Dynamic Posture and Balance Drills

Side Glide With Breathing (SGB)

This drill is an alternation between the SGND and SGNU drills. Start as you would for the SGNU drill. With good posture and balance, take several breaths in the nose-up position, turn your head so that your nose points toward the bottom of the pool, and exhale a little bit of air underwater. Then turn your head back to the nose-up position. Take several breaths in this position before turning your head to exhale again underwater. The only thing you move in this drill, besides your legs, is your head. The body should stay in a balanced, side-glide position throughout the drill. As you practice this drill, work toward exhaling more air each time you are nose down and try to take fewer breaths each time you turn your head to the nose-up position until you can exhale normally underwater and until you can take just a single breath when nose up. Do this drill on both sides of your body.

Feedback Tools

• When your nose points up, your head should be in the same position as in the SGNU drill—ears under the water. When your nose points toward the bottom, just the back of your head is exposed to the air. The idea is to rotate your head as if it were on a skewer (one that runs through your spine and up through your crown) without bending the skewer.

• Feel for that dry strip of flesh all the way down your side arm, from your shoulder to your wrist, at all times during this drill. Many swimmers tend to lift the head a bit when turning to the nose-up position. This causes the hips to drop. You’ll feel the water line creep up your side arm toward your shoulder, indicating that you have lost your balance. You may need to press your side and the back of your head slightly toward the bottom of the pool in order to avoid lifting it as you rotate it to the nose-up position.

• Another common tendency with this drill is to lean on the extended arm, pressing it toward the bottom of the pool as the head turns for a breath. This is an attempt to artificially support a slightly lifted head. The cure is to support yourself by leaning on your buoy more and by keeping the extended arm at a slightly downward angle. This arm should feel weightless throughout the drill.

Experiment a Bit

As with each of the other drills so far, it is helpful to spend time consciously shifting back and forth between holding a tight-line posture and relaxing into a schlumpy posture. Becoming aware of how the two different postures affect your swimming will help motivate you to make a habit of good posture.

 

FOCUS POINT ➤ Risky Breathing

To take a breath, the uneducated swimmer instinctively lifts his head to a position where he is absolutely sure he’ll get nothing but air, with no risk of swallowing water. This causes the hips and legs to sink—maybe a little, maybe a lot. A 2-inch (5 cm) vertical lift of the head can cause a 4- to 6-inch (10 to 15 cm) drop of the hips, which shows up as an 8- to 12-inch (20 to 30 cm) drop of the feet—enough to nearly double form drag. Sensing this problem, the uneducated swimmer then uses extra kicking to support his hips and legs near the surface. The process becomes a struggle that wastes a lot of energy.

You, on the other hand, must be risky about how low you keep your head when going for air—risky enough that you might take in some water. Hint: If you never ever take in water, then you are not being risky enough. Rotate your head far enough that your nose is pointed more skyward than sideways. The closer you come to a nose-straight-up position, the deeper your head can be when you take a breath. If you create a habit of going for a risky-deep head position every time you breathe, you will decrease the amount of energy you waste in extra support kicking. You goal is zero head-lift, zero torso-lift, and zero extra-energy consumption.

Balanced-Body Rolling (BBR)

This drill is best done with a training snorkel. Push off from the wall in the same position you used for the FB drill—on your belly and with both arms at your sides, nose pointed toward the bottom of the pool—and begin kicking easily. Keep a tight line and keep enough pressure on your buoy to stay balanced. Once you are balanced, roll onto your side. Keep your nose pointed straight down and keep your hands at your sides. If you keep a tight line and keep pressure on your buoy as you roll, you will already be in a balanced position when you reach your side. Stay balanced while on your side. With your arms at your sides, you’ll likely need a bit more buoy pressure to be balanced than when you had one arm extended in front. After you are well balanced, roll again to your front, keeping a tight line and pressure on your buoy as you roll. Do this drill rolling in both directions.

Feedback Tools

• As you roll from the front position to the side position, you should feel the strip of flesh from your shoulder to your wrist become exposed to the air all at once without having to adjust your balance.

• As you roll back to the front position, you should feel the cheeks of your butt become exposed to the air without having to adjust your balance.

• To stay balanced, you may find that you need to keep a bit more pressure on your buoy when you are on your side than when you are on your front.

Experiment a Bit

Again, spend time consciously shifting back and forth between holding a tight-line posture and relaxing into a schlumpy posture. If you do enough of this, you will begin to set up an automatic feedback cycle that will set off alarm bells in your head whenever you begin to break out of good posture.

 

FOCUS POINT ➤ Red Dot

In many swimming drills and in full-stroke swimming, it can be helpful to imagine a 2-inch (5 cm) red dot in the center of the top of your head that you keep underwater at all times. A person watching you from a vantage point under the water as you swim toward him should not be able to see that red dot move up, down, or side to side as your body rotates or as you take strokes. They would only see the dot rotate as you turn your head to breathe. This focus point combines the three head-related ideas discussed thus far: the neck tension of aquatic posture, keeping your nose pointed toward the bottom of the pool when not breathing, and the zero head-lift of risky breathing.

Vertical Kick With Rotation (VKR)

    Freestyle swimming is powered by rhythmic rotations of the body around its long axis. The VKR drill teaches you how to initiate full-body rotations and how to alternate them in a rhythmic fashion.

   The VKR drill starts like the standard VK drill—in deep water with your hands on your chest, elbows tucked in at your sides, and a tight-line posture. After you have established a comfortable vertical-flutter-kick rhythm, use one of your kicks to rotate your body roughly a quarter turn to the right and then continue flutter kicking in this new position. After a handful of flutter kicks, use one of your kicks to make a quarter turn back toward the left where you started. The kicks you use to rotate yourself—one kick to turn you to the right and, later, one kick to turn you to the left—are called rotation kicks.

With a rotation kick, kicking your right leg forward drives your right hip backward (Newton’s equal and opposite reaction). Simultaneously, the left leg recovers backward, which drives the left hip forward (Newton again). Left hip forward and right hip back equals turning your hips to the right. To rotate your hips to your right, kick your right leg as you recover the left leg. To rotate your hips to your left, kick your left leg as you recover the right. It sounds simple, but it takes some real awareness and focus to grasp. It does not take an extra-hard or extra-large kick to rotate. Simply release your hips and let them rotate that quarter turn, then hold them in place as you continue to flutter kick. Each time your hips rotate, allow the top part of your body to take a ride along with your hips (which will happen automatically if you are holding a tight line). You may be tempted to try to help the rotation by throwing your shoulders around as you kick. Don’t. Throwing your shoulders doesn’t help. Not at all. Not even for you. Just take my word for it.

Once you are comfortable with making occasional rotations, add rhythm to the rotations. You’ll use what is called a six-beat rotation pattern, which is simply two flutter kicks (F) followed by one rotation kick (R), which turns you to the right, followed by two flutter kicks and another rotation kick that turns you back to the left, where you started. That’s a total of six kick beats to complete a cycle of two rotations (FFRFFR), after which a new cycle starts without breaking rhythm (. . . FFRFFRFFRFFRFFR. . .). It helps to count these beats out loud, one for each foot as it kicks forward. Continue this six-beat rotation pattern while keeping your head still, nose pointed straight forward—just let your body rotate under your stationary head.

Even if you have mastered standard VK without fins, I strongly encourage you to use fins when you are first learning VKR. Fins will allow you to slow the tempo of your kick. This allows distinct awareness of each beat, making it easier to pinpoint which kicks should be flutter kicks and which should be rotation kicks. Fins will also improve the feedback you get about which muscles you are using to drive each rotation. Once you master VKR with full-size fins, you can try short fins and, eventually, bare feet. In moving to bare feet, you may find that hanging from a small floating object held against your chest is helpful, as it was with VK.

Feedback Tools

• Each time you rotate your hips, you should be aware that your shoulders rotate at exactly the same time as, and exactly as far as, your hips. Your tight-line posture instantly transmits the rotation of your hips along your spine, allowing the action of your legs to drive the rotation of the entire upper body as a single unit. If you find that your shoulders lag behind your hips or that they don’t turn as far as your hips, you have lost your tight line. If you find your hips lagging behind your shoulders, then you are trying to help the rotation by throwing your shoulders ahead of your hips (which, surprisingly, works to hinder hip rotation instead of helping it).

• Check to see if, in preparation for a rotation kick, you are bending your knee on the recovering leg to bring that foot a bit farther back for a bigger or more forceful kick to drive the rotation. It is important not to try to help the rotation by doing this—it simply moves the rotation fulcrum from your hips to your knees, effectively cutting your lever length in half and making your effort much less effective.

Experiment a Bit

After you are comfortable with an easy six-beat rotation pattern, experiment with increasing the tempo. If you maintain the six-beat pattern, a faster kick tempo will result in a faster rotation tempo. With faster rotations, you may find that you need a bit more tension on your tight line to keep the upper body rotating as a separate unit. And, as usual, be sure to experiment with schlumpy vs. tight-line postures.

Long-Axis Rotations (LAR)

This drill takes the long-axis rotation skills you just learned in the VKR drill and puts them to use in a horizontal position, where you will add your balance skills to the mix. Once you are comfortable with VKR, you can transition to LAR by slowly leaning forward and allowing your hips and legs to rise to the surface. Keep a tight line as you transition to a horizontal position, and keep the same six-beat rotation pattern going. Press your buoy to the balance point and be sure your nose is pointed straight down. Once you are horizontal, extend your arms forward toward the end of the pool. Your flutter kicks will propel you gently along while your rotation kicks will result in quarter turns that swing your navel from pointing roughly 45 degrees to the right to pointing roughly 45 degrees to the left. Do not try to rotate all the way to the side-glide position. Once you are comfortable with the six-beat rotation pattern in a horizontal position, you may begin by pushing off from the wall instead of by starting from VKR.

When it is time to grab a breath, turn your head as you rotate and allow the elbow on the breathing side to slide back to your chest while the fingers on that hand remain pointed toward the end of the pool (figure 4.8). This gets the

arm out of the way of your head without taking a stroke and without pushing down on the water. As you rotate back, extend that arm back out in front of you. You may want to go a bit beyond the 45-degree mark when rotating to the air to avoid lifting your head (remember the red dot and risky-breathing focus points). It is important to have at least three, and preferably five, rotations between breaths—at least until you are able to take a breath with no effect on your balance and no change in your rotation rhythm.

Use of a training snorkel can greatly shorten the learning cycle for the basic skills of LAR by eliminating the distraction of having to turn your head to breathe. Continued use of the snorkel is valuable for further refinement when long segments of LAR are called for in the workouts, but you’ll still need to know how to take a breath when the snorkel is not convenient. If you have no deep water in which to use VKR as a starting point, it is still possible to learn the LAR drill by starting from a wall push-off. Just plan on it taking a bit longer to accomplish.

Feedback Tools

• Use your butt for feedback about balance—at all times you should have one butt cheek or the other exposed to the air. Doing so indicates that you are keeping your hips glued to the surface.

• You should be aware that each rotation happens with and because of a single kick beat, rather than two or three beats.

• Matching your rotation tempo to a tempo beeper (or to a familiar tune with a distinctive beat in your head) can help you determine whether you are changing the tempo of your rotations. The goal is to set and keep an uninterrupted rotation tempo throughout the drill (even when breathing).

• Be aware of whether you are using a bigger or more forceful kick to drive the rotation. All the kicks should be the same size and force.

• Use the red dot and risky-breathing focus points to help you stay aware of whether you are lifting your head for air.

Experiment a Bit

After you become comfortable with easy LAR, try a variety of different kicking tempos, from very slow to very fast, always with the goal of making the hips and thorax rotate as a single unit. Try doing LAR on your back and on your sides. Also, supplement the usual tight-schlumpy-tight posture-switching experiment with a similar balance experiment: occasionally release buoy pressure to become unbalanced and see how this affects rotation, stability, and forward progress.