If your childhood was anything like mine, you probably had your mom or dad constantly telling you to set up straight, pull your shoulders back when you walk, stand up proud, etc. I used to begrudgingly respond to the commands temporarily...only to go back to my usual slouched self when my parents weren't looking.
As many of you know, proper posture is extremely important in swimming, but as a coach, I have the same sense of urgency to correct my swimmers' posture as my parents had with me. Because I work with younger kids primarily, mostly 8-12 years old, I tend to focus on 2-3 main concepts that swimmers should focus on for each stroke and then work on details after. I call this Macro to Micro swimming. For each stroke, one of the main concepts is always head/body position. It is always stressed before most any other concept. Here is how I re-enforce it with drills/equipment for both backstroke and breaststroke:
Backstroke: Goggles off, balanced on forehead. I used to use cups and water bottles but balancing them became a chore dependent on how much liquid was in the cup/bottle. We do quite a bit of drilling with goggles on our forehead and I will also try to have small parts of our main set with goggles balanced on their foreheads to re-emphasize their body position while they are tired. Here is an example main set incorporating goggle balance:
4x thru
2x50 @ 1:00 teacup 12 k switch w/ goggles up
2x75 @ 1:10 80/90/100% by 25
2x100 @ 1:20 1-75 free/25 back, 2-50 free/50 back
Breaststroke: I am a proponent of using snorkels often. I think that snorkels in general re-enforce better head position which is huge in making sure that posture in the water is where it needs to be. Breaststroke is no different. I use snorkels with breaststroke, telling my kids that they are still to come up as they normally would but trying to keep the pipe of the snorkel in the water. In changing their head position, I am attempting to flatten their hips out a bit to prevent what I call "sea horse swimming". I am also focusing on eyes looking down. I often will pair this with some dolphin breaststroke in order to still keep the hip snap I am looking for intact while attempting to avoid dropping of their hips that would make it more difficult to snap at the end of the stroke.
I will cover Free and Fly in my next post. Let me know what you guys do to promote good body/head position!
