In this video, I want to pick out two things that’s most likely causing quite a bit of side-to-side movement. With freestyle, we generally want to keep quite stable through the core and through the hips. You can see in this video that the swimmer has a little bit of side-to-side movement. Here are a few things that are causing this.

1.Hand Position
The fingers are keeping very close, there’s no gap between them, the hands look quite rigid and tense. This is quite a common mistake, swimmers are sometimes told to keep their fingers together. If the fingers are too tense and too close together, it is wasted effort and energy and it can sometimes cause you to almost trying to force it too much and that can cause you to have a little bit of zigzag because you are really trying to rip out the water.

2. Overreaching
If the shoulder is being thrown a long way forward and the hand is starting to drift out a bit, this will cause zigzagging. We lose control and the stable body position. What I normally recommend to swimmers in our membership and clinics is to bring it back five percent or ten percent and swim within your range and control.