Good body position is essential to good swimming. The newer stroke manuals and videos emphasize swimming uphill. What that means is that you want your body to be level or even inclined slightly downward at the front. Put another way it means that you want your hips to be high in the water. The best way to achieve this position is to stretch out in the water and put your head down. Often new swimmers swim with their heads out of the water or they swim with their heads too high in the water with their foreheads up and their chins down. The head should be down with the water level running right across the top, at the crown of the head, but that isn’t achieved by just nodding your head. Push the head down while holding the head in line with your spine and shoulders. This way your entire front half will also go down in a nice line and your hips will come up. Once again, relax. Holding your body too rigid while doing any of this will cause excess fatigue and will prevent you from developing a smooth, long stroke. Start swimming paying particular attention to the head position and to your hands. If your hands go too high in the recovery portion* of the stroke you will need to bring them down. If your hands enter the water too close to your head, you will need to move your entry** further in front of your shoulders. If your hands enter the water too far in front of your shoulders, you will need to bring them back just a little. You can figure out your best hand entry position by putting your arm out straight and then bringing your hand back about four inches with your elbow slightly bent. Your fingers should point downward and your palm should be flat, not canted to the thumb side or the pinky side. As your hand enters in this position, push forward at an angle several more inches and then pull your arm back with the fingers still pointing to the bottom of the pool until your thumb brushes your upper thigh. If you are looking down at the bottom, which you should be, you will be able to keep good arm position by pointing your fingers at the lines on the bottom of the pool and keeping them pointed there throughout the stroke. Just practice this for a while remembering to keep your head down.
The final point is perhaps the most important. No matter what you do while training, and this is true for the biking and running portions as well as the swimming portions, you will always have an easier time doing it if you maintain a positive attitude. Just consider that it comes down to, “Mind over mind.” This doesn’t mean just relaxation; it means that you have to be careful not to talk yourself out of anything. Once you start to think that you can’t do something, it will become that much harder to do. But if you keep focused and stay positive, you will be able to continue working hard even when you are tired, nervous, sore, etc.
