- Front crawl stroke, when done well,
is a smooth and continuous movement that looks effortless.
It's actually made up, though, of several components
and to get to this stage, you gotta have them
all working together and dialled in.
- Well, we're going to be continuing
to break down the stroke so that you can perfect
and develop your front crawl and in today's video,
we're gonna be addressing rotation.
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- Don't rely purely on your arm strength
to pull you through the water.
You need to add in full body rotation.
As much as having super flexible shoulders might allow you
to have that range of movement that you need for swimming,
you are gonna be losing out on some potential power
as well as making yourself more vulnerable to injury.
- So the rotation in front crawl should all happen
around your longitudinal axis.
Now what I mean by this is imagine a line going
from the top of your head, through your nose,
and straight down between your feet.
So everything from your shoulders, your torso, your hips
should all rotate around that axis.
There's no movement from side to side.
And what this does is it enables far more muscle groups
to be engaged, particularly your back muscles.
And this is gonna make your stroke far more powerful.
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- The front crawl stroke can be broken into four phases.
The catch, the pull, the exit, and the recovery.
Now, rotation actually happens throughout all four of these
and it's essential in order to have
a smooth and efficient stroke.
And actually you only spend a very small moment completely
flat on your front cause when you're pulling
with your right arm, for example,
your left side will be up and vice versa.
- Yeah, your hips, your torso, and your shoulders
should all move and rotate around that central axis
that I've already mentioned.
But your head does not necessarily need to.
If you're not taking a breath, then you should keep
your head looking forwards and down within the water.
But on the topic of taking a breath,
the rotation actually really helps this.
So when you rotate your hips and your shoulders,
you should also move your head in sync with that
so you rotate around to take your breath,
which is a heck of a lot easier than trying to take a breath
when you're lying flat on your stomach without rotation.
To be honest, I can't really do that.
You have to crane your neck quite a lot.
Once you've taken your breath to the side,
just rotate back around in sync with your shoulders
and your hips and then just try and keep it nice and still
and that's gonna minimise any drag
and any potential snaking down the pool.
- Okay, it's time to look at some drills
that are gonna help with your rotation.
And for these, it's such a good idea to pop some fins on
so you can then focus purely on your body position
without having to worry about anything else.
- We're gonna start by stroking it back
and we're gonna take away the arms,
we're gonna go no arms for this first drill
and its a drill that I like to call kick rotation
and for this, I suggest using some fins.
We're gonna start horizontally, flat on our stomach.
We're gonna do six kicks or around two to three seconds
and then we're gonna rotate onto our right hand side
and we're gonna rotate moving everything in sync,
our hips and our shoulders all together
and then we're gonna do another six kicks
and this is a good opportunity also to take a breath.
And then rotate again back, flat to our stomach,
another six kicks, and then to our left hand side.
Just keep repeating that over and over
to complete a whole length.
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- Okay, for this one, you need to keep your fins on
and you can just start with one arm extended,
one arm by your side.
So basically, superman position.
Now that arm that's extended needs to be the lower side
and your arm by your side is gonna be on the top
and you're gonna try and make yourself feel parallel
to the side wall.
Once you've got that position, then try and breathe
on that side once you're relaxed enough and practise putting
your face down to face the bottom of the pool
as though you were swimming front crawl
and then just rotate your head back
when you need to breathe.
Stay in that position for the whole length
and then swap to the other side when you're coming back.
And you'll probably notice that one sides harder
than the other, especially if you're used
to only breathing in one direction.
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- Alright, so now for single arm drill.
We're gonna start by using fins for this
and then when you progress, you can chuck those away
and start improving since your main sets
are in your everyday sessions.
Now, one option with this is to do the drill
with one arm fully extended out in front of you
and do the single arm drill with the other arm.
Now, you need to focus on the rotation with this
so making sure your shoulders, your torso and hips
all rotating together but with the breathing,
you're gonna struggle to breathe to this side
where the arm is out extended in front of you.
You're gonna wanna breathe to the moving arm side
and still just really concentrate on that rotation.
The other option is to put the arm down by your side.
Now this is a slight progression
and really the more preferred option
because you're actually getting slightly more rotation.
So again, same movement, doing single arm
with the other arm, okay,
and the rotation is exactly the same
but this time with the breathing,
we're gonna breathe the other way,
away from our moving arm and then where you've got pressure
on the water with that moving arm to allow us to breathe.
Now, the rotation and the breathing all in this is really
gonna emphasise and reinforce that rotation for our stroke
so it is a hard drill and I'd recommend doing maybe
half a length and then swimming off the other half length
during your sessions.
- Alright, we're progressing it further now
but actually using doggy paddle.
But by that I mean the full extension doggy paddle
so arm out in front and arm out to the side
and your going to use this for six kicks on either side
so take one stroke, when you're at the full extension,
rotate fully to the side, hold that for six kicks,
and then pull underneath, with an underneath recovery,
back to the other side, hold for another six kicks.
And then you can incorporate breathing with this.
Once you've taken your breath,
put your head back to the centre line
and try and keep minimal movement of your head.
Do this for a length and then progress it to full strokes
still pausing for six kicks.
So instead of doing the underwater recovery,
your arm will recover over the top, but you're gonna rotate
fully so you'll be facing the wall for six kicks each side.
- Right now, finishing off with something a little bit fun
and light hearted, the corkscrew drill.
Now this one does come with a slight warning
cause it can leave you feeling a little bit dizzy.
So do it somewhere near a wall or a lane rope
in case you need to grab hold and perhaps
with not too many people around
because it does leave you a tendency to drift
from one side of a lane rope to another.
Now, you just wanna push off from the wall
to one front crawl stroke on your front
and then rotate straight over onto your back
and do one backstroke, and then rotate back onto your front,
do one front crawl stroke, and just keep repeating that.
See, you're going around in this corkscrew motion.
But do remember to unwind, so go back the other way,
otherwise you could end up feeling a little bit ill.
That does seem a little bit silly and yes, light hearted
but actually there's a lot of value to this drill
because it does really help with our body awareness
and really to nail that rotation.
(soft pop music)
- Right, it's time to put it all back together
and it is worth noting that in these drills,
most of them will actually over exaggerating the amount
of rotation you need when it comes to normal stroke.
But, when you're trying to change something
that you've practised hundreds of hundreds of times
that you would've done in a freestyle stroke,
even something minute is gonna feel quite dramatic.
And it is worth noting that most of rotation needs to come
from your hips so when you do go back to doing full stroke,
it's a good idea to keep your fins on.
It just makes it a little bit easier.
- Now, also adding to that, most of this has been focusing
on the hip and shoulder rotation but with any changes
within your rotation, it can also change other aspects
of the stroke like your hand entry.
So just make sure that you maintain a good hand entry
in line with your shoulder.
You're not crossing over the centre line
too much or even going to wide.
- See rotation as the foundation
cause it does affect all the phases of the stroke
and once you've mastered it, it's amazing
how all the other components just suddenly feel
more efficient and more smooth without extra effort.
- Yeah, I couldn't agree more and we are right in the middle
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