The correct answer is both. Check out Ledecky below (but note the line of her speedsuit tricks the eyes into thinking there's a lot more arch in her low back when in reality there's barely any). Her core is engaged to flatten out her low back which would normally result in anterior tilt *but* her glutes are also engaged which pull her legs up high in the water (normally engaging one's glutes would result in posterior tilt). The net sum is a neutral pelvis and a very straight body line.

I say "engaged" but Katie probably doesn't even think about or feel it anymore. The vast majority of adult onset swimmers will have to concentrate quite a bit and work very hard to achieve this (most never do).

What mental picture would I use in my mind to achieve this while I am swimming? Or would I be better to concentrate on other things like strengthening my core, keeping my head down when breathing, swimming downhill etc.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Unless you have some kind of highly specific weakness or deformity, I would not occupy yourself with "engaging" your abs or your back. The support of the water and gravity will do what it needs to.

Instead, focus on a proper distance kick, a proper torso position, a proper head position (by the way, it should NOT face directly down), and a proper arm entry and underwater pull. Get those right, and your back and core will be exactly where it needs to be for your anatomy.

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The thing with achieving body positions or motions is that it's very individual. There are sometimes heuristics but invariably there's experimentation. For me, I started by doing dry land work by propping my pelvis and chest up on kick boards with my arms at my side, engaging my core to flatten my lower back and my glutes to lift my legs. It took a while before I could even breathe properly in that position. Then I evolved that into a dry land streamline (talk about a delta workout!) and as I did that I became conscious of my body line as I would streamline off the walls. That progressed to kicking while holding that body line and, eventually, swimming.

yeah, about that :>

my left thigh and hip are poorly synched, which has always been more noticeable after a hard swim. A contributing factor has been a habitual swayback. So I tried swimming with a posterior tilt with a pull buoy today, and the posterior chain on the bad side was much more linked up once I got out.

So it is an unusual situation. I'm not looking to swim faster (yet), but to move better generally. Thanks for your response!

I'm not exactly sure what that is.
Where did you get this diagnosis, and from who?

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What I see in the picture below is her right foot being in line with her body. Give me that type of ankle flexibility and I will immediately drop 15 sec off of my 100 free time.

Try to have the back of my suit at or slightly breaking the water line.


McEvoy has a high hip position...

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2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

I had this conversation with a training partner years ago. He swam in college and we're both sub 10min 1000y guys. We swam with 'sway back' our whole lives, but we both realized, separately, that we had to engage our core more now that we're running quite a bit, otherwise our lower backs hurt while running and we found we were prone to running with sway back if we swam that way - not saying that's anyone else's experience , but it was our separate experiences.

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runner's dystonia, a longstanding problem.

mild scoliosis + hypermobile joints contributed to misalignment of femoral head/pelvis on one side. I compensated through years of racing, then hyper compensated. Then the house of cards fell apart to the point where I could barely walk last year at this time.

Through focused activation the long disused regional muscles can now 'grab' the joint normally, and I can run again, but still have a way to go.

Part of that is training out the swayback so the hip joint knits better.

You and me both... my right foot is like an anchor. Arthritis... yada, yada, yada...

Funny you ask, because I've been experimenting with this in the pool lately. It also sounds as though we have some similar bio-mechanical issues. GreenPlease best described what I have found:

I'll describe as best I can what has helped me (an adult onset swimmer). Instead of focusing on "butt up," I concentrate on 1) bringing the small of my back to the water surface using deep core (not surface abs) to "roll up" my pelvis (think "noon" on pelvic clock)--the small of my back doesn't actually break the surface; because I tend to be swayback in the water this actually puts me in a more neutral position; 2) getting my feet to the surface of the water by lifting with the back of my leg/hamstring--that requires contracting glutes; and 3) keeping neck aligned/not slouching so that water hits just above my eyebrow--I tend to submerge my head like a submarine in an effort to get my back neutral.

One of my "aha" moments was that, at least for me, effective kicking was more about "pulling up" than "kicking down."

On sets of 100 and longer in a 25m pool, 1st length I concentrate on body position as described above; 2nd length I concentrate on exhaling as much as I can--I tend to hold my breath; 3rd length concentrate on body position again; 4th length concentrate on getting fingers/lower arm pointed down before pulling (EVF).

BTW, I think the "butt up" is a red herring. My conclusion is that many swim/tri coaches are so used to teaching swimming to lean runners with sinking legs that when they see butt up and feet breaking the water, they assume that the body position is good.

YMMV.

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No coasting in running and no crying in baseball

I have found that I can kick with very good body position (high in the water, ankles break the surface of the water), but as soon as I start adding arm movements my legs go down again.

I've swum my entire life and can't understand this explanation. The fascination with the core is mind boggling. True "core muscles" are incapable of being contracted in isolation. These are intervertebral muscles that span 1-2 vertebral bodies. Everyone loves to discuss the transverse abdominus also, this is not much thicker than a piece of paper and therefore cannot generate the force necessary to do much of anything. When people discuss core they mean superficial abdominal muscles. These are movers, not stabilizers like the smaller "core" muscles. By definition, your abdominals and hip flexors are spine flexors and therefore create a posterior pelvic tilt. Your glutes are hip extensors (or abductors) and extend the spine creating an anterior pelvic tilt. When deciding what position your hips should be in, don't give it so much thought. Place your head in an ideal position- face down looking at the bottom of the pool- and the rest of your body will follow.

That is probably why you don't have to think about it.

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No coasting in running and no crying in baseball

It just seems like a lot of mental and physical effort to focus on hip or low back positioning when swimming. I think a lot of people would be surprised about how much head position will dictate the rest of the body positioning. I'm really a fan of keeping things simple.

a quick thanks to everyone for their insights --

I played around with this again today, swimming with pull bouy and an aggressive (for me) posterior tilt.

observations: it tightened and streamlined the tube from torso down to mid-thigh.

Interestingly, it also freed my shoulders a bit, a faster stroke turnover was easier to achieve.

Finally my hips began rotating as an automatic 'answer' to shoulder rotation (rather than thinking 'gotta rotate the hips!')

so for me it felt more functional. Will keep at it and see if it can be trained up to race conditions and fatigue.

Could tight hip flexors be the culprit for sinking legs? I'm an adult onset swimmer with sinking legs but always been a runner. My chiro says my hip flexors are really tight. I've been trying to lift the legs but it's been hurting my lower back and I threw it out the other day. Maybe I need to find some exercises that teach me to contract my glutes instead or more?

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So you've got some sense of body awareness as evidenced by your observations. Keep doing what you are doing. When you can reliably access that particular technique on demand, try a set of moderate effort 25s on something like 1:1 swim to rest ratio, while introducing a very slight delay in your rotation (while keeping the arms moving) after the first one and increasing it gradually over subsequent 25s to see what happens. I am not suggesting this as a "fix" for anything or as a move in any "right" direction, just a mechanism for exploring technique. If, during this exploration set you feel a pull toward changing your cadence or effort level...go with your gut and trust that you will learn something useful from it.

Same here. Try to have a good head position and feel the surface with the back of the suit.

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___________________________________________
http://en.wikipedia.org/...eoesophageal_fistula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral_palsy
2020 National Masters Champion - M40-44 - 400m IM
Canadian Record Holder 35-39M & 40-44M - 200 m Butterfly (LCM)

You don't need a mental picture. Lie on your stomach on the ground (well, you could do it on the bottom of the pool...) with your hands extended in front of you (like you were gliding off the wall on a turn). With your legs straight, lift your feet off the ground. You will feel the muscles in your back, glutes, and hamstrings that are engaged to do this. These are exactly the muscles you use to keep your legs at the surface. Get a feel for what it is like to engage these muscles, and use them while swimming. It doesn't take much strength to do this in the water due to buoyancy, and it won't take long to build the endurance. Like GreenPlease said, it will become second nature, more or less. It does require you actually thinking about it while swimming, though, until that point. Also, it is important to have reasonable hip flexor flexibility, or you'll be fighting yourself. Cyclists can tend to have tight hip flexors from the closed hip angle used in biking.

Just doing it correctly while swimming is all the strengthening you need.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

I seriously doubt you would shave 15 off your 100m with better ankle flex. It's awesome of you can hyper extend the knee and keep the toes pointing to the back of the pool, but you can keep the toes point back (and not down) by simply not locking your knee at the completion of the kick. Just leave a slight knee bend and voila, your toes won't point straight down. Also better hip flexibility will allow you to kick from behind your body to the plane of your body, but not "in front" of your body. Look how much behind her body her left leg is. Most adult onset swimmers are kicking front of themselves killing their streamline. It's also the same with most adult runners....everything is in front of the body!