Hello. how's it going? Are you ready for another video? In this video I want to talk to you about the difference between a propulsive phase and a non propulsive phase of the swim stroke. Now you may think of this as an odd topic to talk about, but I assure you it's, it's quite important. Now I learned this lesson quite a few years ago,

and I remember thinking, Oh, that can't be right. Or maybe it could be. And then I just, it really changed the way I thought about how I go about swimming. And each time I am doing a practice and how my arms are moving, I thought, wow, isn't this really different. Now, let me ask you a question.

First of all.... How many phases of the swim stroke are there. Now, if you're watching me, I'm going to pretend I'm swimming, right? So this is a front on view. Okay. And I'll take it to the side view. Now. How many phases of the swim stroke are there? When I'm talking about phases? I'm talking about like the arm phases.

Okay. So think about it. How many well let's, let's kind of walk you through it. Write them on the board here. The first one, Is the entry and stretch Coming up, entering the water, stretching forward. That's phase number one.  Second phase is known as the Down Sweep. So you've You enter the water, you stretch,

you come down this part here, phase two or stage two, and that's called the down sweep. The third stage is known as the catch position. Can you sort of, if a stage two is coming down right here, this position here is a third stage and that is known as the catch position. So that's the side view of it.

That's the front view. Okay. That's the catch? Now number four. You know what it is? Before I write it down? Begins with an I In sweep. So entered, stretched down, sweep into the catch. This phase right here is known as the in sweep. Here I am back. Okay. That's In Sweep. Next phase. Next stage.

Next step. The next one. Number five. What's that one called? It begins with an, O actually it doesn't. It begins with a U.  It's the upsweep. Okay. Quickly review entry, stretch down sweep, catch,  Insweep,  Upsweep. That's where we are. So here we go. Enter stretch. That's one down sweep to the catch,  Insweep,  Upsweep.

One more, one more phase left. Number six. What's that one called? And it begins with an R and ends with a Y Recovery. Okay. So Enter, stretch downsweep, catch, Insweep, Upsweep recover. And that's the six phases of the arm stroke. Now let's go back to the beginning question that I asked you,

or did I ask you, I can't remember the idea is..... which of these Is propulsive and which one is non propulsive? Now basically what propulsive means versus non propulsive is that a propulsive phase of the swim stroke means that it's, it's the phase of the swim stroke that's moving you forward. The non propulsive phases are the phases of the stroke that are not moving you forward.  I remember when I first learned this, I'm going to pull up. I'm not going to do it yet, because if I put up, put up a slide, you're going to know the answer. I really want you to kind of think about this first. I've asked this question of many swimmers. I'm just go, Hey, what is the most powerful part of your stroke?

And I go, Hmm, let me think about that. Some people have to think about it. And some people don't think about it at all. And they know right away, they said, Todd, this is what it is. Or they go. I'm not quite sure. And I go....think about it. What do you think is the most powerful part of your stroke?

Now for many people, their answer is this boom right there. This section right here is the most powerful part of their stroke. And if you guess that, then you are absolutely wrong. And then some people think right there and that's a good guest too, but that's not right. The most powerful part of your stroke is when you're here going back.

And oftentimes what you see for many swimmers is when you get to this phase and going back, you're tired. You're kind of fatigued. So you give up. So this section here, even though it's the most powerful phase of the swim stroke, many people don't actually get the bang for their buck because they're so focused on the front here trying to come down as fast as possible ....they are like..... down,

down, down, it's all this downward action. But they're forgetting about that underwater component. And they think this front part is moving them forward now, okay, let me pull up this slide. This slide represents the propulsive phases and the non propulsive phases. You can see that the dotted line represents the non propulsive phases, and the solid line represents the propulsive phases.

And if you pay attention to this, you can see that there's only two phases that are propulsive and the two phases that are propulsive are the underwater components of the swim stroke, which going to be..... I know what you're thinking. You're thinking Todd, well, isn't the catch underwater? Yeah, it is, but it's not propulsive. So these guys are not propulsive non non number four,

the Insweep is. That's the start of the propulsive phase. Number five is the end of propulsive phase.  Number six, recovery phase is non propulsive. So think about that next time you are swimming. That when you're above the water, no surprise, right? But this recovery phase is not moving forward because not even in the water, this Entry and the Stretch is not moving forward.

The Downsweep. It's not moving you forward. All of this space here. The downstream is doing is getting in the right position so that you can push the water backwards. When in the catch position. This is non propulsive. Cause you are not even moving. You're just anchored. Once you get into the Insweep and the Upsweep, that's where you start to get into moving yourself forward underwater.

So from here backwards, that is a propulsive component of the swim stroke. And yes, I gave away a little secret too.  That the most propulsive part of your swim stroke is from here back. And this is known as the upsweep and is the most propulsive part of your stroke. So this week I want you to pay attention to, okay,

the down sweep is not propulsive. It's just getting your arm in the right position and paying attention to finishing your stroke. So when you're here pushing the water backwards. Okay. See how that feels. So that, does that change anything, when you think about swimming, did some light bulbs go on or you got a little aha moments for me?

It definitely did for, because I really thought that this front part was moving me forward. So I used to really giver in the front end to try to really maximize my speed, maximize my stroke. And then when I realized that this part here is not moving me forward, I'm like, wow, I can, I can relax a bit and then focus here

on pushing the water back. So here and I am pushing it back, pay attention this week to the propulsive and the non propulsive phase. And let me know how it goes. So this video is all about propulsive versus non propulsive and I hope you learn a thing or two. I will see you in the next video. Bye Bye.  :)