The Key to Effective Power and Body Position

You’ve probably often heard that you need to work on your core, whether for the run, bike or that nagging lower back pain. While it is great to have a low enough percentage of body fat to actually have a 6 pack, that’s not what we are referring to!

Using your core means keeping your weight back and over the pedals on the bike or using your abs to help lift and pull those knees up on the run. Being aware of your middle can help increase power and lower heart rate both in training and racing. Holding the body in a straight line during the swim uses core muscles in a different way. Utilization of the stabilizers to hold a long body position is many times overlooked as a
way to achieve more power and decrease drag due to a more streamlined position. Don’t even think about relaxing your core as your body will not travel in a straight line or be able to transfer power from the lower to upper body for either rotation or the underwater pull.

So, how do you work on your core for the swim? Simply being more aware of the body’s position from head to toe is a great beginning. Try to maintain a straight line from the top of the head to the tip of the toes, realizing the body will travel faster this way. Too many people lose perception of where the hands, arms, and legs are relative to the straight line in which the body should be positioned. This is especially true while breathing.

The most common problems are: lifting the head (to breathe), twisting the body (as opposed to rotating), splaying the legs (a function of twisting or crossover), dropping the knees, crossing the arms over the center line of the body, pulling too widely, or swaying the back. Don’t allow the lower back to arch just like you would not allow it to arch while doing push-ups on land (see photos). While you should try to swim relaxed (not stiff), you don’t want to relax to the point of letting go of the Curve and twisting of torso Rotation with straight spine core muscles that hold the spine in a straight line; those need to stay somewhat engaged throughout the swim.

One of the best ways to work on strength for a straight body line is to do a “plank” exercise in the front and side body positions. This involves placing the elbows or hands immediately below the shoulders (on the floor) and making a straight line with the body from the toes to the shoulders, keeping the head in line with the spine (see below photos). Repeat on the left and right side while either stacking the feet one on top of the other or placing one foot in front of the other. This is one of many Pilates exercises that can help achieve body alignment awareness as well as increase core strength.

Working on core alignment will lead to faster times and increased power. This is an easy way to realize those faster open water swim times without any additional time investment. Why not swim from your core?

The Swimming Kick: Don’t Let It Drag You Down

So what’s so important about the swim kick if you are a triathlete?

A proper kick in swimming is important for many reasons. First, kicking improperly can pull you out of ideal body position (parallel to the surface of the water). If you are kicking from your knees instead of your hips, you will have the tendency to drop your knees to keep your feet from coming completely out of the water; this will cause “uphill swimming.” Knee kicking is one of the most common mistakes made by triathletes who did not swim competitively growing up. The kick should come from the hip flexors and gluteus muscles, with only a small portion using the quadriceps. Think of a long lever and the tops of your legs being the origin of the motion, with the thighs moving back and forth, not just the part of the leg below the knee.

Over kicking, and using too much energy for the swim, is not something you want to do either; nor is kicking with too great a range of motion. The kick should be kept small and tight, keeping the legs in line with the torso, as close to the surface as possible; hence the term “flutter kick”. Think of trying to keep the legs inside the tube your head and shoulders create as you move forward thru the water. The hips should rotate back and forth and the legs should stay perfectly in line with the hips. If the legs and feet end up too far apart, they can actually create drag and slow the swimmer down. Twisting the body, rather than rotating,
will cause the legs to also play apart, and is thus not desirable.

Proper kicking can greatly aid in forward propulsion by keeping the legs up and holding proper body position, but is often overlooked as the generator of power for the rotation of the hips and body. Kicking from the knees hinders rotation and may cause a twisting of the body as the hips try to remain neutral. Proper kicking from the hips actually creates an easy way to rotate the body back and forth for each stroke by keeping the body properly lined up and optimizing the reach of each stroke.

A great way to know if you are guilty of “knee kicking” is to see if you are propulsive using a kickboard or kicking on your back. If you are on your back you should not see your knees popping up out of the water, but your feet should be right at the surface at the upward stroke of the leg. Ask someone to watch you or arrange for underwater video taping.

Becoming proficient at the flutter kick, if you are not doing so already, will help you swim faster with less drag, as well as give you another gear if you need to turn it on during a race. Kicking harder with the knees dropping will only waste energy and make you tired. This is a very good area to work on during the fall and winter months, as you work on limiters during the off season. The next swim article will focus on the importance of engaging the core muscles; another great way to improve not only the swim, but the bike and run as well. Without the core actively connecting the upper and lower body during the swim, proper kick and rotation are not possible.

Do you feel like you are struggling to get across the pool? Are you exhausted after ten to twenty laps? Do you feel like you are not improving despite frequent trips to the pool and trudging thru the workouts?

If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions, your most likely culprit is the wrong body position, otherwise known as swimming “uphill.” The body should be completely parallel to the surface of the water with the legs no lower than the shoulders and torso. This is known as balance in the water, learning to push the sternum forward and moving your center of gravity up. . (Think about where your center of gravity must be to paddle out on a surf board.) This allows the body to travel forward with the least amount of resistance from the water. If the legs are lower than the rest of the body, a lot of water must be pushed forward in front of the swimmer for him to make any forward progress.

For a swimmer to achieve this ideal, streamlined body position, the swimmer must hold his core or spine line straight. This means being able to lengthen the vertebrae as if trying to make oneself as tall as possible. For those who are relatively new to distance swimming, this can take a lot of concentration as well as practice, both in the water and out. Weak inner core muscles (the small muscles closest to the spine, not the six pack everyone covets) will make achieving a long spine line very difficult. Pilates (especially exercises like the plank, performed both forwards and sideways) is one the best ways to work on weak core muscles, not crunches, if you want to move smoothly and efficiently thru the water.

Holding the head too high out the water can also lead to body position problems and uphill swimming. For every inch the head is too high, the hips drop about six inches and the feet drop about a foot. (This is what happens typically during sighting in open water, and why “Swimming Uphill” Balanced body position sighting can be so tiring.) Try to keep the head down low enough in the water so that only the very top and back part of the head can be seen above the water level. The ears and entire face should be submerged. When breathing, one half the face and the ear closest to the bottom of the pool, should be completely submerged. A common mistake is to lift the head while breathing, and this pushes the hips and legs down and causes the swimmer to struggle for air.

Another way of expressing this completely horizontal and streamlined position is to move thru the smallest possible hole in the water. We will address this area again in the next article with a discussion of proper kick technique; it is impossible to achieve good body position and balance without it.

This is the obligatory first post. More to come…