Posted by heathweaver

Today I wanted to review the catch position of the hand. I often see people who swim quickly having a very similar hand position when entering the water. Here are some examples from Ian Thorpe:

Each of these pictures illustrates the hand position pretty well. The fingers are relaxed and the hand is slightly cupped. The thumb serves to trap the water in the cup. The last picture shows from the side how much to cup your hand.

I don’t really know for sure but it looks like the thumb position and cupping your hand is more important than worrying about your fingers.

 Last note, as I swam at a different sized pool today it’s helpful to show my meters per seconds rather than total time. This works out to 1.220 m/sec compared to 1.316 m/sec. That would have been more like 22.25 sec on 25m. Not really very good. I need to swim 35 m in less than 26.60 to beat my best speed.