swim smooth

Paul Newsome and Adam Young

SwimSmoothThe complete coaching system for

swimmers and triathletes

Introduction

Developing a good freestyle swimming technique is essential to swim well in the pool and open water alike. A good stroke technique reduces your drag and increases your propulsion for a given level of effort, meaning you move more quickly or more easily through the water, or both!

OVERGLIDER JANE

Paul: When I fi rst started coaching in Australia I worked

with a swimmer called Jane who was struggling to keep

up in the slow lane of my squad. She had a large pause

in her stroke timing which meant that she accelerated and

decelerated on every stroke. She certainly looked smooth

and effi cient from the poolside but once we looked at her

with underwater video analysis it soon became clear that

she had a large dead-spot at full extension and she was

“putting on the brakes”. She was a long way from reaching

her potential in the water.

By working with Jane to keep her arm movements more

continuous she soon developed a better feel for the water

and found that she was moving more quickly and easily

through the water. Six months on she’s now leading the

middle lane of my Wednesday morning squad, next stop

the top lane Jane!

As a swimmer, continually developing and refi ning your stroke technique is a never ending effort, it’s not something you should just do when you initially start swimming freestyle but something that should form a core component of your training and preparation every week.

You’ve probably seen great swimmers on the TV or on Youtube, or perhaps even in person at your local pool. Elite swimming styles vary, some moving with a long smooth style whilst others power along with a

We worked on removing the deadspots from Jane’s stroke

Freestyle Stroke Technique

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CORE 1 Freestyle Stroke Technique2

more punchy technique. These styles can look quite different but when broken down, both share all the common elements of a great stroke technique.

In this section we’re going to take a good look at each aspect of the freestyle stroke in turn, pointing out common fl aws and show you step by step methods to improve your technique. We’ll refer to Appendix 1, which contains drills and visualisations for you to use to develop each aspect of your stroke.

Before we get started, let’s examine swimming ‘effi ciency’ – a concept that always crops up in relation to stroke technique but is often quite misunderstood.

The Nature Of Swimming Effi ciency

Elite pool and open water swimmers have great stroke technique which is one reason why they move so quickly through the water. A great stroke technique makes an elite swimmer so effi cient that even at a nice steady pace they can swim faster than most ‘normal’ swimmers can sprint.

Your effi ciency determines how fast you move through the water for a given level of effort. It’s not just about swimming at a low effort easily, effi ciency applies just as much when you are racing at a hard effort too. If you are effi cient at racing efforts you will move more quickly than someone of the same fi tness but who is less effi cient than you.

Effi ciency is extremely important in swimming but don’t think of it as a fi xed level for a given swimmer. Your effi ciency changes as your effort level (easy vs. steady vs. hard pace), fatigue level (fresh vs. tired) and swimming environment changes (pool vs. open water). This is why it’s important to work on your swim-ming fi tness (see Core #2) and racing skills (see Core #3) at the same time as your stroke technique. If you simply work on your stroke technique at a steady level of effort in the pool your effi ciency will fall away dramatically at a higher level of effort or in open water.

Working on all three of the cores of swimming development is the very best way of developing your swimming technique and effi ciency. Increased swim specifi c fi tness allows you to sustain faster swimming

Olympic Gold Medallist Rebecca Adlington has a very effi cient and fast stroke. She can swim around 1:15 /100m at a steady pace.


CORE 1 Freestyle Stroke Technique 3

for longer, giving you more time to work on your stroke technique and effi ciency in the ‘effort zone’. Later in Core #2 we’ll take a detailed look at developing your swim specifi c fi tness.

What It’s Like To Be Truly Effi cient

Many intermediate level swimmers, perhaps swimming around 1:45/100m, believe that although they are not fast swimmers they are still effi cient as they can sustain this speed at quite a low level of effort. Unfortunately this is not truly effi cient swimming. Elite swim-mers’ strokes are so effi cient that they physically cannot swim as slowly as 1:45/100m without deliberately disrupting their stroke technique to do so. An elite swimmer might race at 0:55/100m but swim at a ‘steady all day pace’ of 1:10/100m – incredible stuff!

If you’ve already worked on your stroke technique you may fi nd these facts about the level of elite swimmer’s effi ciency quite depressing. That’s OK, the mistake you might have made was to focus prima-rily on reducing your drag rather than increasing your propulsive effi ciency at the same time. As we’ll see in section ##, propulsive effi ciency means that for a given level of effort you create more pro-pulsion. Working on your propulsive technique is not about makings things harder, it’s about directing the effort you are putting into the water in the right direction to push you forwards more quickly. We’re confi dent you’ll take some large strides forward in your swimming by working on this area of your stroke.

Drag reduction was very much the focus of things in the early 1990s and it’s still heavily promoted in some places on the internet. Whilst drag reduction is still seen as important in modern swim coaching, we now understand it is a mistake to focus on it at the expense of propulsive technique. It’s the combination of the two that’s important, we could say:

true swimming effi ciency � drag effi ciency � propulsive effi ciency

Technical point 1: The difference between swimming at 1:10 /100m and 1:45 /100m is even larger

than it might seem. Since drag power increases with the cube of speed #add ref#, an

object travelling through water at 1:10 /100m requires a 330% higher effort than at

1:45 /100m. This goes to show how amazingly effi cient an elite swimmer actually is.

Technical point 2: Elite swimmers are very fi t and this is a factor in how fast they can swim but data

from other sports shows that an elite athlete’s power output is normally only 20-

30% higher than well trained age grouper swimmers. This relatively small difference

cannot account for the much larger difference in speed that we see between elite

swimmers and age group swimmers and triathletes. The rest comes from their true

swimming effi ciency.

ADAM: “At the Swim Smooth offi ce we receive a lot of emails and blog comments from swimmers working on their stroke technique. They feel they can swim nicely for 100 or 200m but then their ‘stroke falls apart’. These are nearly always swimmers focusing on their stroke technique to the detriment of their fi tness and as a consequence they tire quickly and their stroke starts to shorten up or their rhythm drops. If they had a better level of swim-fi tness they could sustain their stroke tech-nique nicely and become much more effi cient swimmers.”



1. Stroke Technique: Breathing

It would not be an over-statement to say that breathing technique is the single most important aspect of freestyle swimming. Good breathing technique is much more challenging than in other swim strokes because the swimmer’s head is in the water at all times and the swimmer must keep their head low and breathe to the side.

For swimmers learning freestyle, breathing can be extremely challenging and it’s normal to experience high levels of anxiety about breathing in air and not swallowing water! If this is you then developing your exhalation technique and also your ability to keep your head low and breathe into the bow wave is very important. These are the fi rst two aspects of breathing technique we’ll look at in this section. Don’t worry, get this right and you’ll soon be feeling much more calm and relaxed when swimming freestyle!

For more intermediate level swimmers, brushing up on bow-wave breathing and exhalation into the water is going to be important for you and can make a real difference to your effi ciency when swimming. We’ll also encourage you strongly to learn to breathe bilaterally and show you have you can do this even if you’ve tried and failed before. This is important as it is a natural way of keeping your stroke more sym-metrical and can even help you develop the catch phase of your stroke.

For more advanced swimmers, breathing timing is often an issue, particularly turning the head late to breathe. We’ll examine this in the last section here.

1.1 Breathing: ExhalationFor fi tness swimmers and competitive distance swimmers, it’s important to constantly exhale whenever you are face down in the water. This rids your lungs and bloodstream of CO2 build up and means that when you do rotate to breathe you have more time to inhale as you don’t have to exhale fi rst.

Exhaling into the water sounds easy on the face of it but can be surprisingly hard to get the feeling of, for most people it simply doesn’t feel like a natural thing to do. To develop good exhalation technique use the Sink Down Exercise in Appendix 1.1. Experiment between exhaling into the water using either your mouth

or nose or a mix of both; there’s no right or wrong here, see which feels more natural for you.

When performing video analysis, it is easy to spot a swimmer hold-ing their breath under the water, you’re looking for a long con-stant stream of bubbles to be exiting their nose, mouth or both. Different swimmers are more comfortable exhaling through the nose and others through their mouth – it’s not critical which. When performing the sink-down exercise you can ask them to try both and see which feels best to them.

Once you are able to exhale smoothly and sink down nicely, try some easy laps of freestyle swimming. Simply focus on a nice smooth exhalation into the water and nothing else. Use the Bubble-Bubble-Breathe mantra to help you coordinate bilateral breathing and exhalation at the same time.

To really feel the difference a good exhalation makes, repeat swim 100m as: 25m exhaling smoothly, 25m holding breathe and exhaling

PAUL: “If you’ve ever done any yoga you’ll intuitively understand the rela-tionship between breathing technique and relaxation. If you hold your breath you automatically become tense - please never never do this when swim-ming! Instead focus on exhaling into the water with a long constant stream of bubbles. I ask swimmers I’m coach-ing to experiment with making sounds into the water as they exhale, for example the ‘brrrrrr’ sound of a motor-boat or motorbike, this helps develop the technique of exhalation.”



at the last second, 25m exhaling smoothly, 25m holding again. The difference this can make to your swim-ming is truly amazing!

Technical Point: Traditionally swimmers were taught to hold their breath as it increases the level of

buoyancy in the chest. This is certainly true but most swimmers already have plenty of

buoyancy in the upper body, instead it is in the legs where it is lacking. Excess buoyancy

in the chest causes the front end to lift up and the body to pivot around its centre, so

sinking the legs and creating drag at the rear. By smoothly exhaling into the water and

removing excess buoyancy in the chest, we can counteract this and lift a swimmer’s

legs higher in the water. This is a classic example of our way of looking at ‘Cause And

Effect’ in swimming, something we’ll examine towards the end of this section.

1.1 Breathing: Using The Bow WaveA swimmer needs to keep their head position low when breathing, craning the head upwards causes the legs to sink adding drag. Further, to lift their head upwards the swimmer is required to press downwards on the water with their lead hand and this ruins their catch. Craning upwards can also cause neck ache – in fact if a swimmer complains of neck ache a lifting head is the fi rst thing to look for.

In the case of unilateral breathers, the lack of rotation on the non-breathing side causes that arm to sweep around the side when recovering rather than over the top of the swimmer. The momentum of this arm then causes it to cross over the centre line at the front which then causes a loss of balance and a scissor kick. The crossover also ruins the catch and so propulsion. All because this swimmer only breathes to one side!

Breathing every three strokes is also about the right amount of time to exhale properly into the water between breaths – in this sense bilateral breathing can help improve a swimmer’s body position too!

Elite swimmer Jono Van Hazel shows us his excellent exhalation technique through the nose.



John: Choosing A Wetsuit Wisely

Many triathletes come to the sport with a back-ground in cycling or run-ning. John was one such athlete who was a good cyclist and fantastic runner, capable of a top fi ve split in the run leg of a triathlon.

Despite his fi tness on land, John found swim-ming extremely diffi cult at fi rst. He was constantly out of breath and strug-gling to complete 50m at a time.

John’s lean muscular build is perfect on land for great athletic performances but in the water all the dense muscle made from a very sinky legged swimmer.

Choosing the right wetsuit was essential for John to perform at his maximum in open water. He chose a ‘balanced-buoyancy’ suit with maximum buoyancy in the legs but less in the chest to help bring his legs up high allowing him to cut through the water much more quickly.

Many swimmers are resistant to the idea of bilateral breathing because they fi nd it hard to breathe to their bad side. They may also fi nd it too long between breaths as their stroke rate is too slow (e.g. overglid-ing) or because they are holding their breath underwater causing an uncomfortable build up of CO2.

Aim For ‘Very Good’ Not ‘Perfection’

For most swimmers there will be characteristics of your individual stroke style that inhibit your technique to some extent. For instance, you may have a tendency to cross over in front of your head or your legs may like to sit a little low in the water.

You should certainly work on refi ning natural aspects of your stroke using the methods in this book but if you have a strong natural dis-position to them, they may be diffi cult to eradicate completely. That’s OK, it’s certainly possible to swim extremely well by merely minimising the fl aws in your stroke technique and in fact chasing perfection can become very time consuming and distracting.

Remember that as a swimmer you need to balance out your training time between the three core aspects of your preparation: stroke tech-nique, fi tness training and racing skills. If you devote too much time to stroke technique development you will not reach your true potential. Remember the diminishing returns suggested by the 80-20 rule!

Then ask them to turn their palms outwards, rotating their shoulders internally. They will feel the stress in their shoulder at that point, if they already have an injury then they will likely feel discomfort at that point. Then ask your swimmer to crossover each arm, as if crossing over in their stroke – the level of discomfort rises further. This exercise really highlights the risk of injury of using a thumb fi rst entry, which is made doubly worse when combined by a crossover.

A thumb fi rst entry was originally suggested by JE Counsilman in the late 1970s as a smoother method of entering the water, he com-bined it with an S Pull shape as a method of pulling through (also defunct, see section ##). The idea of the thumb-fi rst entry and S-Pull shape was that it provided a smoother hand entry and a longer pull pathway to develop more distance per stroke. However, this was a one dimensional analysis which did not take account of body rotation. The benefi ts of an S Pull shape have since been disproven as benefi cial.

We now understand that a thumb-fi rst entry is the leading cause of shoulder injury and pain in swimming and should be avoided – or removed from the stroke – at the fi rst opportunity.



S W I M T Y P E S

The Arnie: Profi le

The text in this section is taken from our coaches manual, it need re-writing for a swimmer audience.

Arnies, or the female ‘Arnette’, are normally talented ath-letes on land and often lean and strong in build. As triath-letes they are normally strong cyclists and runners, and are frustrated that they struggle relatively in the water. They tend to be very straight talking and will often tell you outright that “I can’t understand how all these fat people swim quicker than me, I’m much fi tter than they are!”.

An Arnie’s frustration is born from their intensely com-petitive nature, they are goal driven and Type-A in their approach to sport. They often have a team sport back-ground on land and are used to being good at sport which increases their frustration in the water.

Be aware that not all Arnies are overtly muscular, the best description of the universal build is ‘athletic’ and ranges from quite skinny to muscle bound. Arnies tend to be anx-ious to get on with things and get to the point. As you explain something to them they will often answer quickly as if to hurry you along: “yip! yip! yip!”.

A “full-on Arnie” is so driven that they fi nd it diffi cult to relax and take the pressure off themselves, this is a major problem for their swimming. However, most are not quite so intense and might switch in and out of their competitiveness. For instance they might stand at the end of the pool and make a joke but put their race face on as they put their goggles on. This is also the case with most female Arnettes who generally have a gentler feminine side until they get down to athletic business!

In a squad situation an Arnie’s competitiveness can cause problems with group discipline – for instance they always want to catch the person in front. Sometimes they overtake a swimmer aggressively before blowing up completely. In fact during training sets they seem prefer to go hard early on and blow up rather than be patient and pace things out.

Poor pacing is another characteristic of Arnies as they tend to have a naturally strong anaerobic system. If you ask an Arnie if they can sprint they will normally say ‘no’, however ask them to swim 25m quickly and they have a very strong turn of speed due to their athleticism. If you are unsure whether someone is an Arnie or Bambino this is one way to distinguish the two – in general Bambinos fi nd it hard to sprint.

(Continued)


1.5 The Unco Drill

Unco is a special drill which helps you develop the rhythm and timing of your stroke. We love Unco at Swim Smooth as it brings so many elements of the stroke together and forces you to time your catch, pull and body rotation correctly. You can even use it to polish up the timing of your breathing.

Australians love to shorten any word and put an ‘o’ on the end – in this case shortening ‘uncoordinated’ to make Unco. This probably tells you straight away that it is quite a challenging drill! We’d encourage any swimmer to give it a try but it is probably best suited and most benefi cial for upper intermediate and advanced level swimmers.

If you are a bit of an Overglider or have any deadspots or pauses in your stroke then give it a go, you’ll fi nd it realy interesting.

Unless you have an exceptionally propulsive kick, always use fi ns when performing Unco. It’s a one arm drill, performed with one arm by your side whilst performing a full stroke with the other arm.

Once you have got the hand of the drill, try 4x 100m with fi ns on as:

4x [25m left arm Unco + 25m right arm Unco + 50m freestyle swim + 20 seconds rest]

How should it feel?

Because you are only using one arm, Unco is always going to be a little bit surge = the surge should be forwards with the propulsion from the stroking arm. If you feel like you are bobbing up and down a lot then this highlights that you are pressing down on the water at the front of the stroke. This only lifts you up which doesn’t generate any propulsion and acts to sink your legs, creating drag. If you feel like you are bobbing vertically then you need to work on a better catch action, pressing the water backwards, not downwards.

Stroke Visualistations & Drills

A P P E N D I X

1



why it’s the king of drillsThere’s two reasons why Unco is the King Of Drills: fi rstly, if you’re not sure what to work on in your stroke then you can’t go wrong with Unco – it gives a benefi t to almost any swimmer, even elite swim-mers. Secondly, it helps you put all the lements of your stroke together, making sure everthing works with the right timing – no other drill does this.

You will feel the magic of Unco when you swim normal freestyle immediately after performing the drill. We recommend you perform a short swim every time following Unco, keeping the fi ns on and just feel-ing the rhythm and timing of the stroke. The improved smoothness and effi ciency can be a revalation!



Breathe away from the stroking arm and breathe on every single stroke – even if you don’t feel you need to – this helps drive your body rotation.

We suggest you start with your right arm stroking and breathe to your left as shown in the pictures to the left. Once you get the hang of it you can swap sides every 25m or so.

The key to the drill is to make sure that you rotate your body fully to the dead side as shown in the last picture. There’ll be a temptation not to do this, the key is ensuring that you dip your non-stroking arm and shoulder down into the water as shown in the last picture.

The mantra of the drill is ‘stroke and drip… stroke and dip…’ You will really have to emphasise dipping the dead shoulder into the water as there’s no arm stroke on that side to help you.

This rotation within the drill is critical. Get it right and your stroking arm will recover easily over the top of the water. However stay fl at on that dead side and the arm recovery will be very tough!

If you struggle to coordinate the drill don’t worry that’s normal – in fact it’s the whole idea and simply highlights that the timing of your stroke may need some work. When you get it right it should be smooth and rhythmical.


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