Mastering the Straight Line: Conquer Cross-Over and Snaking in Freestyle Swimming
This week’s 3rd stage in our Swim Smooth Stroke Correction Hierarchy will focus on “A for Alignment”:
This covers off a large magnitude of aspects of the freestyle stroke, including:
The distance you reach forwards in front of your head
Hand alignment as you enter into the water
Hand depth as you extend forwards in the water
Lateral positioning of your hand and arm as you extend forwards in the water
…and most importantly, the effect that any issues with these aspects of your alignment have on the other areas of your stroke, vis-à-vis, welcome to the Cause & Effect aspect of our Methodology ✅
Alignment can really be thought of as anything that will help set you up for a better stroke, specifically the catch (as we’ll discuss next week).
These four aspects of your alignment can all be brought together with a drill I designed specifically for this in 2013 which I named the “Javelin drill”. The drill progression starts with simply kicking on your side, which is a great way of testing your stability and alignment in it’s raw form. If you can improve on this simple aspect, your swimming will improve in leaps and bounds no matter what your ability level or core issue facing your stroke.
To see exactly how this all works, please watch our latest YouTube video and remember to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE 👍
