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.