General question: looking at some of these videos, when wearing a pull-bouy the head and eyes seem to look forward a lot more. It is widely preached to be head down/look down. When wearing a pull-bouy or wetsuit SHOULD one look forward slightly more to allow that chest push? Or should you still be eyes down but still trying to push the chest down? The latter I can see myself sinking and swimming to the ground lol. I don't know, I find head position confusing when/if wearing toys. Videos of eyes and head forward make it more so since that's the opposite of whats normally preached?
I once knew a good swimmer around here who used to look at her hands in front of her with her catch. She had a swimming background and a killer kick though. Can someone please help clarify head position when wearing a wetsuit in races or pull bouy in the pool?


Edit: just went for a swim and tried to look forward a touch more. I think by looking down too much I'm burying my head- and the terminology swim down hill maybe affects my
Pull. Anyway by looking forward a bit more I found I could get the front half of my body on top of the water a bit more. It made me less likely to over-rotate for breath as well. It also meant I could get an earlier catch and pull more water.
I dunno. Swimming is an anomaly to me 😂

My first thought on this is that by floating the swimmers front end, are you not simulating a body position that would only be achieved if the swimmer is holding their breath?

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Jon Ryder
RPM Coaching

You understand that "swimming downhill" is just a metaphor, right??? I mean no one literally swims downhill obv and for that matter, during the races I've done which had a "with the current swim", I did not notice the "push" at all while swimming but rather only after finishing the swim and noticing that my swim split was consid faster than it would be normally.

Head position is the same w/ or w/o the PB and/or wetsuit; head position is over-rated in terms of its effect on your speed. As Sheila Taormina points out in her first book Swim Speed Secrets, Johnny Weissmuller swam 57.0 for 100 LCM with his head entirely out of the water, and no flip turn, dolphin kicks, tech suits, etc, and with training that would be consid minimal by today's standards. Given that the WR today is only about 10 sec faster (46.XX), Johnny was getting a great pull out of his arms to go that fast with head entirely OOTW. So focus on pulling hard and let your head position fall out wherever it wants to.

You know who Sheila T is, don't you??? For the help of those who've not followed swimming and tri over the past 20 yrs, Sheila won a gold swimming on the women's 4 x 200 free relay in '96, with a 2:00 for 200 LCM. Then she switched over to tri and raced ITU with great success; she finished 6th in the first Oly Tri in 2000, won the ITU WC in 2004, and finished 23rd in the'04 Oly Tri. In 2005, she took up modern pentathlon, won the event at the '05 Pan Am Games, and finished 19th in the '08 Oly. She is the first woman ever to qualify for the Oly in three diff sports; swimming was part of all three and running part of two. She is also, acc to Rowdy Gaines, the shortest woman (5'3") ever to win a gold in Oly swimming.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I watched Kyle Hooker at USAT Nationals in '15 come out of the water in something like 18:00 flat and he literally sighted every other stroke. Literally. It almost seemed as if he had integrated it into a sort of hybrid freestyle. The lesson: pull hard.

Outstanding example!!! Guys like Hooker are going so fast that their heads are quite high in the water such that looking up a bit to sight is no big deal.

Looked him up on the USA Swimming times search and, at age 17 in 2005, he went (in scy) 1:49 200, 4:53 500, 2:04 200 fly, and 4:24 400 IM. It looks like he "retired" from swimming after HS, or at least his best times are all at age 16-17. He swam for Nation's Capital Swim Club in D.C., same club Ledecky swam with. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

If a PB is supposed to help people work on perfecting/strengthening their pull......and a strong pull is desirable......where's the rub? (rhetorical question)

Someone told me that a strong pull would overcome some body position issues. I believe him. I honestly can't figure out why people attempt to put down others' use of this tool.

Ya, actually strengthening the pull is the reason the PB was invented, e.g. b/c swimmers with strong kicks tend to overly rely on their kick. I know this is hard for some tri guys to believe but some swimmers can kick almost as fast as they can swim. See the "Kicktastic" type in the Swim Smooth typology.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

When I get a cramp in my arch while swimming, I will point my foot towards the bottom of the pool (90 degrees) and immediately feel the resistance. It's like throwing out an anchor.

My dad has zero ankle flexibility. When he kicks, he actually goes backwards; it's quite impressive.

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Oui, mais pas de femme toute de suite (yes, but I am not ready for a woman straight away) -Stephen Roche's reply when asked whether he was okay after collapsing at the finish in the La Plagne stage of the 1987 Tour

For me, unlike the experts quoted above, it is all about drag minimization. I know that if my head is not "down" then forward progress is eliminated, end of. If you have natural buoyancy (or exceptional strength / fitness, or HUUB pants) you can overcome this, but I don't :(. Which is why I try to focus on the weakest area, the leg kick, which is the cause of the drag, rather than on the arms, which are the "easy" part. Until someone convinces me otherwise ..


In this connection can someone explain to me where to slot "jammers" into the scheme of things. Do they have a functional purpose, if so what, or are they mainly just aesthetic "toys"? In the blurb there was something about relieving or relaxing muscle strain which is something that I was not conscious of. Are they a half way house towards HUUB's but which could be used - to advantage - with a kick board?

The more material the better so high-end jammers are faster for pool racing. Not sure if that answers your ?

I wanted to add to the discussion that imo the most important part of the swimming spine is:

> angle of lumbar to pelvis. The straighter the better.

A low angle leads to a body that floats higher in the water, in particular the hips.

Now if your thoracic spine is tight, then keeping your head low helps the lower back positioning.
If you can do a yoga cobra without any lower back tension/issues, then you can swim heads up without killing your floating position.

Our club kids kicking on a pull board are heads up and fast, torso is flat, legs are high.

Me kicking on a pull board, I am still better using a snorkel otherwise my legs drop too low. But this is getting much better.

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I share your fate with the need to use a kick board with the help of a snorkel, except that public pools in NE UK take a dim view of such aids and I have to make do without (breathing under water is tough!) Which is why I was wondering if the combination of a kick board and jammers (is a jammer the same as a jammer?) would make sense in a way that a PB would not.

. What is the $64 K secret?

I wish I could understand and implement this!

I suspected "the secret" but didn't know how profound it actually was.

And the "secret" is probably what folks don't want to hear. 1st stop is a good sports physio, to check your spine. For me it was about 1 year of IMS therapy and working with the results of that. In total I got stuck with a lot of SS needles. It loosens everything up.

Besides getting my lower lumbar to flex out (like convex - which was a revelation for me), daily rolling of the spine, thoracic, upper back/neck area. It wasn't a chore for me and I just kept working at it, like this is what I have to do. My back is live-able now too. I couldn't sit, stand or even lie down without back pain - always had to be moving.

So my "swim" posture score was say 1/10 to start. I am at about ~4/10 now, where a top swimmer would be 8 or 9 /10.

It's crazy, I am swimming maybe once a week, yet I am the fastest/easiest I have ever been. Full practices with our TSUN club group and have some speed in the tank, flip turning and busting off any distance I want. So the neck forward, rounded hunched shoulders, sway back and loose glutes will sink you.

I've stopped working on swimming as it's good enough for now. I am working on getting my lower legs to act like some springs now, so I can have a some semblance of a run split.

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I have to second this.

Prior to getting into triathlon, I was lifting weights and doing body-weight exercises pretty intensely for... 10 years?... starting in high-school and I never really had correct form or any sort semblance of balance in the muscles groups I was working. The result was a kyphotic spine/shoulders and a compromised range of motion in my shoulders. Over the last five years I've learned to pull hard (and even kick hard!) with decent form and pretty good timing *BUT* it was clear about a year ago that I had hit a wall. When I would work with a coach I physically couldn't get into the positions they wanted me (my kyphtoic spine/shoulders forces me to pull fairly deep and my initial catch has a large "down" component) and when said coaches gave me dry-land flexibility assessments both of them said something along the lines of "you might be the least flexible swimmer I've ever come across." It had nothing to do with proprioception or understanding what the coach was communicating... I physically couldn't do what they were asking me to do.

I've been working with a physio for about six months. In that time my swim volume is easily down 50% and I haven't lost any speed. If I were swimming as much as I had previously I could see dropping 5 seconds/100m for something like a 1500 by the end of the year (which is pretty good for someone who was stuck in the 1:30/100m range). Heck, there could be more on the table, I don't know. I finally don't have to kick my butt off to keep my feet near the surface.

This is the rub (for me): If I can get all the resistance I need for strengthening my pull from swimming "normally" what is the benefit from introducing something artificial such as a PB which alters my body position and reduces the drag (only whilst in use)? I am not convinced a PB makes it any easier to improve the arm movement, possibly the opposite.

Unless the aim is for a quick fix feel good effect. One day I will understand.

this is a great thread.

I did very technique-focused session today. Specifically trying to focus on body position.
I am quite consistently about 3 sec faster per 100y when I use a small pull buoy at the same effort level. This means that the better body position makes me faster despite not kicking. Similar results when I use Roka Sim floaty pants. This seems like "free" improvement (i.e. at the same effort level swim faster)

1. I try to sink my chest ("swim downhill"), breath out fully through the stroke, pull up my butt. But I don't seem to be able to get the same position I get with a small piece of foam between my legs (man, that last sentence just sounds wrong out of context). Any ideas that work for people on how to improve the position?
2. Taking a bit of contrarian approach, does it even matter? If I plan to do all my races with a wetsuit which will change my body position anyway, does it make sense to invest time in better position and for that matter in kicking (I hardly kick at all with wetsuit as my legs are very high in the water)

Unless you're an aqua Nazi, my guess is..........no.

I can only repeat what I was told in my recent SwimSmooth video session (NB not targeted at folk in swimsuits). This was to in effect enter the water with the arm pointing at 45° "downwards" rather than (over-)glide horizontally as seems to be accepted practice in many views. In retrospect although it meant re-programming what had been hard-wired in in the past, it seems perfectly logical if the aim is to raise the legs. Putting it into practice effectively is of course another matter.

To quote Ryan Lochte: "the pull buoy puts my body in the ideal position, which I then try to emulate when swimming full stroke." Of course, a swimmer of Lochte's caliber has no problem getting his hips high b/c he has both a very strong pull and a very strong kick. From my many years of swimming with and watching fast swimmers, I think that *most* male non-AA (or higher) swimmers are faster with the PB than without it. A swimmer needs to have either have a very strong kick and/or be swimming pretty fast to swim faster than they pull. Since you're prob not familiar with the USA Swimming Age Group Time Standards, to make AA standards swimming in the usual 25 yd (SCY) pool, an 18 yr old boy would need to go 1:51, 5:01, and 17:32 for the 200, 500, and 1650 free respectively. (AAA and AAAA are the two highest USAS standards.)

So, next time you hear a former D1 swimmer on ST say that any "competent" swimmer should be able to swim faster than he pulls, consider that those times above are prob about what that guy can do now, even a bit out of shape, vs he prob went 1:40/4:35/16:00 at his peak. Don't feel bad that you pull faster than you swim, b/c it is true of *most* swimmers except the fast to very fast. I do think you might get some benefit from the PB if you use Lochte's approach. If you were to truly work at swimming for a few years, you might eventually get to where you could swim faster than you pull, but then again maybe not; IMO, it would basically depend on your innate swim talent.

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I don't (sadly) consider myself in the same class as Ryan Lochte so can be forgiven for having different views: Swimming with a PB is undoubtedly easier and faster than without since (like comparing an Airbus with a helicopter) most of the gravity drag is removed.
Another view occurred to me this evening whilst sharing the pool with a PB devotee: If you consider swimming as a means of getting / keeping fit as opposed to a means of making amphibious forward progress, then using a PB transfers the "work" from a whole body balance to the arms. The other guy's legs were pretty much immobile throughout the whole session so I suspect had little to show for it at the end. By contrast gut feeling tells me that spreading the work has got to be beneficial.

Swimmers at all levels from little 4 yr olds learning to swim, all the way up to Lochte and Phelps, use the pull buoy (PB) for a portion of their workout, anywhere from 5% to 25% depending on the day. I'm not aware of any swim coaches who advocate using the PB all the time but rather it is simply a tool, like the kickboard, paddles, fins, ankle bands, etc. The PB is like a kickboard for your arms. OTOH, it is your swim workout so obv you can structure it as you prefer.

In any event, try to enjoy your swimming as much as you can. :)

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"Anyone can be who they want to be IF they have the HUNGER and the DRIVE."

I'm not a fish by any stretch of the imagination and don't exactly swim a lot. My tri swim resume: :25 oly, :30-:34 70.3, 1:05-1:10 IM.

Most of my races are wetsuit races despite living in hot as hell Texas since I do either early or late season races around here or travel to races during the summer to avoid the heat. I was, by far, at my best when I did the majority of swimming with sim shorts like the Rokas or Xterra Lava Pants. That was for either wetsuit or non wetsuit races, but mostly wetsuit (maybe 75/25 in my tri lifetime).

Last year I decided to do zero swimming with sim shorts and I fucking sucked in the pool and at my races (which ironically were all non-wetsuit races). My pull sucked. I'll be the first to admit that I can't kick for shit and I pull my way through any swim.

I resisted going back to the sim shorts this year but for the past month I have gone back to them and I've been swimming well. You can see my race sched in my sig and the only race that should be non-wetsuit is Cartagena. So I couldn't give any shits about training without the sim shorts.

My $.02 and YMMV.

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