5 Reasons Your Arm Drops When You Breathe

last week i got a couple of emails from different swimmers asking about the same problem they were having trouble keeping their lead arm in front and reaching forwards while they turned

to breathe so what they found is that their lead arm was dropping down and they didn't get much of a catch when they breathed and so they were wondering how can i go about fixing this so in this video we're going to look at what

causes it and how you can go about fixing that problem in your freestyle so you have a better hold and a better catch and ultimately faster freestyle

[Music] now when i'm working with someone face

to face there's a bit of a checklist that i'd often go through to make sure that they've got these elements in their stroke because there's not just one cause of this there can be a number of different reasons why this is happening

so we're going to go through the five main reasons that i find causes someone to press down in the water without being able to keep their arm in front while they're getting their breath and the reason that we want to

fix this is that you probably find you lose a lot of balance in the water if you if your arm is dropping down and you're not going to get much of a hold of the water so you're not going to propel yourself forwards

very well if that lead arm is dropping straight down [Music]

so the first thing that i will often look at is the breathing how are they breathing now the the two main mistakes that people make here that causes that lead arm to drop is they'll lift their head up

well above the water and that sort of comes from they end up pressing downwards on the water to lift their head up above the water and and then obviously you're not going to be able to get into that good catch position so we

need to make sure you're not lifting the head up well above the water and we need to make sure you're looking in the right position and the right position is straight to the side so if i'm working with someone i might get them to look at

the lane rope or the side of the pool and try and look there once you've turned your head to the side to breathe because sometimes people will look too far behind them or too far in front and

it really just throws their alignment out and if you think of swimming freestyle and breathing i like the analogy of imagining like you got like a skewer through your spine and through your neck and your head is a bit of meat

on that skewer and when you go to breathe you're just turning the skewer but it stays aligned on that skewer so you're turning to the side and coming back you're not shifting your head way off to

the side now with some elite swimmers i see the head come off to the side a bit but generally just try and keep it mostly centered because that's going to keep you better aligned so we've got to check the breathing first and foremost

now the other thing that can help there too is we want to try and keep part of that bottom goggle in the water when we turn to the side but the other thing is where your mouth is when you breathe so last week i was

working with someone who's in our stroke analysis membership and we looked at his breathing and his breathing was like a gasp for air it was like open mouth really sort of um upper chest

breathing now what i um have got him to do is to just almost like reach around with his mouth off to the side and try and um just make it more of a a controlled or a steady inhale instead of

this big gasp for air because that's going to cause you to it makes it difficult to stay calm and relaxed when you're breathing if you do it that way so we need to make sure

we're breathing the right way so first thing is just breathing if you have trouble with that you can do a couple of simple drills like in the first week of our eight week faster freestyle course

we work on some sink down drills just to relax but if you're looking to just get that breathing position right side breathing drill with the kickboard is probably your best bet so if you put some fins on hold the kickboard out in

front and you can just practice that skewer like approach to breathing to the side now it's okay if when you first start that you find it difficult and you can't really keep that bottom goggle in if you

need to turn that little bit further that's okay but just over time you'll get more comfortable with it until you can get that split vision that we're looking for [Applause]

[Music] now the other thing that we then look at is the rotation through the shoulders so over is a fairly common problem that i see particularly on the breathing side so if we're looking front on it someone's

swinging towards us you'll see that for the most part yeah most good swimmers are 30 to 40 degrees through the shoulders if you measure that shoulder rotation at its furthest

point now if you're going past that and if you're particularly going to 90 degrees through the shoulders it's very hard to keep that lead arm in front because of the pressure it can put on your rotator cuff the pressure it can

put on the shoulder there so a lot of people struggle to keep their lead arm in front if they're going to 90 degrees so we just want to check how far you're rotating through the shoulders as you

turn to the side to breathe now often that over rotation is a result of the head turning too far or lifting but sometimes it's not sometimes people will just want to rotate more than what they

actually need to so that's the second thing we want to check in with and if you are going too far then what you can do there is just work on reducing that rotation and like i mentioned in the video last week about

how to swim relaxed one of the things that can help you just get the right amount of rotation is think of rotating your torso think of rotating it forwards instead of side to

side because like carl and pipe said we want to be rocking side to side and not rolling side to side and i think when you when you think of that as rotating forwards instead of side to side that's

what that's a way that can it can help you do that [Music]

the third thing that can lead to that lead arm dropping when you breathe is actually the entry of the hand and of the arm into the water and again working with a different swimmer in our stroke

analysis coaching last week i had a look at his entry and he was coming over and landing elbow first and when you're basically landing elbow first it means that you've essentially

fully extended and reach forwards above the water so by the time you go to get the hand in you end up pressing straight down because you've got nowhere else to go it's very hard to then continue

reaching forwards in the water which is what we want to happen when you've done that above so what we want to work on changing there is making sure you enter fingertips first elbow up

and then you slide the hand forwards in the water out in front of the shoulder before you start the catch because if you if you don't if you are going elbow first and the hands just landing in last you'll find that that's

that hand that arm just wants to go straight down to the bottom of the pool so that's another one we've got to check in with and another simple draw you can do there with fins and a kickboard is just entry drill so holding the

kickboard out in front get that hand to come in fingers first and that keyboard is going to force you to enter early enough so you go fingers first because if you over reach your hand's going to hit the top of the kickboard and you're

not going to be able to get that sliding forwards of the hand in the water so another really simple drill

that you can use to check in with that [Music]

the fourth thing i check in with here is the exit of the opposite hand so let's say you breathe to the left and it's your right hand that's reaching forwards we want to have a look at what's

happening with this left hand as it's finishing the last part of the pull or the press phase of the stroke because a lot of people tend to finish too short there

they come out before their hip and if you're doing that then you're not going to get that last bit of propulsion at the back part of your stroke that helps you reach and rotate forwards so

sometimes one of the causes of people not being able to get that lead arm reaching forwards is they've just got no propulsion out the back to be able to actually get it because if you don't have it there it's

coming out short and you tend to just fall down collapse on it a little bit so we need to make sure that the hand is number one pressing back past the hip

so just past the hip and number two make sure the palm of the hand is facing behind you nearly all the way back past the hip because another common thing we see there is this palm of the hand ends

up turning into the body and sort of the hands almost slicing or cutting throughout the back so again just missing out on that propulsion there because that press back past the hip works hand in hand with that reach forward and extension out there and

that's where you get that nice lengthening through the body and through the shoulders so we've got to check the exit [Applause] [Music] now the last thing that i will often

check here is what's happening with that arm as it's going forwards we want to look at the what we call the starting catch position where we want to have this very slight

downwards angle and primarily looking for is the wrist dropped as they're reaching forward so sometimes if people are reaching forwards this wrist is is dropped they're like that and that

elbow's dropped down then it doesn't really lead to being able to continue reaching forwards because with a dropped elbow dropped wrist that arm just wants to go straight down so i've got to make sure that our

lead arm is in the right position and in the right shape and so that's having the fingers below the wrist wrist below the elbow in a very slight downwards angle there because if it's the opposite with the

elbow lower than the wrist wrist slower than the fingers uh then it's it's very hard to continue reaching forwards there in the correct way so we want to make sure that's happening now just as a as a side

note is a bit of a bonus there the other thing we can sort of look at is where is this shoulder as you're reaching forward so with good freestyles you'll see the shoulder is somewhere up near the cheek

not on the cheek but near the cheek so it ends up staying up there through that reach phase now with swimmers who are new to the sport sometimes we find that

that just is dropped down it's not near the cheek it ends up being well below it and again it's just it's one of those finer details that's worth checking in with so there's a drill you can do

something like shoulder to cheek scoop drill which you may have seen on our other videos before where this will encourage you to or force you basically to keep that shoulder up near the cheek as you're going through this catch

motion now in that drill that shoulder's probably a bit too close to the cheek you wouldn't actually want to keep it that close but it's a great way just to get a feel for that rough position that we're trying to get into so if you follow that checklist you can see

whether or not you're doing each of those things and that can help you keep that lead arm out in front now the very final thing you could do here let's say you just didn't want to you didn't want to go through any of that and just like what's the what's the

quick fix or what's a way that i could um get this sorted without having to think too much about it well if if you want to just try something you know you quickly

one of the things that's worked with a few of the swimmers that i work with is just really think of holding the glide or reaching forwards for about twice as long as what they expect so exaggerating

that reach out in front or that glide out in front now for example i'm thinking of one of the the swimmers that i coach online when he sends me videos we were having trouble

with him getting getting a good catch he was just sort of that arm was dropping down he was too straight with the arm and he was always going too deep so what he had to do was

exaggerate how long he felt like he was reaching forwards for by about twice as much so i said to him okay next next video that you send me i want you to exaggerate it to the point where you think this is way too much

this is way too too much glide out in front and just send it we'll see what happens and when he did that it was the right amount and his timing was actually a lot better the catch was a lot better and then over the course of

about three or four weeks he was able to um to basically fix it and it's so much better now so that's kind of like the quick fix approach won't work for everyone but for some swimmers we found

that that to basically just fix it pretty quickly so a couple of ways that you can go about it i know this is a longer video but sometimes these things require a bit more detail

than others so hope you enjoyed the video and if you do enjoy this stuff uh check out the effortless three membership there's 14 days free uh have a look at the eight week faster freestyle course inside there because that is what most

of our members are going through at the moment and we're getting some really good results there so uh thanks for watching please like and subscribe and share this with anyone you know who's trying to improve their swimming and i'll be back with another video next

week [Music] you