Freestyle Catch Hand Entry

You can also play around with “slow motion” swimming to see how exactly swimmers are entering the water and challenge them to correct it in real time.

This month’s tip series is focused on the all-important freestyle catch. Arguably the most important part of any freestyle, developing and maintaining an efficient freestyle catch is crucial for swimmers at any ability level.

We’ll start this week by looking at the very first phase of having a good catch: the hand entry. While this may seem like a simple stage of the skill (how hard is it to put your hand in the water?) there are a few key points that are useful to remember when thinking about the catch.

Fingertips First…

Swimmers want to enter the water as efficiently as possible to set themselves up for a good catch.