Many of you have been hearing me talk about an early catch in freestyle.
Desired Observation: Awareness of where your hand enters, rotation of body, and how soon you start pushing.
Desired Outcome: Development of forward balanced reach, body rotation, and early vertical forearm position to maximize the push of water behind you thus moving forward more efficiently.
Equipment needed: Kick Board
Here is a demonstration of the drill from GoSwim.
A little additional thought. When you put your hand under the board let the top of your hand touch the bottom of the board as you reach forward to take a stroke. This gives a little bio-feedback. Make sure you are holding kick-board arm straight.
Interesting drill, I’m going to give it a try. I think that it would be enhanced quite a bit by using a Finis snorkel, and I wonder if the small Finis alignment kickboard might be a better bet than the traditional one used in the video. (No, I am not a shill for Finis, but I do like those two pieces of equipment quite a lot.)
I agree about the snorkel. My observation of people as I am teaching this drill is that they have to think to much about the breathing.