Keep Your Core Connected

It is simple physics. The more you keep your body inline, core connected, the more efficient you will be moving through the water. Regardless of the stroke you are swimming, it pays to keep this simple fact in mind.

We have all seen swimmers that snake back an forth in the water during freestyle of backstroke. Likewise we have seen the fly swimmer who rears clear out of the water just to dive down deep for the next stroke. Or perhaps it was a breastroker who bobbed her head up and down like a chicken through each stroke cycle. These are all examples of swimmers who are not keeping their strokes connected.

Think of the plastic or wooden toy snake. With all of those hinges through it's body you can see that if you tried to push it through the water that it would just coil up and not go very far in the water. All of the energy of the forward motion in the water gets absorbed into the coil of the snake... energy is lost. That lost energy greatly diminishes efficiency. By improving your body's connectivity you will improve your efficiency... that means more speed in your swimming.

Take a toy torpedo. The kind you find in backyard pools and bathtubs. These rubber toys are a great example of efficiency in the water. When you push or throw one of these through the water, they really go! The rigid design allows nearly all of the forward energy of the release to go into forward motion of the torpedo... very efficient!

When swimming you want to keep your core (head through the upper leg) connected as much as possible. It does not matter which stroke you are doing... stay connected.

In, long axis strokes (Free and Back) it means rotating along the length of your body, keeping your arms and hands moving along the long axis (not swinging out wide from your body or crossing it's center axis), and allowing no hip sway, head drop/lift, etc.

In the short axis strokes (Breast and Fly) it means keeping head, shoulders, abdomen, and upper legs in line. In these strokes we want to avoid extreme height or depth. We want to keep from lifting our heads independent of our bodies, or arching at the back/bending at the waste. Undulations in fly should be tight, powerful, and quick.

The bottom line is that we want all movement in our strokes to lead to some sort of propulsion. Body movement that does not create, result from, or lead to propulsion is likely a waste of energy and efficiency.