A high body position in the water is very important for fast, efficient swimming: the legs, hips and feet should all be in one horizontal line near the surface. A swimmer with low-lying legs in the water creates a huge amount of drag, slowing them down dramatically. If you swim more quickly or more easily with a pull buoy between your legs, or are dramatically quicker in a wetsuit, then this is a strong indication that a low body position is a serious issue in your stroke.
If you have a low body position in the water then you need to work on improving it as an absolute priority for your swimming: it will be the single biggest thing holding you back.
The most common causes of a poor body position are:
Pressing Down On The Water During The Catch (Chapter 13). Many swimmers try and overpower the catch phase of the freestyle stroke and end up pressing down on the water with a straight arm. This lifts them up at the front end and sinks their legs at the rear. 
Furthermore, for swimmers with good stroke technique and good natural buoyancy, a low head position can bring their legs too high at the rear and make them feel very unbalanced and unstable in the water. For such swimmers this is exacerbated further when using a wetsuit where the extra buoyancy pushes their legs higher still. Adopting a higher head position is essential for these swimmers to regain their balance and swim well in a wetsuit. We’ll discuss this more with regard to Kicktastics in Chapter 20 and also in Chapter 38.
Head technique is a very individual area of stroke technique, something that works for one swimmer will not necessarily work for another.
The legendary Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe won four Olympic gold medals and set numerous world records in the 200 m and 400 m freestyle. Often held up as having one of the most efficient freestyle strokes of all time, as Ian developed his swimming as a junior he found that he needed to keep a very high head position with his eyes just beneath the surface looking forward. With a lower head his legs rose up out of the water and he lost balance in his stroke and the effectiveness of his brilliant kick. Just like Ian, think about how your head position affects your swimming and choose the best position for your individual stroke.
The easiest way to check your body position is to ask a coach or friend to check if your heels are lightly breaking the surface as you swim. Make sure you are not doing this by bending excessively at the knee – your heels breaking the surface is only the sign of a good body position if you are achieving this with a good kicking technique, kicking mostly with a straight leg from the hip.
If you have a low body position in the water then you need to work on improving it as an absolute priority for your swimming: it will be the single biggest thing holding you back.
The most common causes of a poor body position are:
- Holding Your Breath Underwater (Chapter 7). Holding onto your breath creates excess buoyancy in the chest, which lifts you up at the front and sinks your legs. Work on developing a nice smooth exhalation into the water.
- A High-Lifting Head When Breathing (Chapter 7). In a similar manner to holding your breath, lifting your head high to breathe causes you to pivot at your hips and sink your legs. Developing your bow-wave breathing technique is essential to improving your body position.
- Looking Too Far Forward in the Water (this chapter). Many new swimmers with poor natural buoyancy and a feeling of breathing anxiety will swim looking too far forward in the water which in turn can sink the legs at the back.
- Kicking From The Knee (Chapter 9). A poor kicking technique with excess knee bend adds a lot of drag and sinks the legs. Work on moving to a kicking technique with a straighter leg driven from the hip.
- Scissor Kick (Chapter 9). A scissor kick is normally caused by a crossover of the lead arm in front of the head. This causes a loss of balance and with it an involuntary scissoring of the legs to avoid toppling onto your back. By improving your hand entry and swimming posture (Chapters 10 and 12) you will remove the scissor kick and so improve your body position.
- Dorsi Flexed Ankles (Chapter 9). Poor ankle flexibility is a problem for many triathletes with a running or cycling background. Such sports create a lot of stability in the ankle, which harms the swimmer’s ability to point their toes. The resultant drag causes the legs to drop down.
- Under Kicking (Chapter 9). Swimmers who are focusing on making their stroke very long often try a two-beat kick to further reduce effort. For many swimmers with poor natural buoyancy or poor ankle flexibility this does not produce enough lift and their legs sink downward.
- Poor Core Stabilisation (Chapter 10). If you flex through your midsection and aren’t sure how to engage your core muscles to hold your backside and legs high then your legs will likely sink.
- Poor Hip Flexibility (Chapter 29). Poor hip flexor flexibility from a lot of sitting at an office desk or lots of cycling (especially on tri-bars) can drag the legs low in the water. Work on a few simple stretches before you swim to promote range of movement around the hips.
Swimmers with very poor body position normally have three or more of these issues in place in their stroke. For this reason there’s rarely a silver-bullet solution to improving your body position – it takes an all-round approach across many areas of your stroke. It’s important not to become frustrated with this but be calm and persistent in your approach. From the perspective of our Swim Types system, Arnies are the biggest sufferers of low-lying legs, and for very muscular Arnies it is quite possible that they can never achieve as super-high a body position in the water as some female swimmers can. That’s OK, any improvement in body position will reduce drag significantly and is well worth the effort of pursuing.
Many coaches encourage all swimmers to push their heads down low into the water to help bring their legs upwards, this can be effective for a proportion of swimmers but very bad advice for others. At Swim Smooth we suggest you treat a low head position as a last resort, only using it to improve your body position if all else fails. This is because a very low headposition has several disadvantages:
- It reduces your proprioception, or ‘body awareness’, in front of the head, making the development of a good hand entry and catch harder.
- It makes it hard to see forwards in open water, which damages your navigation and drafting abilities. As we will see in Chapter 36, drafting alone can save you up to 38% of your energy expenditure – a huge reduction that would be unwise to ignore.
- It bends your spine forward and thus harms your swimming posture, making crossovers in front of the head more likely (Chapter 10).
Furthermore, for swimmers with good stroke technique and good natural buoyancy, a low head position can bring their legs too high at the rear and make them feel very unbalanced and unstable in the water. For such swimmers this is exacerbated further when using a wetsuit where the extra buoyancy pushes their legs higher still. Adopting a higher head position is essential for these swimmers to regain their balance and swim well in a wetsuit. We’ll discuss this more with regard to Kicktastics in Chapter 20 and also in Chapter 38.Head technique is a very individual area of stroke technique, something that works for one swimmer will not necessarily work for another.
The legendary Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe won four Olympic gold medals and set numerous world records in the 200 m and 400 m freestyle. Often held up as having one of the most efficient freestyle strokes of all time, as Ian developed his swimming as a junior he found that he needed to keep a very high head position with his eyes just beneath the surface looking forward. With a lower head his legs rose up out of the water and he lost balance in his stroke and the effectiveness of his brilliant kick. Just like Ian, think about how your head position affects your swimming and choose the best position for your individual stroke.
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