Meat Hook Freestyle

Technique Tuesday

US  ⋅  Oct, 28 2008   |   Coverage created by Garrett McCaffrey


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About Coley Stickels 

Organization:Lake Oswego Swim Club
College:University Of Arizona
High School:Creighton Preparatory School
Bio:
Coley was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska and attended N.E. Creighton Preparatory High School, class of '96. At the University of Arizona, Coley graduated cum laude in English/Media Relations in 2001…
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#49
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#48
Random Dude   May 18, 2009 at 2:21pm
Last thing he says about freezing the water and pulling you body past your arm is brilliant. Best explination I have heard for the underwater protion of the stroke
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#47
Anonymous Coward   May 3, 2009 at 5:41pm
great explanation and video---I am going to try it out tomorrow. Thanks for the input
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#46
David Marsh's Drill   May 2, 2009 at 8:58pm
Lo Fi said:
my couch says i almost would swim catchup freestyle, when i get tired.

is there a drill to train a windmill stroke?
The only drill I know of is straight arm freestyle. If one over exaggerates the straight arm freestyle with a slow recovery, you will swim with a more open recovery or maybe even close to a straight arm. rotation is key.
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#45
Lo Fi   May 2, 2009 at 12:00pm
my couch says i almost would swim catchup freestyle, when i get tired.

is there a drill to train a windmill stroke?
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#44
Sprint_guru   May 2, 2009 at 11:46am
all Garrett needs is a snorkel and that drill is a great one
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#43
Anonymous Coward   April 30, 2009 at 11:31pm
The catch works wonderfully. I'm a distance swimmer and tried it for the first time a couple weeks ago, and it worked great. I'm planning on using it just for the 50 to gain a little bit of speed. It feels really powerful, great technique for sprint events.
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#42
Anonymous Coward   April 30, 2009 at 4:07pm
i agree with shawn... i think the main thing to remember is that there is a difference between straight arm catch and straight arm recovery. its possible to do both, but its more common to do one or the other. the technique that is the most powerful for sprint swimming is the straight arm catch. from what ive seen, straight arm recovery CAN be used for pretty much any speed of swimming... from janet evans to stefan nystrand
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#41
Anonymous Coward   April 30, 2009 at 3:57pm
Good God AITC what is up with you and roids? How many videos can you comment on about roids in 10 minutes?
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#40
Anonymous Is The Coward   April 30, 2009 at 3:43pm
if Garrett adds some 'roids and a Jaked, he'll go 20.93
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#39
Lucas   April 30, 2009 at 3:19pm
What is that drill in the beginning of the video, never really explains what he is doing it and how??
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#38
Shawn Klosterman   April 29, 2009 at 11:20am
i personally think the term "straight arm" is too vague and misleading. this vid gives great insight into what is really going on with someone like Bousquet and why the style applies well to sprinting.
there are swimmers with technique like this who don't look like they are swimming "straight arm" and there are swimmers who swim "straight arm" who are doing things not even similar. we need more vids like this to break it down for us because now that bousquet is having so much success and we are all speculating that Phelps might be moving toward this in his "new" technique, I think there will be a lot of confusion about what is really going on underwater.
and how does this compare to Janet Evans and what we call her "windmill straight arm" technique? distance. sprint. we need to come up with more terms like meathook to start differentiating and to start putting emphasis in the right places to get people to develop good technique when they try to make changes rather than having people start making changes based on what they think they see when they watch the best of the best racing at full speed.
great vid. bring us more!
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#37
Anonymous Coward   April 29, 2009 at 11:15am
shug said:
I didn't hear anything about "velocitate" in the vid? You can leverage your body in the water to create "torque."

What language have we all agreed upon?
I say lets go with Japanese.

It doesn't matter how you term it as long as the swimmer understands what you are trying to get across.
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#36
Shug   April 29, 2009 at 10:48am
Anonymous Coward said:
You can't "torque" your body, the same way you can't "velocitate" down the pool. Try to pay attention to the language we've all agreed upon.
I didn't hear anything about "velocitate" in the vid? You can leverage your body in the water to create "torque."

What language have we all agreed upon?
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#35
Anonymous Coward   April 29, 2009 at 9:47am
You can't "torque" your body, the same way you can't "velocitate" down the pool. Try to pay attention to the language we've all agreed upon.
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#34
Squid UK   April 29, 2009 at 8:54am
"Freeze the water." Loved Garrett's look at the camera at this point like it was a earth shattering concept. Watch Vendt in his prime and this is exactly what he does, albeit without the strait arm/meat hook. I agree with post #23 that you can teach kids distance free (watch the Beijing 1500 final and you won't see a meat hook in the bunch!) and sprint free as two distinct strokes, like back and breast. Started implementing it a bit this year with my swimmers and it makes a lot of sense even to age groupers.
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#33
Anonymous Coward   April 29, 2009 at 12:09am
Garrett, you are the BEST. I have been trying to quantify what I need to do to improve my freestyle sprint stroke and this is exactly it.

This video could potentially get me a scholarship. Hell yeah.
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#32
Get Your Facts Straight, Punk   April 28, 2009 at 9:27pm
Bousquet has the LC 50 world record as of Sunday, and he is not far off of the 100 record either. He is the fastest man to ever swim
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#31
Punk   April 28, 2009 at 8:33pm
yeah in SCM. Which means exactly...nothing
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#30
GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING   April 28, 2009 at 8:21pm
WARNING, GRAPHIC CONENT IS PRESENT IN THIS VIDEO. THE SIGHT OF GARRETT McCAFFERY SPORTING AN ARENA EUROPEAN CUT MAY OFFENED SOME VIEWERS. THE CONTENT PRESENT BY GARRETT McCAFFERY IS NOT ENDORSED BY ANY SWIMMING ORGANIZATION AND SHOULD ONLY BE VIEWED UNDER ADULT SUPERVISION.
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#29
DjQ   April 28, 2009 at 7:34pm
Awesome breakdown of the technical aspects of free!!

I want to see Garrett rip a 50!
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#28
JJ   April 28, 2009 at 5:32pm
with regard to the meathook or the loping freestyle, don't you think we should teach all of these styles to the younger kids? If we can teach them fly, back, breast, free, then why can't we teach them the three styles that Mike Bottom suggests. Then maybe we can have kids be really strong at the 50 to the 500 and the IM Events. If Phelps can master the 4 main strokes, why can't we teach the principles of the different freestyles to our upper age groupers. Then kids could change which freestyle they use depending on what distance they are swimming.
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#27
Comment 16   April 28, 2009 at 5:07pm
not Sullivan. His stroke is very different
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#26
Tard   April 28, 2009 at 4:41pm
Nah said:
That ain't meat hook. Thats just classic straight arm. Its ugly as hell too. But it clearly works for that guy. Bet he can't keep that up for a 200 though
It doesn't matter what he goes in the 200 if he's been a WORLD CHAMPION/WORLD RECORD HOLDER in the 50 and 100
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#25
Ricky   April 28, 2009 at 3:59pm
It's great to see other coaches coach in the same way but use different words that I would. This sometimes helps other swimmers that aren't hearing exactly what you say, now understand what you are talking about. This is why I like floswimming.
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#24
Anonymous Coward   April 28, 2009 at 3:27pm
where do u buy the dvd please?
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#23
Pole Vault   April 28, 2009 at 3:26pm
my coach and i just started redoing my freestyle like this.
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#22
Nah   April 28, 2009 at 3:22pm
Chris DeSantis said:
You can find the Munoz fly video in my user videos. Here's a great example of meat hook freestyle:
That ain't meat hook. Thats just classic straight arm. Its ugly as hell too. But it clearly works for that guy. Bet he can't keep that up for a 200 though
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#21
David Maxwell   April 28, 2009 at 3:02pm
I remeber seeing this stroke when Bousquet was racing Cullen Jones on the 3rd leg of the 4X100 Free relay at Beijing. It is so awesome to watch and looks extremely fast. i would imagine that you would have to be extremely strong to pull it off though. Im not sure how well it would work for age groupers
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#20
ACslater   April 28, 2009 at 1:36pm
This looks very similar to the shoulder driven stroke that Mike Bottom teaches. It applies to freestyle and butterfly, and it is where there is no outsweep like Coley said. The hand drops straight down into the catch position and the swimmer vaults themselves over the anchor. Very effective for Mike Cavic, Rafael Munoz, Stefan Nystrand, Eamon Sullivan, Fred Bousquet, and many other sprinters.
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#19
Hey   April 28, 2009 at 11:45am
michigan thrash!!!!
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#18
Paul   April 28, 2009 at 10:40am
I had one of my sprint guys using paddles with little fishing weights on the end for the same purpose. Not for everyone that's for sure, but if you've got sprint talent swimming with a distance stroke it doesn't work just like it doesn't work for a distance swimmer to swim with a sprint stroke.

We just did a little in warmups, etc to get the feel. Then we put it away from a year and progressed from it.
You absolutely have to figure it out as a coach. What type of athlete do you have? What type of athlete do you want to have in three years?
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#17
The Dore   April 28, 2009 at 10:28am
Tigers two times!
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#16
DM   April 28, 2009 at 10:03am
This style of freestyle is definately not for distance freestyle. Holding it for a 100 takes a fair amount of training.

And Bousquet did release a DVD along with Cesar, Brett Hawke and Richard Quick. It came out real recently.
I have been playing with this type of freestyle since last summer and I have to say I have been getting results. I haven't mastered it by any means but I can definately see the benefits of it. Brett talks about this type of freestyle in the DVD I mentioned above
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#15
Anonymous Coward   April 28, 2009 at 9:35am
lets get down to aurburn and video frede bousquet personally and have him show us his freestyle and then do in slow motion.
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#14
Anonymous Coward   April 28, 2009 at 9:32am
i feel like you can't use that for distance swimming. unless you have ridiculously well built shoulders it seems like there would be some serious problems doing that for a mile or even a 500
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#13
Chris DeSantis   April 28, 2009 at 9:24am
You can find the Munoz fly video in my user videos. Here's a great example of meat hook freestyle:


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#12
20 Something Swimmer   April 28, 2009 at 9:23am
Yay for post-college swimming!
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#11
Anonymous Coward   April 28, 2009 at 8:38am
Where is the Munoz video he references?
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#10
Windmill   April 28, 2009 at 8:34am
can I get a WINDMILLLLLL??!!!

but seriously, is this a fusion of windmill and a longer more extened stroke?
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#9
Baylor Swimming   April 28, 2009 at 8:19am
This is exactly what Coach Flack at Baylor School teaches us all the time
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#8
Great Last 15 Sec   April 28, 2009 at 7:45am
then end of this video is a great way to look at the mental part of the catch in sprint free.
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#7
Gator Nation   April 28, 2009 at 3:56am
does this apply to distance freestyle
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#6
Dolf Dolf   April 28, 2009 at 3:04am
I have exactly the same problem, I glide too far underwater to get a long stroke but loose some water that could be used in the catch. I'm onto this technique straight away!
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Meat Hook Freestyle

Uploaded By: Garrett McCaffrey
Head coach of Lake Oswego Swim Club, Coley Stickels, was nice enough to coach me through a practice one afternoon during my visit. The first thing he did was fix my stroke. He likes to teach a style of freestyle that works for World Record holder Fred Bousquet, and he compares it to a meat hook.
April 28, 2009
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