Forward Motion
Take Your Swim to the Next Level, Article 3
by Coach Craig Strong
My last two articles have stressed the pivotal roles of balance and leveling your body line in the water. If you have been practicing the balance drills I prescribed, then you should be looking more and more like a kayak in the water. It is important to continually return to these drills to make balancing your body an automatic part of swimming. Remember that every swimmer, no matter how proficient, should work on balance.
One of the most visible signs of being off-balance occurs during breathing. When taking a breath, it is common to push down with your hand immediately upon its entering the water. This is usually an attempt to get leverage to raise the head for air. Doing so increases imbalance that produces a choppy stroke that has poor traction (often referred to as a "missed catch") and in turn has a weak underwater pull.
How can you fix this problem?
Work on extending your lead hand to the wall in front of you just after the hand enters the water, and press down into your armpit when taking your breath. When you're on your side, the armpit region marks the area of your buoy. As discussed in my last articles, we call this region your "buoy" because of the lungs' propensity to float. Pushing down into your buoy causes the lower extremities to rise, thereby leveling your body, creating a better overall bodyline and thus decreasing resistance in the water. Extending the lead arm farther will make your entire vessel longer, and the longer the vessel the faster. Voilà, the kayak rather than the iceberg!
Next step: the kayak needs power to move forward, and it is here that balance alone is not enough. Much more is needed. Even if you have achieved balance, have good posture in the water (with your back flat, head in a neutral position, and the spine in line), and your hips and shoulders rotate with rhythm in time with your hands and breathing - even if you are doing all of these things correctly, you still might not be moving forward as efficiently and fast as you would like. This is quite common. What's wrong?
The problem is likely a weak link in the kinetic chain. Let me explain.
The term kinetic chain, which is more commonly known in sports like tennis, football, golf, and baseball, refers to the way that momentum from one body part is passed to adjacent body parts. To see what I mean, imagine your body as a chain, where each body part represents a link in the chain. The force generated by one "link" transfers to successive "links" in the chain. For instance, in tennis the most effective stroke begins with the legs, their energy being transferred upward through the body to eventuate in a powerful stroke. Likewise with pitching and batting: force transfers from the drive of the legs through the twist of the trunk (i.e., the core), then through the shoulders, arms, and eventually to the wrists and hands. But it's not that the force is simply transferred; in order to have a powerful stroke or swing or pitch or throw, each link in the chain must do its part and build upon the previous link's contribution. If there are weak links in the chain then the whole thing falls apart.
In taking this idea to swimming we'll need to make a modification, namely that the grounding of the chain is located not in your feet, but rather in your lead hand. I'll explain how below. However, as in tennis, baseball, golf and other sports, the motor - that is, the source of your power - is in your core (hips and torso). I cannot emphasize this point enough: although it is common to think of the arms and the legs as the source of power in swimming, it is actually the core that's generating the power that propels you forward.
To see what I mean, let's visualize the process.
Reaching your lead hand out to the wall in front and pressing down into the armpit will thereby relieve this hand and forearm of downward pressure. This should leave your lead hand and forearm relaxed. At the arm's (and body's) fullest extension, the hand then drives into the water and anchors there, approximately one foot below the surface. (To "anchor" is to move your hand down into the water and your elbow up and forward in front of the shoulder, achieving what is called an early vertical forearm [EVF]. I will discuss this and the technique of anchoring or "catch" in my next article.) This anchoring is analogous to the tennis player's feet planting on the ground: the plant creates the resistance necessary for the core to rotate.
Core rotation works like this. As the lead hand anchors, the recovery arm moves through its cycle and passes the head. Simultaneous with and driving this motion, the alternate hip (i.e., the hip on the side of the recovery arm) drives forward while the other hip rotates upward. The core muscles are working the entire time to instigate and transmit the power of this twist through the arms. Meanwhile, with your lead hand planted, pull your body over your hand rather than pulling your hand past your body. Your effort at this point should focus on holding your anchored hand fixed in this position, pulling on the water molecules as if you were pulling on a rope. The power of the stroke derives chiefly from this early phase and not from the finish phase, as many people believe. We enter the final finishing phase of the stroke when the chest passes over the hand, transitioning then into the recovery phase. The finish of the stroke happens just past the hip, with the hand exiting the water, rounding off (palm in) in a relaxed manner and moving forward to start the cycle anew. The momentum generated at the end of the stroke is as important as the follow-through of a swing of a bat or tennis racket. This final piece - a fast exit and relaxed arm recovery - takes us full circle and generates the force needed for the next stroke.
That, in a nutshell, is the kinetic chain: anchoring with the lead hand enables core rotation which transfers and builds power through the arms. As I stressed earlier, if there is a weak link then the power created through the chain is dissipated and propulsion is diminished accordingly. Consider the following real-life example. I recently trained an athlete - let's call her Triathlete Jane - who appeared to have textbook form: Jane's head was in a neutral position, her spine was in line, she had a good body line in the water, she extended forward properly with each stroke, her hips rotated in time with the alternating shoulder movements, and she had a proficient kick. What more could a coach ask for?! But there was a problem, namely that she wasn't achieving her full potential. This was due to a weak link in the kinetic chain: as her hand entered the water, her elbow dropped. This may seem like a small problem, but it led to a failure to establish early vertical forearm (EVF), and this in turn resulted in a loss of traction and leverage, leading to weakened hip rotation which ultimately diminished power in the stroke. The lesson to be gained from thinking of swimming in terms of the kinetic chain is that all of these things are interconnected and interdependent. What appeared to be a small isolated problem in Jane's case was in fact a significant problem that ramified throughout the entire stroke cycle.
To see the kinetic chain done properly, watch the following video of World Record Holder Grant Hackett swimming freestyle. He is balanced with a sleek body line underwater and excellent extension and body rotation. His initial catch in the water, which is extremely quick, generates an incredible amount of power. He anchors his hand (EVF) and in almost a whip like motion pulls himself over his hand. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6qIhkuzTx0
Now, I can't guarantee that these will make you swim like Hackett, but the following drills taken from Total Immersion will get you started toward developing a powerful and fluid kinetic chain.[1]
UNDER SWITCH ~ Begin in a hand lead balanced position on your left with nose up. (See Article 2: Floating Forward for a description of hand lead balanced position.) Turn nose down by moving only the head as the right hand passes by the face to move into recovery phase underwater. At this point the body should roll to opposite hand lead balanced position. The drill finishes with nose up hand lead balance on your right.
- Balance - Body should start in a balanced position with knuckles of upper hand touching the surface.
- Alignment - Body should cut through the water like a knife. Back flat, stomach in, head aligned with the spine.
- Timing - Waiting for the hand to come by the face before switching is essential to front quadrant timing. It is key to keeping length in the body and stroke.
SINGLE SWITCH ~ Repeat the under switch drill for one or more lengths of the pool. Continue the progression beginning in hand lead balance. Instead of bringing the recovery arm to the lead position underwater, bring it out of the water through the recovery phase. Repeat the drill now, nose up, nose down, with smooth effortless strokes as the body switches from side to opposite side in a balanced position. Maintain the key elements discussed in each drill up to this point. Recovery arm should be relaxed, low to the surface, close to the body, with the palm facing in. Body should remain in a balanced position throughout with the timing of the rotation fixed with the hand passing the head.
- Hand is connected to the hip - hand goes in, hip goes in.
TRIPLE SWITCH ~ Triple any of the above. For instance, to triple the under switch, one would perform three consecutive under switches with the nose down before finishing in nose up hand lead balance position.
ADVANCED
SINGLE ARM FREESTYLE ~ Begin in a hand lead balanced position on your left with nose up. (See Article 2: Floating Forward for a description of hand lead balanced position.) The opposite arm (in this case, right arm) is relaxed at your side. When ready, go nose down and without moving the right arm take a freestyle stroke, finishing in a left side balance position. As you rotate through the single arm stroke, the timing of the breathing occurs as the hand hits the water. You will breathe to the opposite side that you take the stroke (in this case, breathe to the right). Stay in the hand lead kick position as long as you need to regain your balance and your breathing. Repeat the drill trying to not take breaks between strokes. The single arm freestyle drill with the opposite arm at the side is a very challenging drill but will put together the timing of the stroke with the kinetic chain.
Practice these regularly and please don't hesitate to contact me with questions. Look for my next article
on anchoring and leverage!
[1] Laughlin, T, Delves, J. Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way To Swim Better, Faster, and Easier. Fireside; 2004.
