Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. On today’s episode I’m going to talk about how to look good when you swim. I know a lot of you are here to swim faster, be more efficient, and those things do tie into looking good when you swim. But I know there’s a lot of you out there who are looking to just look good when you swim. You can either compliment at the pool or at the ocean at the beach where someone says geez you look like a good swimmer, you have a nice style, you have a nice technique, it’s one of the highest compliments you can probably receive as a swimmer. So this episode is all about what can you do to look good. Now it doesn’t always translate to more speed or an increase in speed because sometimes you have to get a little bit scrappy to be swimming faster where you may have

to get your stroke rate up a bit more, you might have to be a bit more assertive with your recovery, your kick, and so on. But there is a bit of a correlation there in many cases. But solely today we’re just focused on looking good. And I was at the beach with my kids last week and we’re down at a place where a lot of swimmers will go out and there was a guy who rocks up. I’d seen him before. Actually I didn’t know it was him until he came out of the water but I see this guy go out into the ocean and start swimming out to the first buoy, yellow buoy out there. And soon as he took his first couple of strokes I noticed he’s a good swimmer. He’s got a nice stroke and some of the things that made me aware of him being an experienced swimmer or looking good was you can just see what he was doing as his arms come out of the water with his recovery. And you can see how he has composure when he’s swimming. You can see how he’s got good length in the stroke.

So I’m going to dig into some of those things that made me realize that he was a good swimmer even though he was swimming 50, 60 meters away from me. It’s one of those things that stood out. Now one of the first things that I think is good to know is the base position. What I’d consider the base position where you should return to after every single stroke. If you think of swimming freestyle as this constant movement where there’s no stopping point or pausing point where it’s just like you’re running on a treadmill and there’s no distinct clear or starting position really then it can seem a little bit confusing as to where should you be in the stroke. What I like to think of the base position in freestyle is when you’re fully extended with one arm out the front, you’re rotated on your side and your other arm is about to exit the water. That I consider the base position or the starting position of each stroke.

And if you think of swimming freestyle from going from that base position to the same position on your other arm and other side then that helps you know where you should be at the beginning of each stroke. And if you get that base position right then you’re going to set yourself up really well for the other parts of the stroke that are to come. Now what is a good base position? Well that is when you’ve got good posture so you’re long through your spine, you’re long through your neck and your eyes are looking either straight down to about 45 degrees in front. So we hold our body the right way, got a head in the right position and we’ve got this length and this line through our spine and through our head. It’s important to get right first because if you don’t hold your body the right way there’s going to be a lot of wiggle and movement through the hips and through the legs and through the arms. But good swimmers don’t usually have too much movement or wiggle

through their body line. They keep it fairly straight. So that’s the first thing we need to hold the body right, have the head in the right position. The second thing is they’ve got the right amount of rotation and that’s typically 30 to 40 degrees through the hips and through the shoulders but that base position it’s important to get your opposite shoulder to the one that’s in the water. So your opposite shoulder should be just out of the water because if you have your shoulder in the water or too low of the arm that’s about to come out of the water there then it’s very hard to come over the right way to come over comfortably. So if you think of your base position on one arm let’s say your left arm is in front or your right shoulder should be just out of the water. You need to bring it back a little bit to get that out. With your lead arm, the one that’s in the water we want to aim to have the hand or the fingertips at shoulder depth.

So essentially you’ve got your arms straight out in front of you and that’s where you’re going to be most efficient and most streamlined there. Whereas someone who isn’t as good with that they haven’t quite got their base position. Sometimes people go too deep. I know there are coaches out there who teach 30, 40 centimetres below the surface of the water but it’s just it’s too deep. It’s not where you see the best rooms in the world going to. So I like to aim for shoulder depth or armpit depth with your hand when you finish reaching forwards. So if you’ve got that and making sure that you’re not dropping your elbow or dropping your wrist at any point there you’re essentially just keeping it straight out the front. And then the final thing just in that base position is keep the kick fairly narrow. You don’t want to be kicking too big. You don’t want your legs to be spaying out the back there. So just keep them roughly within your body line.

When I’m running clinics, when people are going through our eight week course we use some really simple drills like side kick and 616 drill to practice being in this base position and getting all those things correct because when people are in the right spot with all of those different aspects of the base position they usually feel really streamlined, they feel fast and they also look a lot better. We work on these things straight away in our clinics and it’s usually after the first three drills and two of them are side kick and 616 drill where we’ve just ironed out a couple of the faults or errors that we often see in the stroke. It’s once we’ve done that that they tend to look very smooth and very efficient. So that’s why I think it’s good to start with the base position and getting that right. So if you’re working on that base position you may do the side kick or 616 drill but where fins were snorkel to get good at that

and hold everything in the right spot and that’s a nice way to build up to a good base position. Now once you’ve got your base position the next thing that I would be looking to do is recover the right way. Now good recovery will have first of all that shoulder out of the water like I mentioned in the base position but then if you think about being open with your underarm or your armpit you’re almost trying to show part of your underarm to somebody on the side of the pool as you’re swimming. Be open through the underarms in that recovery and feel as though it’s the elbow that’s lifting or causing the arm to come over the water because that way then your hand and your forearm can relax as you come over the top. You see a good swimmer and this guy that I saw down at the beach last week nice and open through the underarm. He had a high elbow recovery as in good lift through the elbow not where he’s trying to keep his hand close to the body

don’t get confused with high elbow recovery as like a zipper drill where your hand’s really close and tight. No, he was coming over open through the underarm hand was relaxed off to the side and he just looked very calm, very composed as he went over the water with his arm. So that’s what a good recovery will often comprise of and it’s a very distinct thing that good swimmers do. You can see it from above the water. You can see that composure and how they come over as a really evident thing of a good swimmer. And I think that’s something that most people can achieve to make themselves look good is that type of recovery. There are some typically guys who a bit tighter through the thoracic, through the shoulder and so on who are a bit more limited with their range of motion. But I think for most people, if they practice that base position, they practice getting their shoulder out and they come over the water the right way.

So they feel like the elbow’s causing it, the arm to come over and not the hand. Then they can start to work towards that better looking stroke. This podcast has brought you by Great Ocean Wet Suits an up and coming Australian performance wetsuit brand for triathletes and open water swimmers. The wetsuits are designed and tested in Melbourne, Australia for fast, easy and enjoyable swimming for athletes of all levels. They’re worn in and raced by Olympians, triathletes and open water swimmers from all over the world. And I personally use Great Ocean Wet Suits even before they became a sponsor of the podcast. I’ve personally found that the buoyancy, the freedom through the shoulders and the fit are the best that I’ve ever had in a wetsuit. So I highly recommend them and you can currently get 20% off either the gold or silver wetsuit models using our own code effortless20 at checkout. So enter the code effortless20 at checkout

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I’ll sometimes have a bit of separation between the fingers when I enter the water. And then especially when I’m reaching forwards and extending. If I’m just cruising up and down and I’m not looking to go fast or anything like that I’m just looking to feel good and warm up. There’ll be a bit of separation through the fingers in the entry and through the reach. And I’m not talking much because good looking freestyle won’t be a hurried freestyle. It will be a longer, more relaxed stroke where you’re taking a bit more time in the reach or glide phase of the stroke. Never pausing, never stopping out the front. You’re always keeping in motion but you will take that little bit of time through the reach. So good looking freestyle is never hurried and never rushed. And by keeping the hands forearms relaxed or soft that allows you to do it much better. And for those swimmers that tend to be hurried and rushed just generally

they’re normally two tents straight away when the hands enter the water there. If you’ve got that tension and this is a good right way, wrong way drill to do in the pool is some 100 meters where you’re trying to keep your hands really tense and your forearms really tense and see how you feel with your entry and your reach. You’ll probably find that your stroke rushes more. You go quicker into the catch and you just can’t have the same sort of length that you would have if you keep that soft hands feeling. Do that back and forth and notice a difference. And you’ll find that you’re typically much better off with that relaxation through the hands and forearms. So we’ve got those things in place. You’ve got the right base position, correct amount of rotation there. You recover with an open underarm and the hand and forearm is somewhat relaxed. Then you enter fingers first, again, keeping that hand relaxed and then you reach forwards in the water

out in front of you, keeping the hands relaxed and soft still. Now the other couple of things that are important is obviously a good catch and pull. Now without going into too much detail with the catch and the pull we’ve gone into that with other episodes. Many of you have done the five day catch challenge which explains how to go through that in detail. But some key aspects of your catch and pull is it’s slow to fast. You’re going to be slower through the reach, a little bit slower through the catch and then you’re just going to gradually build up the speed through the catch and pull. So you’re a bit slower out the front of the stroke with a gradual buildup and acceleration out the back. Nothing too extreme, not really slow and then really quick but just a nice gradual buildup that will help you keep pressure on the water and buildup pressure as you go through that part of the stroke. You’re a good.