Mark Threlfall: Whether you're a pure swimmer- Heather Fell: -or triathlete-
Mark: -for many of us, freestyle is the go-to stroke of choice, and I imagine many of you are
eager to go faster in the water. Heather Fell: Or to get into T1
as soon as possible. Mark: With a little
bit of effort, it is all possible. Heather: Yes. There are several aspects
to the freestyle stroke and today, we have five tips to help improve your technique.
[music] Mark:
Okay, let's begin from the top and work our way down. Our head is pretty much the heaviest part
of our body and therefore has the biggest impact on our body position. One of the big goals we look
to when we're talking about swimming technique is to have a nice streamlined and flat position
in the water. Now, here on GTN, you likely have heard us talking about the seesaw effect
by lifting our head right up out of the water or a little bit to high,
we'll find our legs start to sink, creating resistance against the water. Equally,
if we bury our head down into the water, again, that can create resistance, although that is
harder to do and less of an issue. When I'm swimming alone, one of the things
I love to do is actually relaxing my head down, so I'm looking towards the bottom of the pool,
and then lifting my eyesight up around two meters. I'm looking around two meters ahead of me around
45 degrees to the bottom of the pool. That's going to keep your body in hopefully a nice
position without lifting your head too much and driving those legs down into the ground.
[music] Heather:
Your head position is very closely linked to your breathing, because obviously you need to
move your head in order to get your air in. It's really tempting to lift your head up
too high to get in that oxygen and as a result, your legs will sink. You want to think about
trying to make your breathing nice and relaxed and smooth. You're turning your head to the side,
ideally, not more than half of your face coming out of the water. As you take that in-breath,
you turn your head back down to neutral as you exhale, and it's the exhalation which can
really have an effect on your relaxation. If you try to do trickle breath so you're
continually breathing out, that will help you to keep that smooth relaxed rhythm. Now, if you're
feeling really out of breath, you might want to consider breathing more often. You've obviously
got the option of breathing every two, every four, every six if you can only breathe on one side of
you, and you feel comfortable breathing on one side. Otherwise, you could actually alternate it
to make it into bilateral breathing, so that gives you the option of breathing every three or every
five. Whatever manages to suit for you, so you can feel relaxed and keep it as smooth as possible.
[music] Mark: We're now moving down
the chain in the body and on to possibly one of the biggest mistakes, and that is being too
flat in the water. Unfortunately, all this does is just hammers the pecs and the biceps as we pull
and we swim our way along. Ideally, we actually want to have some rotation in our stroke. This
helps to distribute the load through to our shoulders so that stabilizes, but then using
some of the big lat and back muscles to add some power to our catch and our pull. Now, to get this
nice rotation in our stroke, one way of thinking about it is actually just to extend a little bit
out to the front as we catch in the water. Big thing here, though, is as we move the
shoulders round, our hips move in sync with our shoulders.
A really good drill for this is actually three swims, six kicks. You do three normal strokes,
and then on the third stroke, you extend out onto your side, kick for six kicks, make sure that core
nicely before then starting another three strokes, and keep continuing that over and over.
[music] Heather:
Next up, you want to think about where your hand enters the water. Imagine a line that's actually
splitting your body in two, from your head down to your ankles. You want to make sure that your
hand does not go past that midline. If it is, it's going to be putting a strain on your stroke and
causing you to maybe wiggle slightly and be less efficient, but also put more of a strain
on your shoulder. Ideally, you want your hand to be going in pretty much directly in front of
your shoulder so it's set up in a nice position. Obviously, as Mark's spoken about rotation, it's
going to come hand-in-hand as you're rotating into that as your catch goes through. A great drill,
just to help remind you of where your hand is entering the water, is the salute drill. You're
going to simply tap your head on the way forward. This just gives you a bit of a reminder of where
your hand is in the air, and then hopefully you can go straight forward in front of your shoulder
from there. [music]
Mark: Now on to our final tip, right down to the bottom of our body with our leg kick. Of course,
our leg kick provides propulsion, but it's also an easy place to waste energy with an inefficient
leg kick and poor technique. Ideally, our leg kick should predominantly come from our hips
rather than from our knees as a lot of people do do. That's not to say there shouldn't be any
movement or flex in the knee. A subtle flex is absolutely fine,
but predominantly that movement and power is coming from the hips,
all the way through to our feet with a nice flex and toe off through the ankle.
Now, if you compare a sprinter to an endurance swimmer or triathlete, a sprint will have
something like a six- to eight-beat leg kick, a really fast and powerful leg kick. Whereas,
a triathlete and an endurance swimmer will have something like a two- to four-beat leg kick,
providing mostly just balance to their stroke. So, for those endurance swimmers
and those triathletes, a six- to eight-beat leg kick just isn't sustainable for those
longer distances, which is why we opt for the two- to four-beat leg kick.
With that in mind, it's actually really important that we work on our kick and make it as efficient
as possible so we can even get propulsion for the slower two- to four-beat leg kicks.
[music] Mark:
Efficient swimming is not an easy task to master, but we're confident by following
some of these tips today, you'll see some significant improvements in your stroke.
Heather: Yes, good luck with those and make sure you practice and stay patient, because
it does take a little bit of time. Hopefully, these have helped you. If you've enjoyed it,
give us a like. Remember, you can follow us on our social media channels, and you can also
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