The part about compressing the chest was something I figured out after swimming for years. I would describe it is that you are trying to push your chest down into the water with your abdominal muscles. Since the chest is buoyant because of the lungs pushing it down lifts the hips so it actually gets you higher and flatter in the water. Plus it makes getting the elbows higher much easier. You get faster instantly.
@@MySwimTutor Is this a new channel? I see a lot of video but no views. Anyway, I'm subscribing as a beginner Triathlete. Thanks for your awesome video.
After 30 years of smoking (and a little drinking), I've taken up swimming to help me quit. So now I'm watching as many videos as I can on the subject. I have to say - at 52 - I'm not at all interested in being particularly great at the activity so a little inefficiency doesn't really matter. I'm getting my exercise, elevating my heart rate, elevating my breathing rate. Bad swimming is still a great workout. (I'm a long way from jogging, aerobically.) All said, the principles do seem to be getting through my skull! :D Look down and not forward for the most streamlined shape, saving energy on keeping the feet fluttering gently at the surface. Be friends with the water, don't fight it. A half mile (not continuous) three times a week is where I'm at three weeks into the programme.
@@speedfireprotection Ta. I've had so many issues with hay fever and hay fever complications in the last 5 weeks (down to the chlorine in pools). 5 weeks of blocked noses and sore throats wasn't great and then I booked a holiday in Madeira so a tiny right shoulder injury last friday worked wonders. It got me out of swimming and the nose is already much improved. So now I'm _rowing_ instead! :D At least I did today and for the next two days will. Friday morning,, I jet off and don't want my holiday ruining by hay fever symptoms! Lol.
@@NeilMalthus Sorry I didn't specify lol. Thanks for the patience. How do you break up the half mile? You mentioned a program you were following, so was just curious the details of that.
I rewatched the video twice and have to say that it's worth rewatching a few times more. Dan is so inspirational, incredibly experienced and his explanations are easy to understand and made so reasonable! It's a great summary of what is Brenton constantly teaching us in his videos here! Thanks to ES for taking this one as it's TOP! I wish there could be more videos with Dan like this, but also in the pool to show us more of his fantastic skills!
1:30 is the most important thing, you need to understand and befriend the water before you have a chance of becoming a good swimmer. Most people dont invest the time to sort the real basics and that includes playing in the water and with the water a long time before you worry about the stroke. Myself I also think swimming needs to learn from diving about breath control and powering your lungs. But this was a great video!
Definitely important. I've been a competitive swimmer for most of my life and when you spend a few weeks out of the water you can tell right away because that feel for the water isn't quite there anymore. It doesn't take long to tune back in but you do notice the lack of feel and you can't really start until you've got it back.
As someone coming back into swimming training for a triathlon, I am grateful to have had years of swim coaching from a young age. All these techniques you unwittingly do and don't know are good techniques until you watch videos like this, especially the inward and outward sweep. I dodn't notice many others swimming with it and thought it wasn't ideal. Now I know otherwise.
Interesting to hear about the postural considerations with the chest, core and hip. I haven't heard much about this in other content I've seen. I'd love it you could consider a deeper video on that topic!
What he failed to convey was that shoulder and hips rotation shouldn’t be the same degrees. If you over fort are you lose the serape effect and the torque is lost. You have to imagine your back muscles are like a spring. And the hip is the one holding the force momentum and inertia if you rotate he hip too much you don’t produce that effect.
I remember watching this channel for hours when I started to learn swimming properly (by myself, no coach). I agree with Dan. It is very technical. Took me 2 years plus to really “get it”. My most challenging are breathing and kick coordination. Can’t seem to get it right. I can swim 50m at most and already tired. But just recently I think I kinda “got it”. It was a feedback from a friend (also a swimmer) who saw my swimming videos. If you wanna learn faster and not wondering why you haven’t improved, you gotta find a coach or two. It really helps
Solid gold advice and tips!! 👍 After spending the past year relearning how to properly swim freestyle this is very timely and great information that I can put to use immediately. Thank you!!!
Many years ago when I was learning to swim competently as an adult (Not drowning would be a better description than swimming for what I could do before then) the coach started the lesson by tying a rope to the end of the pool and getting us to use the rope to pull ourselves through the water as hard as we could. When he said that the force we were pulling the rope with was the same as the force we should be able to pull on the water with in normal swimming, nobody believed him initially, but a few months later when I realised my arms weren't strong enough to pull any harder, he had proven himself absolutely right.
I've been trying to teach myself swimming freestyle for nearly two decades now but I'm still struggling. And I swim 25 metres in 40 seconds. So no, it's not only years.
@@mister-kay I am sorry, if you are trying to teach yourself freestyle for 20 years and still do 25 in 40 you have been doing it very wrong. Find yourself a proper coach.
Fantastic breakdown of technique. The insight on keeping the hips flatter is new to me, I used to think you have to rotate the whole body 'swim on your side', but I suspect there are other ways, like Dan's approach. In the end finding what works best for one is the real challenge!
Yes it is good to keep the hips as flat as possible. But the slower you go the more hip rotation you will have. When there is too much hip rotation you core will loose connection - this creates all kinds of coping mechanisms
13:08 "Don't drop your elbow"......and the swimmer behind him is BIG TIME dropping his R elbow! His advice about learning slowly cannot be overstated; no coach can say it enough. Also, the end of recovery with the hand and arm thrust forward (through the donut) often results in the upper torso bending sideways at the waist destroying the body position. Tips to avoid re needed.
Cheat travel! I love it! I've watched it twice and I plan to watch it again. Excellent explanation! I love what he said about connecting with the water!
Best explanation ive seen Looking fwd to putting it to practice I'm a sub 1:30 freestyle swimmer over long distance I find I can't maintain my efficiency as I get faster so im expending to much energy for little improvement I'm going to try this tommorow 😊👍🏊♂️
It's so comforting to hear from this elite swimmer that unilateral breathing is perfectly normal. For years, I thought my inability to breath bilaterally is not normal.
Yeap i was just copying on my mind your comment, but i can imagine he means on upside or even parallel of shoulders? This is great content, thanks for Dan Smith for this, but maybe i should pay for the most pricy piece of the video. 11:05-11:17 and the last part :(
@@hartsa8840 no idea what you both mean. I actually closed my eyes and listened, and pretty much understood all the key concepts Dan was trying to convey. He should probably convert this video to a podcast and get me hits.
@@dakzer55 11:05 "...and we force here it means we force here..." 14:24 "...you're just gonna rush here..." Something else caught my ear when I watched it for the first time but I can't find it now.
If you know, you know. Great athletes dont always make good instructors or coaches. While watching, i was saying to myself that some people don't know what hell his talking about. I knew because im an instructor. When you teach you have to know your audience. You should speak as if your audience knows nothing. I didn't learn anything but it did confirm what i teach. 10:41 g@hartsa8840
Great video, agreed with everything said. Without discounting the man, obviously as an Olympian; however i don't agree with rotating the upper body only. As a heavy swimmer, I was still able to reach national qualifiers and the trick was through rotation of hips. Granted that can be specific to my body type. Rotation of the hips contribute to momentum and if you watch Dan swimming he rotates his hips, something that he speaks against of in this video. The more momentum you are able to generate in rotation the easier the kick is and the further you are able to reach. Either way, phenomenal video.
Yeah and a lot of power in that arm pull, power in the chest for the lung expansion and contraction, and experience in drag reduction form. Another thing is what is called “being connected” in swimming. It takes real good timing and you can feel it when it happens but it takes a lot of energy and oxygen and is not easy to maintain. Good luck 👍🏼
The entire body rotates for elite swimmers including with the demo swimmer, so the information that only the shoulders rotate and not the hips is very confusing to me. The shoulders appear to rotate more but that is distorted because they are wider. There is a clear rotation in the hips and legs though not as obvious it is definitely not staying fixed in place.
The "hips not rotating" business is really confusing, and contrary to most other video instructions. You can clearly see hips rotating for most swimmers. Can you please make a follow-up video and talk about this?
100% agreed. Loads of the footage in the video shows swimmers rotating their hips in sync with the shoulder rotation. This channel has done more than a couple of videos where catch timing is triggered by hip rotation.
Generally in events of 50-200m free, the swimmers will aim to limit their hip rotation and rotate more through the shoulders. We coach mostly triathletes and longer distance swimmers swimmers so I’d recommend most people have even rotation through the hips and torso
swimming technique has to be the most confusing and controversial topic I have ever tried to wrap my head around. Basically every coach on youtube tells you how important hip rotation is and how it induces the rest of your upper body rotation. Now this guy comes along and tells us the opposite and that we shouldnt rotate the hip. i also dont see how it's dependent on distance. the logic why hip rotation is recommended often is, that most people dont have enough shoulder mobility and breathing is very difficult if you dont rotate the hip. I dont see how either is not the case in short distances. really very confusing, especially as a beginner when I'm just trying not to inhale water.
@@maxmeier532 Maybe I can help clear up some confusion. Firstly, just as there are technical and style differences between 100m sprinters and marathon runners on land, there are different styles of freestyle swimming for different speeds and distances. There is a clear style difference between sprinters and long distance swimmers, so you will come across conflicting information on occasion, but if you get to know which style is which, you'll be able to understand which information applies to which style. In the world of competitive swimming, there is also inside knowledge that shorter distances = faster speed. By shorter distances, I mean anything under 200m. When swimming at high speed, there is little hip rotation in the stroke best suited for this style of swimming It's far more effective to leave the shoulders to do the bulk of the work and to leave the hips relatively flat. Breathing is not an issue because, to be swimming at these speeds requires an experienced swimmer who has mastered breathing a long time ago. For longer distances, the speed is generally acknowledged to be slower and more hip rotation is more present in the stroke. This is more the style that is taught to beginners because it teaches balance and efficiency, both of which are very important in the early stages. This is the style you will probably see the most information on, and yes, hip rotation is an important part of it, especially for teaching breathing technique to beginners. So the issue here isn't distance as such, but the _speed_ at which you swim the distance, and also, your level of experience and technical mastery of the stroke. If you're very experienced, you can change styles to suit the distance and speed. If you are still learning, it's best to stick to the one style until you have reached a certain level of proficiency. You can swim 50m slowly in a long distance style with equal hip and shoulder rotation, or you can swim it in a sprint style quickly, with little hip rotation. The distance isn't the issue, it's the speed. Just remember that in the sport of competitive swimming, short distances equate to high speed, so if someone says, "this is for short distances," they really mean, "short distances at very high speed." That may have confused you more. If it has, I apologise!
@@maxmeier532 you explained it yourself in your own comment! "breathing is very difficult if you don't rotate the hip". Breathing comfortably is critical for longer distance swimming. A lot of sprinters don't even breathe at all.
I trying his style .. really moving smooth forwards by itself especially in the gliding process... I just learn swimming last year February 2023 who could not stay float in the pool at 2m depth . Now I can swim & swim like athlete at least little by copying Thier gesture as possible as I could .. watching these RU-vid clip makes who interested in swimming improve a lot
3:15 Chest back towards the spine, and down. I haven't seen that elsewhere. It doesn't feel like it straightens me out, rather the opposite. It kind of fights having the neck positioned with the chin back and it creates more tension. How do you find a balance? It's too subtle for me to notice in the swimming examples, he could demonstrate without a shirt on? Maybe this posture discourages chest breathing in favour of using the diaphragm. I guess it moves the lungs closer to the middle of the body making the legs sink less. This does seem more useful to me than the advice I see elswhere of pulling the belly button towards the spine. Should we "belly breathe"? During the slower speed demonstrated at 10:06 the hip rotation is greater than in the faster example at 5:06
While I am only a beginner swimmer, and loving it, I do have a good sense of body connection, and if I understand correctly, it is about maintaining that connection. When swimming, I feel a source like an orb of light and pleasant space from my lower body powering my upper body effortlessly, which as I improve on feels really enjoyable and make me feel at home in the water. That same sense if i connect to it first allows me to visualize the tips I am learning in these videos. While striving to keep my chest pressing down to keep body level, at the same time the frontal line is connected somewhat flat towards my navel, which nourishes it and stops that internal space from floating upwards and making a disconnect. That nourishment includes the water. It is not so much muscle tightening as a sense the muscles follow. So their is a connection down the frontal, which allows radiative energy to rise up deep inside of the body and back. Same with hips, where if rotated too much, then the feeling of the large almost hollow connection from center of each hip down into the leg is lost. In martial and internal cultivation that connection from deep inside the hips into the legs and also into the body trunk is first developed before more intensive application.
I tried this posture yesterday. Today I feel I have used my back muscles differently, so something is happening. I explored "chest back" while kicking in streamline, comparing with chest out, positions in between, feeling for differences in buoyancy. I tried it in drills, breaststroke glide, dolphin kick. It changes the position of the shoulders, rolls them forward if I exaggerate. For fun, I explored it in backstroke and it limits mobility a little, I rotate earlier or put the arm down wider. Ofc, that is a different stroke. It's something to play with and I'll have to practise to find nuances and balance. Thanks!
The point he made about rotation and keeping the hips more stable while rotating the shoulders more. Would that still apply to triathletes or open water swimmers? I’ve been doing what he’s saying not to in terms of hips and shoulders all rotate at the same time.
Swimming 100 m in 1:10 effortlessly is only possible if you have the right body type. A slender body low body fat long arms large hands, All make it possible. For everyone else out there with Dad bods you'll be lucky to maintain 1:40s,
Swimming very technical but a lot of olympic swimmers seem to have their own non technical styles like galloping/loping strokes or brute force dramatic strokes
06:09. Correct me if I'm wrong here, but saying "think how much weaker your knees are compared to you glutes and hamstrings? Instead of talking about knee weakness, talk about quad muscles, which I would think are actually usually stronger than the hamstrings. Talk about bending the leag causin drag, instead of knee weakness, that is affecting the efficiency. Right?
I have a question. Why stretch your arm in front of you to the maximum. You fight water resistance then. Alternative - just to scoop on downward motion. NB: short distance swimmers just pummel the water with straight arms - use them as propellers. I underwstand this is exhausting and can't be used for long distance. So I understand recovery with high elbow. Aother bit. When I was being taight swimming. It wa a long long time ago, the guidelines were to scoop water a little bity under the torso so it is mnot like the arms are always onm your side. Was this wrong. The idea is that you do not get moved sideways as much. Another commebt. Yes, this style looks beautiful and effortless. But rememer Janet Evans who did 800 m freestyle records and destroyed that testosterone spiked East German swimmers. Her style of swimming freestyle looled more like some asymmetric butterfly. Still she did fabulously.
Generally in events of 50-200m free, the swimmers will aim to limit their hip rotation and rotate more through the shoulders. We coach mostly triathletes and longer distance swimmers swimmers so I’d recommend most people have even rotation through the hips and torso.
What he alludes to, but doesn't actually say, is that rotation of the shoulder girdle and the hips needs to be connected so that power can be generated in the arms and the legs. How? Via the Anterior and Posterior Oblique Myofascial Chains. These run between each shoulder and the hip on the opposite side, on both the back and the front of the body, and underpin the power of swinging and throwing movements. The front and back complementary chains co-contract to produce rotation in one direction or the other. The shoulder that moves back (up when horizontal in water), for the sake of argument lets say the Right one, moves towards the opposite hip, the Left hip, which also moves backwards(up when horizontal in water) as a result of the myofascial chain between the shoulder and the opposite hip shortening. At the same time on the front of the body the Left shoulder moves towards the right hip as a result of the Anterior Myofascial chain between the two shortening. This result in twisting of the torso, retraction of the right shoulder and forward projection of the left shoulder. If the whole torso remains flat with the same amount of movement relative to the water in both the Right shoulder and Right hip, there is rotation of both relative to the water surface, but not to each other. When this happens the power generated by these rotational myofascial slings is lost. Hope that explains what I agree is often a bit confusing.
Would love to know if there’s a drill to dial in the different rotation required through the shoulders vs through the hips and legs. I feel like the side kick drill could be reinforcing a bad habit, but maybe there’s some nuance I’m not aware of.
You could cross your arms and kick face down in the water only rotating the upper body. Each shoulder should pop out of the water. This will help build the feeling. Hope that makes sense.
Using fins will make this easier if like me you don't have a really strong leg kick. Arms can be held by the side. Just rotate to breath on alternate sides. There is a video out there somewhere of Michael Phelps doing this drill. It gives me something to aim for!
He makes it clear he doesn't understand how he does such great things very well when he says the knees are weaker than hamstring and glutes, because knees aren't a muscle... Quadriceps are the muscle that feeds into our legs and they are very comparable to glutes and hamstring in endurance and power... Especially when you see he is using his quads to kick and almost zero hamstring engagement (he is not pulling his legs up but is kicking them out)
