2/1/07 - 3/1/07

Be a Safer Swimmer - 360swim SaferSwimmer

Feb 4, 2007

Body Balance and Swimming (Head lead body rotation drill)

As most of you might already know, body balance is one of the key aspects of fast and efficient swimming. I already talked about the balance a bit in the previous post about sinking legs. You might be thinking, what kind of balance do I need in a water while I swim, I just float. Well, that is true, your body naturally floats, however, it matters how you float and how much effort (energy) you consume with floating :). In this post, you can see a decent video of one good drill that is great for balancing your body in the water. Watch the video and below you will find my comments about the exercise.

Ok, as you can see, this drill requires constant kicking and a lot of core body strength. Keep your hands at your side, like you have them in your front pockets (don't move them). Your eyes are looking at the bottom of the pool or at the sky (not to your sides like in the video). Your body rotates on an axis that goes through the top of your head and comes out of your toes. The swimmer in this video does a very good job of rotating while keeping the head steady and hips at the surface.

As you can see, the rotation should be very smooth, trying to minimize the visual effect of tightening your muscles to turn. Also, it is nice to turn on your back, however, I'd keep the rotation only from one side to the other across your front, so you never end up with your belly up. If you really have trouble with the side to side, go side to back and back to side. Start on your side, looking down, then rotate to your belly, head still down, then rotate to your other side and now you can rotate your head to breath in the same axis as described above. If this is a bit too advanced, please consider working on your head position first.