Reach & Rotation

What Is ‘The Reach’?

Your hand has entered the water and you’ve extended forwards, so your arm is nice and straight. The reach is where we just extend a little further, moving our shoulder forwards.

Why Focus On The Reach?

• Make each stroke that little bit longer
• Give the stroke some rhythm
• It adds some good rotation to the stroke (which, if done right, gives us more power on the pull)
• Gives us time to think and execute each stroke well

What Should We Think About During Our Swim?

✅ Extending our hands forwards fully, giving us a nice straight arm out in front.

✅ Including a very short glide before starting the catch and pull – we don’t want to be in a rush to take the next stroke.

✅ After hand entry and extension, and during the short glide, we are reaching forward that little bit extra – giving us a bit of rotation through our shoulders and chest.

✅ Keeping our leading arm (during the breathing stroke) high in the water – no pressing down and no pulling too early

What Does Reach And Rotation Look Like?

The image below shows:

• Extending fully – the hand couldn’t be further forward.
• Shoulder in front of the chin
• Rotation (look at the angle of the chest)
• Hand (and arm) is slightly below the surface of the water – not right on the surface – taking a bit of pressure off the shoulder.
• Ready to start the catch

Swim Style

A lot of our swimmers prefer this style of swimming when we work on it during technique sets. It feels nice. It doesn’t feel rushed. It feels like we’re in full control.

However, when we progress to some ‘faster’ swimming sets, the focus, patience and discipline disappears along with the long stroke and many swimmers revert to a shorter stroke and a faster stroke rate.

If that’s you, I’d urge you to keep the faith and stick with the long stroke.

This will become obvious when you start to think about our catch phase. A long stroke, with good rotation, makes the catch easier and the pull stronger. Which, in turn, makes our swimming quicker. And for a little less effort.

Once we have mastered this, we can then think about making our stroke quicker if we want to.

I hope that has helped you think about another aspect of your swim technique.