1. Take Your Mark – Above Water (1)

Video Transcription: Let’s take a further look into what the Take Your Mark position should look like above water. As I said, arms are as far wide as possible. Your hands need to be outside your knees. Your arms being wide allows that to happen because when you pull up, you want to keep your knees in between your elbows and you want to have clearance. You don’t want the knees hitting the elbows or pushing out against the elbows because that’s just gonna affect your ability to push off of that wall. When you pull up the ideal position is you want to pull up to about elbows being 90 degrees. It’s okay to be like 90 degrees or a little bit sharper, but you don’t want to be less than 90 degrees. 

When you deal with younger swimmers, moving their own body weight is difficult. For them, you’re gonna see it’s gonna be really hard for them to pull themselves up to a 90 degree position because the upper body strength is not there yet. Keep working on 90 degrees being that standard, and more is better than less just because you activate the upper body more. You pull up higher, which gives you more leverage to get out and over. Knee bend is opposite. Knee Bend is a lot tighter when you pull into a Take Your Mark position. You’re looking for about 45 degrees of knee Bend, which is a super deep squat. You can see in this girl down here. She’s got a really tight angle. You’re looking for a tight angle. 

You want to be in an explosive position. You don’t want the heels and the bum to ever meet. There should still be a space there, but it should be a tight angle on the knee Bend.