I'm puzzled by the "catch" phase of two men who seem to dominate this group lately - Hackett
and Thorpe.
Their upper body and head drive out of the water during their downsweep on their breathing side. And
they certainly need a flat hand in the water to generate downward pressure to do this.
But why not circumvent the whole problem and bend their wrists before sweeping down? With their
fingers pointed at the bottom of the pool, only their forearms would generate downward force,
and that ain't much. Less "Miller-torque". That is, less tendency for the downsweep to sink
their bodies.
That's exactly what many female swimmers do.
Hannah Stockbauer bends her wrist very quickly after her arm extends forward. (Go check it out on
Donald Graft's website) In fact, I've noticed a very similar hand shape to many elite female
swimmers. Their thumb is apart from the other fingers, the fingers are curved slightly, and they
bend their wrist down and out right away. Will definitely alleviate downward force on the water.
Then their wrist straightens as their forearm falls and they have a much better opportunity to pull
back on the water, and not push down. And Hannah is not the only example. In many of the Brooke
Bennett videos is a female who has almost identical right arm movement as Hannah. That woman uses a
four beat kick - three on the right, one on the left. She always seems to be in second or third, but
I'm very fond of the way she swims.
Anyways, these big powerful men obviously feel much faster keeping a straight wrist on their
downsweep, and using some of the big downward pressure on the water to lift their head and shoulders
out of the water some.
And my personal observation at the pool I swim at is also consistent. All the "loping" is down by
the fastest male swimmers in the pool. The faster the coach asks us to swim, the more pronounced
becomes the "flop,flop ... flop,flop ... flop,flop" rhythm of these men, and the more prominant the
head and shoulder lift.
Maybe I'm too in touch my feminine side, but I think I'm going to try swimming flat and bending my
wrist like some of the elite females. I can't get much worse 🙂
Eric