How to find the best arm recovery for your swim

When you watch the swim leg of any triathlon race, you’ll see all sorts of different over the water arm recoveries. Some are faster, some are slower, some are higher, some are lower, some are straighter, and some are more bent. 

And of course, you’ll see everything in between and you’ll see various combinations of the different recovery styles.  What’s interesting is that you’ll see swimmers of different ability levels using the same style of arm recovery, and you’ll see swimmers of the same ability levels using different arm recovery styles. 

These observations can make it very confusing when you’re trying to determine how to recover your arms as there is no clear indication as to which strategy is best. 

The main reason there is a lot of variation is because humans are different. Their arms have different lengths, their rib cage is shaped differently, they have different ranges of motion in the upper body, and they have different levels of strength in the upper body. 

That means ‘ideal’ is going to differ from person to person. Rather than copying someone else, the best strategy is to find the best recovery for you!

Finding the best recovery for you

The main idea here is that you can’t necessarily know which arm recovery is going to work best for you, but by using different arm recoveries in different ways, you can absolutely discover the arm recovery that works best for you.

Change the style

Practise recovering the arms high and recovering the arms low. Practise recovering the arms straight and recovering the arms bent. Practise recovering the arms fast and recovering the arms slow. 

You can combine these different styles in different ways as well. By using lots of different arm recoveries, you’re much more likely to discover the one that works best for you.

Variation

While using different arm recoveries, the how becomes relevant. When working on your arm recoveries, I suggest you change it up strategically. Alternate different recovery styles each repetition. 

As an example, you could perform the odd repetitions of a set with a straight recovery and the even repetition with a bent recovery. You can even change the recovery style within a repetition. 

For instance, you can alternate between 25m straight and 25m bent. To turn it up to another level, you can even perform two different recoveries at the same time, such as left arm straight and right arm bent. The more ways you can feel different recoveries, the more likely it is you’ll find what works best.

Train and test

Rather than just playing with different arm recoveries at slow speeds and without fatigue, incorporate these ideas into your training, adding speed and adding fatigue. 

It’s important to not only pay attention to how different recoveries feel, but whether different recoveries allow you to actually perform in a repeatable and sustainable way. 

By using different recoveries during training, you’re going to find the arm recovery that allows you to create the most speed for the least effort.

• A simple way to improve your arm recovery in the swim