifically your forearm and when your
forearm beat gets to 90 degrees you have a high elbow catch and the idea of the early vertical
forearm is so that you can get your forearm in close as close to a 90 degree angle as possible
so that way you have more surface area to pull the water behind you oftentimes swimmers don't
achieve this vertical component of the stroke until a really maybe 50% way through the pull
and so you're not actually pulling any water if you simply just drop your arm down so it's
really important to understand the steps of entry extension fingertips press towards the bottom
of the pool and that will initiate a high elbow catch the analogy that's always used by coaches
is if you can imagine yourself reaching over a log reaching over a barrel the concept of getting your
elbow to pop up and that will take stress off of your shoulder now if you were to enter the
water right in front of your shoulder and then pull straight down how a lot of swimmers swim
you're essentially missing out on that part of the catch where you'll be able to grab the water now
to be able to achieve this early vertical forearm your catch is actually going to be a little bit
outside of your shoulder so the extension happens right in front of your shoulder and then as your
fingers hips start to press and you start to rotate to your other side and you're grabbing
the water what will happen is you will get to that 90 degrees right here but it will come
just outside your body line now this isn't pulling in an S pattern or anything you're still pulling
directly behind you on the same line as your shoulder but because your body is rotating and
your elbow is up high it actually ends up being a little bit more outside of your body but you still
want to think about pulling in the same line as your shoulder and once you have that high elbow
catch you have successfully initiated the early vertical forum now this is something that's not
that natural because instinctively your body will just pull down and oftentimes if you see a really
really good swimmer if you watch them underneath the water you'll clearly see how their fingertips
reach out in front they sink down and then you have this early vertical form this catch where
it's at almost 90 degrees and you have a much bigger surface area to catch the water then just
with your hands you might think that you swim with your hands but in fact if you were to actually
just trace out how much surface area you have with your hand relative to the rest of your arm your
arm is actually much much larger so if you get a compounding multiplied effect when you can engage
more than just your fingertips but your whole hand your forearm and actually the rest of your entire
arm now how do we do this how do we get how do we train to be able to do this a few things first
is to practice this concept on land before you even get in the water if you think about doing a
pull-up or any of these other different exercises right you're engaging different parts of your lat
and the different parts of your back are what's needed to engage if you're going to pull in the
proper high elbow freestyle or any other stroke so think about trying to do this out of the water
just think about having your arms straight and then lifting your elbow up you're gonna have to
actually rotate your elbow to the outside or else you're not going to be able to physically pop your
elbow up so practice this on land and it helps if you have something like a barrel or a log to
literally just rest your arm over and then imagine pulling yourself forward using your lap muscles as
opposed to just pulling straight down you want to really figure out how in your body you can engage
and oftentimes if you have something to grab or just rest your fingertips on you can actually
feel what that high elbow is like and you want to be able practice it with both arms secondly
you want to do a couple of different drills a few different drills will really help you out
the first one I recommend is the catch-up drill there's a few different variations so the catch-up
drill is where you are literally pausing when your arms are in front you take your one stroke you
focus on getting the high elbow catch you pull and you're kicking and then you take your next stroke
only after the initial stroke catches where it was in the first place so you take your stroke pull
with the other hand place it pop your elbow and then really focus on getting that early vertical
forearm there's a few different variations of this you can do it where your hands are literally your
thumbs are touching each other between strokes you can do it where your hands are a little bit
wider and you can do it where you're actually carrying a PVC pipe or a stick or something so
you can really exaggerate how long you pause so that you can work on this high elbow catch another
drill that I actually prefer the most is called fist drill this is where you're actually swimming
with a fist rather than having your hands open so what you're doing is you're actually reducing
the amount of surface area that you have to pull the water with your hand as a result you have to
focus more on your forearm and really catching the water with all the parts of your arms that
are not your hand and there's a few variations of this as well which we'll talk about in the drill
series another piece of this training is using equipment there's no better way to stimulate
your neuromuscular system than using a different kind of equipment so that way it gets your body
out of its own natural skin with a new variable a few different pieces of equipment I recommend
there are fingertip paddles so these are paddles that literally only cover your fingertips and what
these really do is it helps you with step number three which is the fingertip press so that when
you're swimming you get an additional amount of resistance on the part of your hand the fingertips
that matter the most to initiate the high elbow catch the next best kind of paddles for this are
what are called freestyle paddles and you can go online you can check these out will probably leave
a link in the description but freestyle paddles are normally in the shape of a triangle to really
focus on the entry and extension piece and then because they're in the shape of a triangle you
have more resistance on the outside of your hand so that way what it really encourages you to pop
your elbow up and to initiate this early vertical concept much more so than having like a really big
paddle there are really big paddles and they can do similar concept but if you're just starting
out these are the two that I recommend it's also a great idea if you want to throw on a snorkel
that way you don't have to worry about breathing you can keep your eyes focused down and you can
actually look and cheat lift your head up and make sure that you're getting a high elbow catch I also
recommend using a pull buoy so that way you can cut off your legs and really isolate what you're
working on with the pull now here's a really quick drill progression that will make you feel like a
million bucks by the time you get to the end of it it'll be really difficult at first but every
25 builds upon the last 25 let's go right into it so you're going to do a serie of twenty-fives if
you're in a 25-meter or yard pool this is great if you're in a 50 metre pool just do one of one
of each instead of doing 225 or you can do 250 so 225s fist drills so we just talked about this
you're in a fist and you really focus on catching the water with your forearm now the next 225
you're going to use your pointer finger so you're gonna go from fist to point your finger literally
your your index finger and your your focus on hitting the water with a nice clean entry with
your pointer finger extending and now you added an additional point of pressure so that you can feel
the water now the third set of 225s you're going to do your pointer finger plus your middle finger
together so now you're in a fist plus two fingers and then you're going to do the next twenty five
your pointer finger middle finger and your thumb so that way you have a new leverage point in the
water and as you go through these twenty fives you're going to start to feel a new connection
with the water and you should feel a little bit faster by the time you get to one two three four
five your fifth round you're gonna go from your pointer finger middle finger thumb to your full
hands and you want to have the concept of big hands you want your hands to feel like they're
huge because what happened was you recruited all your muscles to engage and catch with your forearm
and now you're opening up your hand so that way you have an additional point of leverage and back
to step three it allows you to get your fingertip press to be more efficient and finally once you've
done a few twenty fives with big hands the next step is to go a few fifties with paddles so you're
swimming normal freestyle on these but you're in the the mentality and the concept of swimming with
huge hands now your hands shouldn't be completely open your hands should be closed and comfortably
close so don't squeeze them really tight your fingers should be have maybe a little bit of air
space between them but not much really you want to have full pressure on your hand which means
your your fingers your fingers are closed like a mitten okay so hopefully this is a little bit more
understanding of how the early vertical for can be achieved and a few different ways in training that
you can work towards improving your early vertical forearm and your early catch in pull phase this is
applicable to all the different strokes it's the most it's the easiest to practice in freestyle and
I highly recommend checking out the fist drill and a lot of other drills that we have at my soon pro
if you have any other tips on how you can improve your early vertical forearm I would love to hear
them make sure you subscribe to our Channel and hit the bell so that you can be notified when we
release a new video that was whiteboard Wednesday until next time happy swimming see you later