It’s no secret that swim speed is highly dependent on technique and form; some coaches estimate as much as 80% of speed is dependent on technique with only 20% dependent on fitness. And this seems right. We know that swimming harder (with effort) often will not translate into swimming faster – until we get the technique piece right.
When analyzing athletes’ swim form, I prioritize fixing anything that could injure the athlete first, like crossing over, and then moving on to pieces of form that will improve both speed and efficiency.
This article will review the most common swim form mistakes, and how to help fix them.
1. Injury Makers
Let’s start with the mistakes that could cause injury.
Cross Over
First, crossing over occurs when a swimmer’s hand entry crosses the body’s midline. This is one of the most common mistakes in swim form and can cause shoulder impingement and affect alignment by causing the swimmer to wiggle through the water since the hand crossing over can lead the opposite hip to splay out.
To be most efficient, we want our hand to stay outside the body’s centerline, right in line with the shoulder. Crossing over can be very hard to feel, especially if you’ve been swimming like that for a long time. Video is the best way to diagnose whether you cross over.
When you first correct this, it’ll feel like you are entering wide when you may be entering just in front of the shoulder.
How to Fix It:
- Watch how your hand enters with a drill like “alligator eyes” where you hold your goggles at the surface of the water while swimming freestyle. This drill is also effective to help you set the stroke and hand entry during the warm-up of a practice.
- Tarzan drill, using a snorkel, or using your shadow or a mirror at the bottom of the pool can all also be helpful ways to watch hand entry.
- A catch-up drill using a 12-inch dowel or a kickboard turned sideways can help prevent crossing over, as you make sure your hands enter to the outside of the dowel or kickboard.
Wide Entry
Alternatively, entering too wide or sculling the hand out after entry is another issue that can cause shoulder impingement, and can happen if you think you may be crossing over and then over-correct. This may also happen if you were originally taught the “S-pull” freestyle.
How To Fix It:
- To correct entering too wide, I recommend “alligator eyes” again.
- To correct sculling out after entry, I recommend the pinky first entry drill, where you’ll swim normal freestyle but enter the hand pinky first so they are unable to scull outwards after entry.
Hand Entry
The last piece of form that I often see that can cause injury over time is entering the index finger first during the hand entry. The hand should enter with the palm flat, not turned inward, which can cause shoulder impingement over time. This can be corrected by the pinky first drill.
2. Speed and Efficiency
Body Position
Moving onto pieces of form that will improve speed and efficiency, I first start with body position in the water, making sure the hips and legs aren’t sinking. Often athletes are lifting their heads before breathing or holding their head too high during their stroke. The head should be held in a neutral position, with the gaze down towards the bottom of the pool.
How to fix it:
A great drill to check head position is banding the legs together and swimming freestyle (with no kick and no pull buoy but working to keep the legs from sinking). If your legs sink, you are likely holding your head too high, and/or you may have dead spots in your pull. This is a more advanced drill, but a great one.
Image source: swimovate.com
I also often see athletes not holding their heads still while they swim, bopping their heads with each hand entry, and getting too much up and down or side-to-side movement with their stroke. A great video example to show athletes a perfect, quiet head position is Katie Ledecky holding a cup of chocolate milk on her head while swimming freestyle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0YKBBE3lFw.
Breathing
Breathing can cause issues, particularly with beginning swimmers, who often turn their heads too far and over-rotate to breathe, which can then affect balance in the water and cause a scissor kick to correct it.
How to Fix It:
A drill to correct this is the split vision breath during the front kick breath drill, where one goggle is in the water and one goggle is out while the swimmer kicks with one arm extended in front and one arm at the side. The swimmer breathes with as little rotation as possible and comes straight back down, as seen in the below image.
Image source: https://www.swimnow.co.uk/
The Catch
Once alignment and balance issues are fixed, you can work to catch the water more effectively rather than “slipping through the water.” I often see swimmers bend their wrist too much so they are only using their hand to pull through.
Maintaining a firm wrist and high elbow catch to engage the entire forearm in the pull will create the best surface area.
How To Fix It:
Some good drills for fixing this include:
- Fist drill (swimming normal freestyle but with closed fists so you’re forced to use the forearms to pull through the water)
- Using paddles with only the finger band, no band on the wrist so you’re forced to keep your hand beneath your elbow through the catch and pull (instead of dropping the elbow)
- The YMCA drill is great for learning a proper high elbow catch: https://www.facebook.com/effortlessswimming/videos/371396740225327
- Practice the high elbow catch with swim bands or on a Vasa trainer can help improve body awareness and where the elbow and wrist need to be through the catch and pull.
Image source: theswimbox.com
3. Focus on One Thing At a Time
Learning to improve technique takes time. To maximize your improvements, keep your focus limited to just 1-2 pieces of form each swim workout. If you focus on more than this can be too overwhelming and you won’t be able to do any of it well.
To diagnose where your focus is best spent, we recommend getting a video analysis or having a coach or fellow swimmer on deck to provide feedback. Both of these can be very helpful tools for feedback on your swim form progress.
Happy swimming – and remember to swim smarter, not harder!