Front Balance (FB)

Push off from the wall on your belly with both arms at your sides and begin kicking easily. Check to be sure your posture is organized tall—remember the tight-line focus point. The crown of your head should be in line with your spine, nose pointed toward the bottom of the pool. Lightly press your buoy toward the bottom. This will raise your hips toward the surface. Adjust the amount of buoy pressure so that the cheeks of your butt just break the surface. Don’t make the mistake of pushing your face, instead of your buoy, toward the bottom—you may need to consciously tuck your chin a bit and draw your face away from the bottom to maintain your tall posture. When you need to take a breath, lift your head straight up in front and get a breath of air, then put your head down so that the crown is in line with your spine. Press your buoy again and make sure to re-flatten your lower back, making yourself as tall as possible. Each time you lift your head, your hips and legs sink rapidly toward the bottom. As soon as you return to good posture and press your buoy, you regain balance.

Stepping-Stone to FB

Using a training snorkel for this drill eliminates the distraction of lifting your head to take a breath, thus allowing you to focus completely on the basic skills of tight-line posture and balance. If you are new to snorkel use, plan on spending a half hour or so getting used to breathing with your face in the water and learning to purge the snorkel by exhaling forcefully (which you may need to do after pushing off the wall at the beginning of each length).

Feedback Tools

• When your posture is correct and you are in balance, the back quarter of your head and most of your backside (including your shoulder blades and the cheeks of your butt) will be exposed to the air, and your heels will just break the surface as you kick.

• In your nose-down position, you should see the hairballs and Band-Aids that are directly under your face, not the ones you will soon cruise over.

• If water enters the training snorkel as you do the drill, it usually indicates that you have buried your head (which means that you’ve pushed your face toward the bottom of the pool instead of keeping your head in tight-line posture) or that you have buried your whole front end by putting too much pressure on your buoy.

Experiment a Bit

After you have spent some time with the FB drill using good tight-line posture, purposely relax into a schlumpy posture for a half length or so and note how this affects your position and efforts. You will likely find that with schlumpy posture you slow down, feel less supported, have trouble regaining balance after breaths, and spend more energy. Reorganizing your head, torso, and hips back into good, tall, aquatic posture should quickly solve those problems.