Straight Arm Recovery Freestyle

I'm going to embark on teaching this freestyle technique to my group, which has swimmers aged 14-17. At this point in time I sort of view this straight arm technique to be more of a technique to be utilized by female swimmers and certainly more sprint-oriented athletes.

However, I have a belief that I may be able to revolutionize the freestyles of a couple of my swimmers and actually the first swimmer that comes to mind is a young man named Andrei. Andrei does not have the best workout effort in the world but he does like to swim fast and has some natural speed and given how he currently swims freestyle I think this stroke could add some needed technique to help him maximize what he does bring to the table.

Beyond Andrei I have a few girls that are between 5'6"-5'9" that I think this stroke can help them get more out of their shorter arms. That said, I coach one young lady Zoe that is about 5'10" or almost 6' and I do not think at this point in time given her growth and her arm co-ordination that this stroke is the best thing for her at this time.

That said, I will try it with the entire group and modify this stroke into a drill and maybe push some of those, that find this stroke comes naturally, into this stroke to help develop average freestylers or even below average freestylers into something more....

This is perhaps the most intersting experiment that I have conducted in a stroke that I believe I know a lot about, but I'm open to experimentation to learn what this stroke can bring to the table to some athletes who might as otherwise be limited in their potential with a more convential high-elbow freestyle.