Your Swimming Machine

Earlier I mentioned that freestyle swimming is a series of alternating side-glides connected by propulsive strokes. Rotating correctly, with good initiation and properly connected arms, allows the swimmer to involve much more muscle mass and power than when he is rotating incorrectly or with improperly connected arms or when simply swimming flat. Before I can explain how this works, let’s introduce a bit of terminology. I divide a single-arm stroke cycle into three parts—the stroke, the recovery, and the entry and extension.

1. The stroke is the propulsive underwater action of moving the hand from the fully extended position in front of the body to the finish position somewhere by your thigh. The stroke starts as the body begins to rotate from one side-lying position, and it ends as the body finishes rotating to the other side-lying position.

2. The recovery is the non-propulsive action of taking the arm out of the water from the spot by your thigh and carrying it through the air to a point where the hand is even with or just past the top of the head. The body stays on its side while the arm recovers—no rotation at all, just gliding—and the other arm simply remains extended out front at a bit of a downward angle, helping keep the body long throughout the recovery.

3. The entry and extension is the movement of the arm and hand from the point just past the top of the head to full extension. The entry starts as the body begins to rotate from one side-lying position and ends as the body finishes rotating to the other side-lying position. To an observer, it should appear that body rotation is the reason that the arm enters the water and then extends in front of the body. You should feel as if the arm is de-spooling off the rotating body rather than as if the hand is stabbing forward from the shoulder. From here, go back to step 1, the stroke, to start a new stroke cycle.

 

Note that your arm motions alternate with each core body rotation. With one rotation, the right arm is engaged in 1 above while the left arm is engaged in 3, and vice versa on the next rotation—which brings us back to the topic of how you create those rotations and how you connect your strokes to them.

In the previous chapter, you learned and practiced leg-driven core-rotation skills in the VKR and LAR drills. In swimming, you want to use these leg-driven core rotations as the main engine of propulsion and to allow the shoulders, arms, and hands to act more as transmissions than engines, distributing the work among many muscle groups. How can rotating around the long axis of the body (rotating the hips and shoulders in a plane at right angles to your intended motion) propel you toward the far wall? To answer that, think of your body as a swimming machine—much as your car is a driving machine.

The car has an engine, which produces rotational forces by way of its crankshaft. Your swimming machine’s engine encompasses your legs and core lower-torso muscles. Used properly, they initiate the rotations of your hips, spine, and shoulders.

The car’s transmission and differential transmit the rotation of the crankshaft to the tires. In your swimming machine, muscles of the back, shoulders, and arms act as the transmission and differential. They do this by supporting and stabilizing the upper arm, forearm, and hand in order to direct the core’s rotational forces through them to the water.

What began as rotational force from the engine is finally applied to the road through the tires to produce linear motion. The tires grip a spot on the road so that the applied force becomes propulsion. Because your swimming machine is an aquatic craft, you have paddles—your arms and hands—instead of tires. The large surface area of your arm-plus-hand paddle, in a sense, holds onto a spot in the water so that the force of core body rotation produces linear propulsion.

For your car to work properly, all three components must work together—the engine turns the crankshaft, the transmission is engaged, and the tires grip the road. If any one of the components is not operating properly, the vehicle will come to a halt—so too with your swimming machine.

Imagine that your swimming machine is in motion, gliding on your right side just as the hand on your recovering left arm has passed your head. Your right arm is extended out front. You can see this position in figure 5.4b on page 53. Kick your right leg to initiate rotation (the engine) of your entire body around your tight line (the crankshaft). As your body begins to rotate, you engage your back, shoulder, and arm muscles (the transmission) by rotating your upper arm to get your forearm and hand (the paddle) moving toward vertical and as far out in front as possible without dropping your elbow (figure 5.4c, page 53).

This action firms the entire muscular path from the spine to the hand. At this point, early in your rotation, your transmission is fully engaged. Once the forearm and hand are at a 45-degree angle toward vertical, the paddle has established a traction spot to hold onto. Maintain traction by keeping your paddle as vertical as possible and glued to that spot as your body rotates past it (figure 5.4d, page 53).

If you drop your elbow or simply use your arm and shoulder muscles to yank your hand backward in the water, you’ll be slipping water—the same as spinning your wheels in your car. Keep your transmission engaged as your core body rotation continues by applying only enough shoulder and arm force to finish the stroke at the same moment that core body rotation finishes.

Leg-driven body rotation makes your swimming more powerful and fluid, reduces local muscle fatigue, and has great fitness benefits. You involve as much as five times more muscle mass as you would when using primarily arm and shoulder muscles to do the work. This greatly increases the amount of fat that is burned during the few hours following a high-intensity workout.