Body Position

Swimming Technique: Body Position

Good swim technique starts with good body position in the water.

Why?

Because good body position reduces the amount of drag, the amount of resistance in the water, and helps us swim quickly and efficiently.

When I’m working with swimmers, I like to start with this area of the stroke first. If we improve our posture – and we all have room to improve – then swimming becomes that bit easier.

You generally know if you have good body position if:

• The top of your head
• The top of your trunks / hips
• The feet

… are all touching the surface of the water.

Now we know what it’s supposed to look like, what do we need to do to achieve this position?

I thought I’d share an image from one of our swimmers, highlighting what we’re trying to achieve. This image – and the information in the post – might help us understand what good body position looks like and then how we might improve our own position in the water.

What exactly are we looking at in the image, and how are we going to achieve that?

Three Touch Points

Firstly, when I’m looking at swimmers – and when I do my own swimming – I always want to see the top of the head, hips and feet be touching the surface of the water. Doing this will mean we are high in the water and reduce our drag, making swimming that little bit easier.

Many swimmers sink at the hips. Even more have their legs dragging low in the water. Not in this picture. A perfect straight line, all at the surface. Head low, hips high, feet high.

Swim Tall

In simplest terms, you want to try and adopt a posture that sees you stretched out from your fingertips to your toes. When I think about this, I’m thinking that I want my legs to be extending towards one end of the pool and then, during the hand extension / reach phase, my fingertips to reach as far as they can towards the other end of the pool. The body then has taughtness. It is tall and strong and gives the rest of your stroke a solid structure.

In this picture we can see a really long front end of the stroke. Kate’s hand has entered and extended directly forwards, staying high in the water, giving her a nice long body line from fingertips to toes.

Head Position

Look at the head position. Most of the swim cap is in the water – lovely. Apart from instagram pictures, I don’t want to see much of the logo from our swim caps when our athletes are swimming. In this picture, we can see most of the logo underneath the water.

Many of us swim with our head high, either looking forwards or just with our head sitting high in the water. The higher the head position, the lower the legs tend to be. Kate has most of her head in the water – but has not ‘buried her head’ to achieve that. A nice balance.

You want your head to be low in the water. Instead of looking forwards towards the end of the pool, look down towards the bottom but perhaps one to two metres in front. This way, only the crown of the head will be above the surface of the water – and not your whole head.

That said, avoid the temptation to bury your head in the water!

When we breathe, we still want to keep our head low in the water. Don’t lift your head up and then turn to breathe. Simply keep the head in the same position and turn to the side – no upwards movement. Ideally, when we do this, we want to keep some of our goggles in the water.

Pointed Toes

Look at the flex in that ankle! The toes are nicely pointed – so the feet are in line with the leg and do not cause any unnecessary drag in the water. A straight line from hips to toes. Perfect.

The less pointed your toes are, the more they act like anchors and drag your legs down in the water. I know this can be difficult for some athletes who have stiff ankles – I’m looking at you runners – but the better you become at this, the easier it will be to keep your legs high.

Leg Structure

Speaking of legs, look how extended Kate’s legs are. Really straight, no bend at the knee. A little bit of tension & structure through the legs – not floppy and just following behind – so they extend straight backwards and stay really high in the water.

The more you bend your legs at the knee, the lower your legs will sink. Keep them straight and outstretched. As we advance, we might want to think about engaging our glutes a little to keep the legs long and straight.

When you kick, kick from the hip. Many swimmers kick from the knee – in other words bend their legs and try to generate power through the knee. Don’t. A gentle kick, with the movement generated from the hip is all we need.

How About You?

How do you compare with this? Is your posture as strong, your body line as straight and long? Anything from what you’ve seen or read above that you think you might need to work on?

Swim Session

Here is a swim session to try. All about improving posture and body position.