I would like to thank all members involved in my previous question concerning duathlon.
I’ve started swimming (actively) three months ago and I’ve set a goal to finish my first Sprint Triathlon which is scheduled for May, 2019.
Additionally, I have one really important question which is a HUGE issue for me at the moment and it is associated with swimming in particular (The sinking legs problem).
I just can’t seem to get my body in a pure horizontal position and can’t prevent my legs from sinking while swimming freestyle. I can only do like 200m (non stop) and than I’m struggling and I have to kick more which drains my entire oxygen and energy.
On the other hand, when I swim with a pull buoy I can do 750m non stop in about 15-16 minutes without feeling completely exhausted. But this doesn’t count cause you can’t swim with a pull buoy on a race day.
Also, I usually breathe on the right side, and I’ve noticed when I turn my head to breathe, I can’t keep my left arm in an upright position and it sinks immediately.
Do I have a really weak core? Is that the only reason why I can’t flow naturally in the water, by using mostly my arms and not my legs?
Will intensive core workouts and a lot of swimming (5 times a week) help or should I just quit?
P.S. I’m 32 years old (181cm/74kg) and I have a rather clean muscular legs from running and cycling.
AOS swimmer here, had to learn to keep legs up. Things that work for me:
thinking about engaging my core and glutes
pressing my face into the water (similar to the chin tuck described by poster #2)
Some of the guppy single arm drills might help train your leading arm to stay on the surface. What happens when you breathe on the left?
Hi Scheherazade,
Thanks a lot for your response. You are absolutely right about the glutes and core. As a matter of fact, my gludes have never been extremely muscular and tight due to the fact that I have never actually work on them. When you’ve managed to strenghten your core and glutes, did you felt the difference in terms of gliding, concentrating more on the catch/pull rather than on the kick thus preventing your hips/legs from sinking? How long did you practice to overcome this issue?
To answer your question. I’m currently practicing to breathe on each side (on every third stroke). When I breathe on the left side, my right hand is straight, but only for a while and than it sinks. I try to strech as much as possible, but obviously I’m not doing something right.
P.S. I had a few classes with a personal trainer who said that I’m actually too old for this sport and therefore my legs are sinking
First of all, you’re not too old! I started total immersion swimming lessons in 2014 at age 28. It just takes longer to learn new movement patterns. If you can find the right swim coach, one on one lessons are totally worth it.
I had to think about what effect the engagement has and came up with this:
it stops my legs being splayed and tightens up my kick (so I’m swimming through a smaller diameter imaginary tube)
it stops me rotating too much
both of the above mean I’m getting more distance per stroke.
I swim with a 2 beat kick and this reduces the aerobic demands. A 6 beat kick just tires me out.
If I’m doing a long continuous swim (1000m+) I will probably “reset” several times. The funny thing was I stopped swimming from about mid 2016-end 2017 because I had a knee injury. I did a lot of glute strengthening work as a result of that knee injury and when I came back to swimming earlier this year I noticed the change.
I’m no coach, but i hear what you say and see it with many relative newbiew to the club I’m in.
The video analysis ive then seen tends to show up 2 or 3 typucal problems… most of which are coming from the front end.
looking too far forward (which tilts the whole body and result is the legs sink
breathing- yiu may be levering your whole face out to breathe, and pissibly towards the front too (you should be breathing in the hollow behind the bow wave and with the water line cuttting your face in half such that its one eye in the water one eye out, and breathe like popeye. If you’re seeing the dry parts of the pool with both eyes, you’re over rotating your head and maybe pulling it backwards too. All this unbalances you and results in legs dropping.
your first part of the stroke is pushing your hand downwards rather than backwards. That levers your head out (as above- bad) and agsin your whole body tilts so your legs sink. (A downwards push on the hand does not give propulsion !) Your hand should be going backwards with your elbow higher than forearm/ wrist and wrist higher than hand. What’s termed a ‘early vertical forearm’
Think about…
keeping your head a bit lower , looking somewhere betwren straight down and at 45 deg forward.
check what you see - should be 1 eye in and one eye out, when you breathe, and breathe in the dip behind the bow wave caused by your head, popeye style. If both eyes are out of the water, it’s wrong !
Oh… and make sure you’re exhaking all the time wjen your face is in the water. Otherwise the front of your torso is more buoyant = legs sink ! + you end up using the time your moith is out of the water to exhale as well as inhale meaning you have to keep your head / mouth out for twice as long and exacerbates the problems).
This all comes from what I’ve learned and had to fix on my own stroke c/o swim coaches and video analysis, over the past few years, especially for when breathing to my ‘non-dominant’ side.
Getting some video analysis by a swim coach if you can is worth every penny.
And if you want to see how it should be done, there’s a great little app for about £3 by Swimsmooth that has an animation you can slow down and view from lots of angles.
May sound counter intuitive, but try sculling drills.
Not to sound too Zen or bullshittish, but staying horizontal is almost a frame of mind. It’s not about kicking or not kicking, it’s about flowing.
Im struggling for words to describe it, but try to think of your body as a ribbbon making a series of waves below the surface with the wave starting on the catch, progressing through your body and pulling your feet up.
There are some amazing slow motion videos of phelps and other outlier swimmers that show this.
Hope that helps.
Edit to add: someone else wrote: “it starts at the front end” which kind of nails what I’m getting at… You can lift the legs with a buoy or kick, but if the front of your stroke isn’t right, you’ll be fighting yourself… a correct front end means your legs will naturally be high
Aeroman, I read you post and though: that’s me !!!
NOw that everybody tells me a wetsuit is like swimming with two pull buoys, I’ll shop for a triathlon that allows for a wetsuit ;-).
I fell the faster I swim, the less the legs are sinking. So I’m working on my speed now and multiply the short efforts.
I definitely need a coach too.
I don’t fell I have good proprioception, I fell I look like an eel with boneless arms when tired…
Perfect posture, with the ability to lower your chest into the water and get the rest of your body to balance on that cavity of air in the lungs, is the key to being horizontal.
Have a good trainer in the gym assess your alignment and mobility, etc. Doesn’t cost much.
There are likely issues with the head, breathing that are all true. A snorkel will help you relax a bit. It’s taken me like 5 years to feel 100% comfortable I can swim any distance without a wetsuit (eg 3km etc). I finished this year in very good form.
I am working relentlessly on my posture and that is helping for the run too. Biking takes me the other way, which is frustrating because I love to bike.
Believe it or not you have to learn to swim without kicking or minimal kicking before getting that body position really good.
As a beginner your kick is almost certainly compensating for an imbalanced pull.
To fix this use a buoy and ankle band to expose the pull problems. This should dramatically.improve your body position but may feel very hard or impossible at first.
Eventually you can swim band and no buoy for highest leg position. It’s really hard at first but is Def learnable.
Perfect posture, with the ability to lower your chest into the water and get the rest of your body to balance on that cavity of air in the lungs, is the key to being horizontal.
Have a good trainer in the gym assess your alignment and mobility, etc. Doesn’t cost much.
There are likely issues with the head, breathing that are all true. A snorkel will help you relax a bit. It’s taken me like 5 years to feel 100% comfortable I can swim any distance without a wetsuit (eg 3km etc). I finished this year in very good form.
I am working relentlessly on my posture and that is helping for the run too. Biking takes me the other way, which is frustrating because I love to bike.
I think I’m going to phrase the first part of this just a little differently. Try to float on your stomach and press your chest down. This should keep your hips up. It’s all about buoyancy. Chest down, hips up. Hips down, chest up.
If it’s when you’re breathing, try to touch your chin to the shoulder you are breathing to. (Basically don’t look up to breath).
have you had someone video your swim? Reason I ask is that if you haven’t had that done, what you think you are doing in the water bears no resemblance to what you are actually doing.
when swimming (as opposed to floating on your back) sinking legs doesn’t have a lot to do with how muscular or lean they are.
getting and keeping your legs up is mostly down to a couple of things a) getting enough reach at the front of the stroke and b) keeping your core tight. If you imagine your centre of buoyancy as a pivot, if your legs sink it means you centre of mass is closer to your feet than your CoB is. Getting more reach will move your CoM closer to your CoB. You’ll also get more streamlined at the same time, win win.
I’d be wary of trying to look down too much. Just think “neutralâ€. If you look down too much, that can cause you to bend at the waist, exactly what you don’t want.
Perfect posture, with the ability to lower your chest into the water and get the rest of your body to balance on that cavity of air in the lungs, is the key to being horizontal.
Have a good trainer in the gym assess your alignment and mobility, etc. Doesn’t cost much.
There are likely issues with the head, breathing that are all true. A snorkel will help you relax a bit. It’s taken me like 5 years to feel 100% comfortable I can swim any distance without a wetsuit (eg 3km etc). I finished this year in very good form.
I am working relentlessly on my posture and that is helping for the run too. Biking takes me the other way, which is frustrating because I love to bike.
I think I’m going to phrase the first part of this just a little differently. Try to float on your stomach and press your chest down. This should keep your hips up. It’s all about buoyancy. Chest down, hips up. Hips down, chest up.
If it’s when you’re breathing, try to touch your chin to the shoulder you are breathing to. (Basically don’t look up to breath).
Bringing the “hips up” mystified me for a quite a while. It’s a lot like running in that you want to engage your transverse abdominus (if I have that right). Basically pull your gut in and raise the small of your back to the surface. It does wonders for speed/flow because a sagging structure is very slow in the water.
A lot of good advice in these posts.
The WORST advice you got was from the personal trainer. Having worked with athletes who started swimming in their 40s and 50s, and having watched them progress from barely being able to swim 25 yards, to completing a 2.4 mile Ironman swim within 1 year, I know that older adults can learn to swim well.
Good luck on your journey to becoming a speedy swimmer!
A lot of good advice has already been given. If you want to develop your core, do some kick sets. No, it’s not a lot of fun (especially for beginners) but it’s a great way to improve your core strength. My swim “posture†seems to improve right after I’ve done a kick set.
Dolphin kick on your back. Lots of it. Also Just practice floating in the water. You need to totally relax to do this. Start on your back so you can breath, inhale and exhale and notice your body rising and falling.
My body position isn’t great either but I have a swim coach that has me do the following drills which seem to help immensely:
-do lots of kicking with a kick board as this strengthens your core even if you don’t plan to kick that much while actually swimming
-vertical kicking, you should be able to flutter kick without fins and keep your shoulders above the water for 90 secs. If you can’t then you are kicking from the knees and not from the hips which drops your legs
-side kicking 50m, in the pool side kick and observe your position, basically you’re holding side plank when side kicking and if you’re legs sink you didn’t tighten your core enough
-work and tighten your core: if you think about holding front plank, it’s really the same thing as swimming straight eg your legs can’t sink if you force them straight with a tight core then dip your head position to look at the bottom of the pool
-sucking in your stomach so you have a straight back without an arch → this really helps but hard to do for me without thinking about it
My coach keeps emphasizing core strength for better body position.
I second the band. It naturally teaches you to move your c of g forward which is what has to happen for you to get more horizontal in the water. All the advice re: glutes, head position, abs etc is great but band swimming forces those things to happen otherwise, your legs will drop and you won’t be going very far. Good luck…keep working on it.
This is simple. Lie face down on the ground with your arms pointed forward (so your hands are as far from your feet as possible). Using your back, glute, and hamstring muscles, lift your straight legs off the ground. The muscles you engage to do this (it will be hard to do on the ground) are exactly the muscles you engage to keep your legs from sinking in the water. It is much easier in the water, and is what all swimmers do, without thinking, when they practice it enough.
It is important, also, to be relatively flexible in your hip flexors (look up various ways to stretch them), as tight hip flexors can result from lots of biking and running.
Head position, kicking, and most other suggestions are irrelevant. You keep your legs up by engaging these muscles, period.
Read this thread, watch the goofy video. Many people have indicated how much this video helped with just this problem.
You’re getting some good advice here and some I’d question. One thing I might suggest is a center mount snorkel so you get rid of the breathing distraction while to concentrate on body position. I think virtually every good coach would tell you breathing causes the most issues, so try some refinement without that distraction to develop correct patterns.
The other thing I HIGHLY recommend is to swim some with your eyes closed. When on takes one sense away, the others are heightened and I often swim with closed eyes as it helps me to truly FEEL what’s happening. Obviously you may have restrictions on how long you can do that at first, but even a few strokes with help you sense what’s going on with your body.
Patience, and relax…
