Welcome to the Effortless Swimming YouTube channel.
My name's Brenton Ford.
And this is feedback Friday, where every Friday, we
bring you a video of someone's stroke
to help you better understand what to look for,
and how to change it, so you can swim faster and more
efficiently.
Today we're looking at posture, and this
is something that is fundamental to fast swimming,
but it's something that not a lot of new swimmers
know about, or often do the right way.
Now what we're looking at here is the side arm view
of someone swimming.
What we look to do is try and keep the back
and the neck very long and straight.
So in that straight position it's
going to be a lot more efficient than if you've got a big arch
through the lower back.
So when we run clinics, or in our membership
when we do analysis for people all over the world, one
of the first things I look for is how's their posture.
So we want to try and keep their spine long and straight,
and keep that straight line all the way up through their neck.
So I can see in this first video how
there's quite a big arch in the lower back.
That causes extra drag and resistance
in a couple of places.
Firstly, on the chest, so it opens up more
of their chest or their torso to that oncoming water,
so they end up taking up a bigger space.
The second area that it adds resistance is on their quads,
on the top of their thighs.
You can see that the legs end up sitting just a little bit low.
The other place is kind of at the--
on someone's bum, or the top of their hips.
There you can see how there's a pool of water that sort of sits
where that arch in the back is.
And again, it's just extra effort, extra energy
that you need to use in order to overcome that drag
and resistance.
So what causes it?
Well in this case, head position is a big one.
When someone's looking too far forward,
it will generally put them in that posture
where there's too much of a notch in their lower back.
So for most people, we like them to look either straight
down or slightly further forward,
up to around 45 degrees.
Each person is different, and it depends
on what you're training for.
But anywhere within that range is fine.
But generally keep an extended neck.
As soon as you let any creases come in that neck,
or the chin is too far forward, then it's
going to cause your posture to go away
from that straight and extended position.
So very first thing is head position that's causing it.
The second thing that looks like is probably
causing that is with the left arm,
in particular, in some of those pull throughs,
pushing down on the water a lot instead of pressing back.
And that push down causes the shoulders or the upper torso
to be pushed up, which is obviously
going to sit the stomach or the core low,
and the hips will be up there.
So that is partly causing the arch in the back.
And the second thing can often just
be general tightness, or lack of mobility,
either through the hip flexors the lower
back, or the shoulders.
All of those things come into play when it comes to--
when it comes to posture.
So there's a lot that that can cause it.
Our solution is there's sort of a drill sequence
that we go through that we have in the effortless swimming
membership, which will take you through body position, balance,
and posture, and finding your balance
and posture in the water through a drill progression.
And we just did a training on this within the membership,
which was all about posture, line, and balance,
and how, if you can get that right,
then the rest of the stroke comes a whole lot easier.
Because it's like building a house.
If you get a strong base, a nice solid concrete base
to build on, that's exactly what posture, line, and balance is.
If you can build on that, then the rest of the structure
is going to be put together, and it's
going to stay for a very long time.
But if you don't have that foundation of good posture,
line, and balance, then you're going
to fall apart pretty quickly.