elbow angle prior to catch

[andyinnorway]

It must be Autumn because my head is full of technical curiosity again.

My observations are that there are two predominant ways to point the elbows during the spear phase, at 10 and 2 on the clock or 8 and 4.

Terry, Shinji and Sun Yang all seem to favour the latter, 8 and 4 as this gives you a straighter arm and therefore a little more reach(+DPS). The elbow is then 'popped' or comes up as the shoulder rotates to form the catch.

Rebecca Adlington, the swim smooth guys and some sprinters, use the 10 and 2 position, meaning that they spear the water with their arm or shoulder pre rotated, like the arm of a mechanical digger, and not dissimilar to ballet 1st position rotated 90 degrees, the arm forms a curved wing like position.

The advantage of this is that the forearm can just drop into the catch and therefore seems to be the choice of swimmers with higher stroke rate.

I seem to have ended up with one of each at the moment, long and straight on my extended arm as I turn to breathe and digger like on the other.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this and is there a TI coaching position that recommends the straight arm or is it just coincidence that Terry and Shinji both use it? Which puts less strain on the shoulders?