by Emmett Hines

Waiting to Inhale

Let's face it, the human body wasn't designed for swimming. The Good Lord did not intend for humans to leap headlong into the river and chase after his or her dinner. He gave us the power of reason and the fly rod came to be. If one of His greatest apes should fall into the river, the instinct to lift his head toward the heavens, thrash about wildly and scrabble his hairy carcass back onto the shore would serve immediate survival needs well enough.

The advance of civilization has allowed those of us at the top of the food chain to spend some idle time toying with nature. As such, we have made some modest progress in the area of aquatic ambulation. Yet the instinctive need to lift the head skyward has not been overcome completely in the freestyle stroke even in many elite level swimmers.

Problem:

We all know that lifting the head to breathe is incorrect. Yet, if you watch a pool full of swimmers and pay close attention (perhaps even using slow motion video) to the head motions of each you will find that perhaps 80 percent or more of them are still lifting their heads to some extent to breathe. Most people don't even recognize it as a problem, much less an easily solvable one.

A swimmer moving in a longitudinally balanced position, head, shoulders, hips and legs all in a straight line parallel to the surface, has the minimum form drag possible. Now he raises his head a bit. What happens? The hips and legs sink a bit. In fact a two inch vertical lift of the head can cause a four to six inch drop of the hips, which shows up as an eight to 12 inch drop of the feet. This is enough to nearly double the total frontal surface area. The more frontal surface area the greater the drag forces are. You know this instinctively: you'd much rather kick with your kickboard sliding edgewise through the water than hold it upright like a tombstone and push it broadside-first through an entire kick set.

If you study those same swimmers who are lifting their heads a bit when they breathe you won't notice that much hip and leg drop. Why? They are using their kick to boost the hips and legs to the surface. All of the extra kicking needed to keep the legs up at the surface when the head is lifted is wasting energy, a lot of energy.

Solution:

You've no doubt been reading and following the advances in the swimming technology as espoused by such forward thinkers as Bill Boomer and Terry Laughlin. You have a grasp of the concept of body alignment and balance, your head is "attached" to your spine and you have finely tuned your "T" pressure to maintain dynamic body balance as your body rolls from side to side.

Now you're ready to take a breath on your next stroke. To breathe on your right side you stroke with your arm as you roll from your right side (belly button facing the left wall) onto your left side (belly button facing the right wall).

1. As you begin the roll your nose is pointed more or less at the bottom of the pool. Just after mid-roll (belly button just past facing the bottom) allow the head to "hitch a ride" and begin to rotate with the rotating torso. Note that we want the rotation of the torso (as evidenced by the location of the belly button) to be right with or slightly ahead of the head. Do not allow the head to turn ahead of the body roll. This always results in lifting the head.
2. As body roll reaches its farthest point on the left side (belly button facing the right wall) you may need to roll the head a tad further to allow your blow hole full access to life giving oxygen. This is where it's easy to allow instinct to take over and lift the head slightly. To counteract this tendency you could press the side/back of the head slightly toward the bottom so that it is in contact (or nearly in contact) with the extended left arm. It should feel such that if you continued to roll the head till your nose pointed straight up, both your ears would be under water.
3. While you are on your left side and going through the breathing motion it is important that your left arm remain fully extended toward the end wall. A common mistake is to put downward pressure on the hips. Think of keeping the extended arm "weightless" in front of you while you "lean" on your armpit instead.
4. After you grab a lung (or two) full of air, rotate the head back toward the nose-facing-the bottom position. Here we want the head to roll back to the face down position before the body does.

There you have it. Following the above will allow you to overcome the instinctive tendency to lift your head and in so doing, decrease the amount of energy you waste with extra kicking to keep your hips and legs near the surface.

Emmett Hines was the 1993 USMS Coach-of-the-Year and is head coach for the Houstonian Club and the H2Ouston Swims Teams.