- Rotation is a key element of the front crawl stroke.
It enables you to be strong and efficient in the water.
So once you have mastered the coordination
of your arms and your legs,
it's time to look at the body roll.
- Yeah, now this movement might well seem
a little bit unnatural and hard to get the hang of,
but once you start feeling used to getting into that pool
and rotating with each stroke, you'll be amazed
at how much faster you'll swim front crawl
and how much easier it's going to feel.
- So it's time to find that perfect body rotation.
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Before we go any further, I just want to clarify
what we mean by rotation.
So in swimming terms, it's a movement
around a central axis that goes down
through your head, your shoulders, your torso,
and then an imaginary line in which your legs
move either side of.
- Yeah, and you want to think of your body
like horizontal in the water,
but rotating 45 degrees to each side of that axis
with thinking of zero as being parallel
face down to the pool floor.
Now for each stroke cycle, so that one left pull,
one right pull, we're going to think of it
doing two rotations each type when we're swimming.
- You might be questioning
how this additional movement
can actually benefit your stroke.
Well efficient swimming is very much
about having a strong propulsive phase in your stroke
and also having a correct body position.
And rotation will benefit both of these aspects..
- Now reducing drag is key in any sport, really,
but especially in swimming with the density of water
that we've got to overcome.
So by rotating when we're swimming,
this allows us to take our recovery arm
out of the water, which is less drag in itself,
and it also allows us to breathe a lot easier
because we can clear the water much quicker
to get that air in.
- Yeah, and rotating into your catch
is not only going to help you catch the water,
but then also, as you rotate over the pool phase of it,
it allows you to recruit those larger muscles
and it's going to put less strain on those smaller muscles
around your shoulders, which are susceptible to overuse,
as well as allowing you
to put more power through the stroke.
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Making a significant change to any aspect of your stoke
is going to require a lot of time and patience.
And rotation is no different.
So we need to break the stroke down
and that is where these drills come in handy.
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Let's start by stripping it right back
and taking the arms out of the equation.
For this one, it's a good idea to pop some fins on
as it'll help you with propulsion
and get your body horizontal in the water.
Push off the wall with arms in front of you,
and then pull one hand down to your thigh
and leave it by your side with the other arm
still extended out in front.
And now rotate your body so that your extended arm
is underneath your body and your arm against your thigh
is on top, just on the surface.
This should position you parallel to the lane rope
or the side of the pool.
And then, in this position, you should find it easier
to breath by just having to turn your head slightly.
Now this is just a drill, as you are rotated
to a full 90 degrees, but when you come back to full stroke,
this should give you more of an idea
of how that rotation feels in the water.
Make sure you stay on one side for one length,
swap over onto the other side,
and swap your arms over to correlate.
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- So it's a natural progression
to then add some arms back into your swimming,
but still in this drill type format.
So what we're going to do is find that rotated position
that we were in in the previous drill,
but then we're going to have one arm out front
and kick for six kicks before then sending through
with the other arm that's been racing
and flipping onto the other rotated side,
and with another six kicks, keep doing that
right down the length of the pool.
You can, of course, keep your fins on
if that's going to make things a little bit easier.
Now, though this does seem
like a exaggerated rotation position to be in,
it really helps to bring those strokes
back into the stroke from those other drills
and then just start putting the stroke back together.
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- It's time to up the tempo for the arms,
but still sticking with just one at a time.
You're going to have your spare arm resting by your side.
Now for the front arm, as your hand goes into the water,
you're going to rotate towards that side.
And then throughout the pull, you rotate your body
through to the opposite side so that on recovery,
this shoulder is then rotated towards the ceiling.
Now obviously you're going to have your face
in the water during this, so this is a little bit harder
when it comes to the breathing.
You'll naturally find that you'll probably want to breathe
under the side of the arm that you're actually using.
So it's very much about working out the correct timing
and getting this right with the rotation.
So if you've got enough rotation,
you should be able to breathe as your hand
comes over for the recovery phase.
And obviously, the more rotation you have,
the less head movement and the easier it is.
If you're ready to take it to the next level,
then you can try breathing on the opposite side.
So for this, you need to time it as your arm
that you're pulling with is in the propulsive phase,
as this will naturally rotate that shoulder
up to that side and, in theory,
as you've got more propulsion,
you'll have a little bit more lift
so it should be easy to breathe on that side.
It does just take a little bit of coordination
to start with, though.
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- So now it's time to add in both of our arms
to the swim stroke, and what this drill does
is focus on the recovery phase
to really start encouraging more rotation.
So what we're going to do is
as our recovering arm comes out of the water,
try and keep it nice and close to our body
and drag it essentially from our thigh,
past our hips, along our torso, up to your armpit,
and then even past your ear before we drop it
back into the water to start the next stroke.
Now this essentially can be thought of
as zipping up the side of your body
and this action is really going to be quite hard
if we don't have a good rotation.
Now ideally you should try and avoid using fins
for this drill 'cause it just keeps things
a little bit more realistic.
(upbeat music)
- We're almost back to a normal full stroke.
And if you do naturally breathe bilaterally,
then you're already there.
But if not, this drill you need to breathe
every third stroke, which is basically
going to make sure that you breathe on either side.
And if you currently just breathe on one side,
you'll probably find that naturally
you're a little bit stronger on that side
and you'll find that you're rotating more one way
than you are the other.
So this should help to even out your stroke.
Before we wrap things up, I do just want to reiterate
that rotation needs to only be to about 45 degrees
as over rotation can bring other problems with it.
- Now it might seem like an awful lot of work right now,
but trust us, mastering front crawl technique
is definitely worth it in the long run.
And hopefully you find these drills
that we've incorporated today useful,
but if you've got any of your own ones,
please let us know in the comments section below.
We'd love to read about those.
Hopefully you've enjoyed this video,
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And if you want to see another video
all about the freestyle technique explained,
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And then, if you've got problems with sinking legs
whilst you're swimming and you want some tips on that one,
we've got a video that'll suit you right here.