Hand Entry at Crawl

This is a persistent problem for me and many others. When viewed from the front, each hand happily enters the water and splays outwards as per the Right Hand. This is an attempt to gain balance from the water which means legs and body are skew wiff and adding buckets of drag. Not good.

Making a superhuman effort on every single stroke to enter the hand as per Left Hand is clearly superior. Instead of pointing the middle longest finger at the wall I calculated that I must point the ring finger (next to pinky) at the wall instead. It takes quite a muscular effort. This is what I had to think about on every single stroke of the Cottesloe Mile. It maybe is from being a tennis player?

My right hand tends to do the same cm. Left hand not so much. I sometimes over exaggerate the pinky first entry by entering with what feels like an almost vertical hand to try and counteract this splaying outwards. Even though it may feel almost "vertical" it doesn't actually look that much when I view it under water. I also find it helps stop internal rotation of the shoulder joint. This internal rotation can cause shoulder impingement issues.

gw