How to Improve Body Position for Swimming

For competitive swimmers, better body position can help shave seconds off your times. With beginner swimmers, a better body position is the first building block to becoming a truly safe swimmer from day one. At our swimming lessons in NJ, we focus on how your body position in the water affects your success. It is a crucial aspect of your swimming technique that we put emphasis on. If you swim for fun and exercise, better body position has other benefits as well. Proper body position will help you to be more efficient and fight fatigue.

Body Position Basics

When you’re swimming, the goal should be to make yourself as long as possible in the water. Having good posture in your everyday life outside the pool is a great help with this. By standing up straight and avoiding slouching, you can really improve your positioning in the water.

The first step to improve is to find your natural floating position. Float face downward in the pool, and notice how your limbs and torso feel. Usually, people find that their chest sits higher in the water than their hips and legs. This is not the ideal long, horizontal body position for swimming.

You can practice making your body sit in a position that is more parallel to the bottom of the pool by pressing your chest downwards and trying to lift your hips upward at the same time.

Other body positioning issues can include arm movement. If your arms are always moving, this can lift your shoulders too much. Try pausing briefly after your arm enters the water. In fact, experimenting with your body position by making small tweaks like this can be a big help in finding the right one.

Head Positioning

Another issue is how you position your head while swimming. Good head position will make your breathing more efficient. Proper head position will decrease drag and make your stroke much more efficient.

It’s best to swim with a head position that’s as fixed as possible. You should not be staring straight ahead when you swim. Your neck should be relaxed, not tense, and your gaze should be downward. When you inhale, the water line will hit at the halfway point of your bottom eye.

Otherwise, your vision should be focused on a point about 3 feet in front of you. You can also track your head position by considering where the water hits on your head. The water line should be near your hairline, on the top part of your head.

Wrapping Up

Improving your body position in the pool will make your swimming experience better in many ways. A more effective stroke means less wasted energy. This increased power will show in your improved speed and endurance as you swim.

If you want to improve at a swim school, contact Into the Swim today. We offer some of the best private, group and even Mommy and Me swim classes in New Jersey.