Training Drills with Thor Bendix III

Training Drills with Thor Bendix III

 

Improve your catch position

 

Our final entry of the Training Drills Series with our athletes from the BMC triathlon team. Thor Bendix concludes with a series of exercises aimed at improving our body’s position in the water and favouring hydrodynamics.

 

 

We will proceed with three exercises that will improve your catch position. As we saw in the previous entry, the catch refers to the first phase of the stroke in which the swimmer’s hand enters the water, which should follow the central line of the body without veering inwards or outwards.

 

For the first exercise we will use a kickboard and a snorkel, and it consists of the following:

 

1. Underwater single arm drill: with one arm resting on the board, we repeat the underwater phase of the stroke with the same arm: the catch and the pull. Using the snorkel allows us to observe our arm, its position and improve it, in order to develop a more effective pull. 

 

 

We’ll keep the snorkel for the second exercise:

 

2. Underwater double arm drill: this is like the previous exercise but this time we alternate the underwater phase of the stroke, continuing until the elbow leaves the water, which we try to avoid raising above the waistline. We pay attention to the rolling of the shoulders, pausing for a few seconds between strokes.

 

Finally, we bring everything we’ve learnt together and without removing out snorkel we continue onto the final technical swimming exercise of the Training Drill Series: 

 

3. Snorkel swim: we continue to make use of the snorkel to swim, concentrating only on observing our technique and detecting the areas we should focus more on in order to continue improving. 

 

 

Swimming is a sport in which technique plays a fundamental role, and its practice and improvement never end, from beginners to veterans and professionals: they all dedicate part of their training to improving their style through these technical exercises.