Came across the drill below on Active.com (“3 drills to motivate your winter training”), and I was a little interested. Anyone ever heard of this? Is it as beneficial as they say?
Rotate to breathe: Place a tennis ball under your chin. Swim freestyle, but as you turn to breathe, keep your head down and try not to let the tennis ball pop up. This drill is difficult, but is very helpful for emphasizing proper rotation and breathing technique. Keeping your head down in order to keep the tennis ball in place emphasizes proper head positioning, particularly in the breathing phase of the stroke.
Proper head alignment is key as our legs drop to counter-balance a lifted head, ultimately creating more drag and a slower swim split. By keeping the tennis ball tucked securely under your chin you will ensure proper head positioning and minimize any leg drag associated with lifting your head to breathe.
Correct head position is very important. Although I haven’t done the exact drill I used to do a different drill working on the same thing. As the article describes, if your head is to high, your hips will sink causing you to drag through the water rather than swimming on top of it.
A common (and very natural) mistake is to swim looking forward where you are going. In actual fact you want to swim with your head in a neutral position similar to how it would be if you were walking (i.e. looking at the bottom of the pool). This is why the cross is at the end of each lane so you can judge your turn without looking up.
The benefits of keeping your head down can easily be demonstrated by kicking on your face with your arms by your side (or better yet, by watching someone else do the same thing). If you have you head up, your hips sink, as soon as you bring your head down (so you could hold a tennis ball with your chin) your hips will pop up.
I used to train in a 50m pool and we’d do 25m facekick then 25m swim. On your front kicking, holding your midsection firm is the strongest position to be in. As you turn to breath if you lift you head at all (or even take to long breathing), you’ll feel your mid section sag, your hips drop and you’ll lose drive/momentum (this is why sprinters minimise their breathing).
This is a drill I haven’t heard of before - have heard of putting a cup of water on your head to get backstroke rotation correct, though. I don’t think it’d work…
My ‘marker’ for correct head position is that when I do a turn I want to go into the wall seeing the bottom of the T on the wall.
This is a drill I haven’t heard of before - have heard of putting a cup of water on your head to get backstroke rotation correct, though. I don’t think it’d work…
My ‘marker’ for correct head position is that when I do a turn I want to go into the wall seeing the bottom of the T on the wall.
The one I remember for teaching you not to bob or twist your head was to place your goggles on your forehead without putting the strap around your head. And then they had to stay there for the full 25/50 of back.
Good point and agreed. Sounds like an exercise in overemphasizing a little with the goal of reaching some middle ground. I don’t have a tennis ball with me to test but I don’t think it would be *too *bad if you tucked it deep under your chin/throat rather than with the point of your chin.
Rotating to breath would be difficult though and my gut feeling is that it might encourage a slow breath (bad) and too much of a body roll (bad).
as others have pointed out, this is not a good drill
one thing I haven’t seen mentioned yet in this thread: the trend over the last few years has been to take a breath independent of the body roll - completely opposite of the goal of the tennis ball drill.
