How to create “Flow State” swimmers

By Anita Killmier, Dip. T.: Level 2 coach

(Owner H2O: Swimming Works)

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost;

for the want of the shoe the horse was lost;

for the want of the horse the king was lost;

for the want of the king, the kingdom was lost.

Introduction

Flow State or fluid swimming is a highly elusive quality that is rarely found even amongst the top competitive swimmers of today.  It occurs when body and water are in a combined state of perfect balance and harmony.  The water ‘opens’ and flows smoothly past the swimmer enabling him to slip through in the most efficient, almost effortless manner. 

Few competitive swimmers will master this in all four strokes, let alone one stroke or even part of one.  Every movement made serves to unbalance the swimmer so he is in a state of constant flux.  A swimmer may be well balanced while lying prone, but every time he rotates or breathes in Freestyle it will serve to unbalance him.  Hence he learns to compensate for this feeling of instability by adopting alternative strategies, which are probably not the best ones. Crossing the feet when turning to breathe is one such strategy; turning the head rather than rotating the whole body when breathing is another. He may still become an extremely good swimmer even with these stroke/balance imperfections.  Indeed, many coaches would allow such deviations to go uncorrected.  There is a school of thought amongst coaches that a swimmer should be allowed to develop their ‘natural’ stroke.  However, I hope to convince you that we are in fact doing our swimmers a disservice if we adopt this attitude.

At the elite end of the spectrum, coaches are placing more emphasis on core body strength.  Physiotherapists have been telling us for years that those shoulder injuries are caused from poor posture not just on land but also in the water.  It is only very recently that we are beginning to truly understand the effect that posture has to our balance in the water mainly through the work of Bill Boomer.  Posture is all about body alignment and the better aligned our body in the water, the better balanced we will be.  Swimmers are notorious for their bad posture and by the time they reach their late teens, are firmly entrenched in their habits.  Core bodywork may serve to strengthen and improve this, but in reality, we should be addressing the problem from early childhood. 

There is a great need therefore for coaches to get involved in teaching, to ensure that swimmers moving up into their programme have come with a sound base.  Both teaching and coaching are inseparable, but unfortunately, many coaches are not interested in the lower end of teaching and many teachers are content just to get a swimmer to be able to swim competently enough to save them in an emergency.  Every parent begins in a Learn to Swim programme with this aim.  Few would take their child to swimming lessons believing they have a budding Olympian.  But, if we are to continue to develop great swimmers as I nation, I believe that coaches and teachers will need to work more closely together.  Teachers will need to have a greater understanding of the swimming continuum and their role within, and coaches will need to take a more active part in learn to swim to ensure the foundations that are laid have the quality and detail for future success.  Teachers should understand that their charges may move into squad or competition and have an obligation to get the foundations right rather than compromising them and rushing through for short term results to keep a parent happy.

The Teacher is involved with “building” the stroke. The Coach is involved with “repairing” and “refining” the stroke.

Part One

In all teaching and coaching, of prime consideration is the detection and correction of stroke faults.  My philosophy however is that we should build strokes that are so good from the outset that we don’t need to correct them at a later stage of a swimmer’s development.  This will then free the coach to be a “refiner” and allow him or her to get on with the job of extending the swimmer, rather than be caught up in the lengthy and time consuming task of breaking old habits and re-establishing new ones.

Of course every swim school varies at what point in time a swimmer graduates to ‘squad’ and to a coach-based programme, rather than a teaching based programme.  Some squads have no feeder programme or little control over the quality of swimmer moving into their squads.  This I believe is a huge mistake.

At H2O, we keep children in our learn to swim programme far longer than most in order to consolidate their technique.  That way we refine them in small groups and have them quite technically proficient before we begin the task of building endurance.  Too often, kids move to a squad-based programme when they only have one or two very basic strokes.  They begin to swim increasingly greater distances and probably perform many drills, but how much quality stroke teaching and refinement is really accomplished in these larger groups?   Swimming greater distances badly only reinforces and ingrains bad technique.

The children that do usually become technically proficient only do so because they are naturally talented, better co-coordinated or faster learners than the rest.  They probably improve despite the coach, not because of the coach.  Some are fast at an early age even with poor technique because they are stronger and bigger than their peers - also rarely due to the coach’s influence.   They frequently drop out when that early success cannot be repeated at a later age when their technical proficiency (or lack thereof) begins to tell.  Those with superior technique usually overtake them somewhere in their teens.   Discouraged by the lack of success, the rest fall behind and invariably drop out of the sport.

Surely, it is our responsibility, our duty, to enable all swimmers in our charge to be the best that they can be by providing an environment in which they can excel.  Only by constant attention to detail, minute by minute, session by session, week by week, year by year can we help our swimmers fulfill their potential whatever that may be and however far it may take them.  By raising the ceiling and demanding a higher standard of excellence from our swimmers (irrespective of their age or ability), everyone will find their own level of competence.  Lower the ceiling, demand less and the better swimmers will go elsewhere. 

Naturally, what you expect of a seven year old will differ to that of a teenager or a mature elite athlete, or even a master swimmer who may have physical constraints.  None-the-less, I can easily get my squad of 8 to 10 year olds with perfect streamlining (for example) off every wall, every lap.  We begin the habit of streamlining in our first level of learn to swim.  All teachers reinforce the message at every level up the line, so it is easy once they enter squad.  It is not that difficult to achieve, and if I can develop that habit at an earlier age, how much easier will it be when they are 16, to be able to hold their streamline off every turn in the crucial closing stages of a race?  Much easier because they have been doing it for half of their lives and are well conditioned to do so.

But even this will only be moderately successful unless the teachers throughout that swimmers career ALL consistently reinforce the message that pushing off CORRECTLY EVERY TIME is an unconditional given. It is a truism that a swimmer will always revert back to their worst habits under the duress and fatigue of a race.  Allow bad habits to flourish in training and your swimmers will be outclassed when it counts.

The secret is giving the swimmers the right incentive to want to do it properly every time, because if they don’t there will be a consequence.  They will quickly learn that it is better to do it correctly rather than risk the wrath of the teacher/coach and perhaps have to start over.  It is just as easy to develop a good habit from the outset, than to allow bad habits to flourish – simply by the way you teach or coach and the expectations you have of your swimmers.  I am not talking about fear based coaching, rather, with a sense of humour, a little flexibility, but a firm approach.  If you make each swimmer accountable for their actions to every other swimmer in the squad, they will quickly learn to do the right thing.  This also has the flow on benefit of building team unity.  Any swimmer who does not streamline off the wall makes the entire squad or lane begin the repeat again until they can all do it correctly every time.  If they do it correctly from the outset, they don’t do as many repeats – kids are quick to see the sense in that!

While it may seem a little harsh, I am continually disappointed by the standard of coaching I see both within Australia and the numerous countries I have visited.  Every book I read or course, clinic or conference I attend reinforces the necessity of technique, technique, and technique.  Most would agree that talent and hard work will often result in top class swimmers; but talent, hard work and outstanding technique is the magic combination that can produce greatness.  Why then do so many coaches play only lip service to developing it?

Are coaches of swimmers at such a tender age really coaching, or are they teaching?  Should they have a coaching qualification or a teaching one?  It is my belief that the transition from swimming lessons to squad in the majority of programmes is still more teaching based and therefore Australian swimming in general would benefit by having the Austswim Teacher of Swimming and Water Safety certificate as a pre-requisite to the Level 1 Coaching certificate.  There is not a single coach who would not benefit from a background in teaching first.  I would also argue that unless you come from a competitive swimming background, most swimming teachers would also benefit from having some coaching experience so they understand what skills are needed higher up, and what foundation they need to lay should children decide to pursue swimming as their chosen sport.

When learning any skill or technique, the learner generally goes through 3 well-identified stages;

1. The Beginning or Cognitive Stage
2. The Intermediate or Associative stage
3. The Advanced or Autonomous stage

1. The Beginning or cognitive stage

The swimmer’s first few attempts will often be jerky and ungainly and a large numbers of errors frequently occur.  Visual displays and feedback where the learner can use sight will yield the best result, as the swimmer’s other senses will be less reliable.  The swimmer will have trouble coping with both the movement and adjustments through coach feedback.  Often it is best to allow the swimmer to practice without interference until he has some mastery and moves into the next stage.  Take the skill of breathing on Freestlye, which requires a great deal of coordination and practice.  Initially the beginner will make many mistakes in the course of learning.  Focusing on specific details is generally not appropriate at this stage.  Rather, it is better for the learner to practice bobbing up and down until they can develop their own rhythm, before more specific information and refinement can be given.  This can happen in the next phase when the learner is more comfortable and confident that they can bob down and up consecutively without swallowing water. 

2. Intermediate or associative stage

In this stage, the beginner begins to get the feel of the movement and the skill becomes more fluent.  IF the skill or movement can’t be performed on call, the swimmer is probably still in the beginner stage.  Once they can perform the movement with relative consistency, sequences can be linked together and rhythm and timing are developed.  With practice the swimmer can share his attention between the movement itself and other activity surrounding him.  For instance, he can learn to turn his head sideways for breathing and in conjunction with his arm movement, rather than focusing on the act of inhaling and exhaling which is beginning to occur more naturally.  The teacher/coach can also give specific feedback and make adjustments relatively easily.  The swimmer is gradually linking the action and how it should look with the way it feels to him. 

This is the easiest stage for the teacher/coach to make technical corrections.  Before technique and faults have become ingrained and habits either good or bad established.  Smaller groups and one on one teaching are best so swimmers’ have a greater chance of their specific needs being addressed.  Swimmers should not be promoted prematurely into larger groups swimming longer distances, while they are still in this stage, as any errors left uncorrected will be carried over.  Their needs are less likely to be catered for and corrections harder to make in a larger group.  

However, it can also be the time when the teacher/coach can become conflicted with meeting the needs of the child, the parent and the swim school.  Often the parent wants the child promoted prematurely, to stay with a friend or to give the child a psychological boost.  In some circumstances this can be warranted.  Sometimes, it is the swim school that wants to push kids through for financial reasons.  There are no easy answers unless you are in control of your own programme.

To reiterate a point, this is the critical stage of refinement and it is important that the coach or teacher aims for the perfect execution of the movement.  .

3. Advanced or autonomous stage

Once they are confident the swimmer can perform the movement perfectly and without thinking about it, they can focus on other movement or performance aspects instead.  It is imperative that the teacher/coach instills in the swimmer the ability to maintain the technique through a variety of differing stresses.  For instance, the teacher may have the swimmer performing a nice freestyle technique with fins, but can they maintain that technique without fins or over a greater distance?  The coach will train the swimmer to maintain technique at slow, medium and fast speeds or while maintaining a certain stroke count or stroke rate.  Failure to do so (stroke reverting back to the old habit) can be seen as the failure of the coach to provide the environment for ‘perfect practice’ to occur. 

However this stage can be a double-edged sword.  The swimmer can now perform the movement automatically but any deviations from ‘perfect practice’ are now ingrained as bad habits.   I recently read that (conservatively) it takes 1,000 try’s to really break a bad habit and 1,000 more try’s to establish a new one.  So, for every 20,000 strokes swum badly, it takes 20,000 performed correctly to ‘break’ the habit and another 20,000 to bed it in.  Think about it!!

If the swimmer has graduated into squad and his coach needs to correct a stroke fault, the swimmer will again move back into the beginner and intermediate stage.  However, while the swimmer is attempting to fix their technique, it usually results in a decline in speed as the swimmer will only be able to perform the movement at slow speeds so they have time to think it through.  Hence, their speed work will be compromised.  Squad swimmers may stay at this intermediate stage for months to make any significant, long lasting change to their technique and it takes a huge commitment, belief, trust in the coach and often sacrifice on their part to persevere. They have to be prepared to swim thousands of metres slowly and with control, before they can hope to hold their new technique over increasingly faster speeds.  Not a great programme if they aspire to compete at any high level meets.    Any reversal to old habits at speed is an indicator that the swimmer has not yet integrated the new movement completely.  The wise coach will advise the swimmer to perhaps sacrifice a whole season in the knowledge that the improved technique will bring about superior results in the following season.  When they do resume competition, they will find some low meets with less pressure for their swimmer to practice swimming at speed, but with control.   No wonder that many coaches view this prospect as daunting and many swimmers find it easier not to bother.  Some coaches often justifying their inaction as letting the swimmer develop her ‘natural’ style.

This can be very frightening for the swimmer and parent to contemplate and again, the coach is often faced with the parent who knows very little about the sport of swimming but just wants to see their child getting faster not slower.  They may equate getting faster by training harder, longer and further.  Often the coach ends up compromising the long-term benefits of a technique based programme for the short-term gain of a high volume, endurance programme.    In my opinion, volume and endurance can continue to be built over the course of a swimmer’s career, but as coaches we only have a small window of opportunity to bed in technique before it becomes too difficult and arduous to change.    The coach who runs a technique-based programme needs to sell parents on his programme and stand by his philosophy with the courage of his convictions.  Yes, you may lose some parents/swimmers along the way who feel differently, but those who remain will be there because they have faith in your programme.  Once you have the support of those behind you, your programme will move from strength to strength and your results will begin to justify your actions to others.

You may think this is contrary to the position that Australian Swimming promotes ie that young swimmers should be in an endurance-based programme.  I agree with this line of thought, but only when it goes hand in hand with a technique driven programme.  Technique should never be sacrificed in the quest for speed or endurance and any speed work should be performed with control.

Coaching technique therefore should not be something sparingly taught, or relegated to special ‘technique’ sessions that parents have to pay extra for.  It should be an inherent part of every session with the steady application of drills and constant attention, reinforcement and feedback by the coach.  The coach must work actively until the swimmer can execute drills perfectly.  So many coaches prescribe drills without telling the swimmer the how, what’s and the why’s, or without ensuring they are performed with any great skill or precision.   All that ends up happening is the swimmer swims garbage laps thinking about what they are going to have for dinner that night or their homework, instead of truly thinking and caring about what they are doing.  A surprising number of these coaches will be under the misguided impression that because they are setting drill work, they are indeed doing ‘technique’ work.  I say they are only paying lip service to it.    Unfortunately, many parents are not discriminatory enough to tell the difference and the coach believes it is the swimmer who is incapable of producing anything better.  The discerning parent will often go elsewhere. 

There is much more to coaching than sending swimmers off on a departure time or holding a stopwatch and telling their times. The coach who sets a programme and then stands back and watches is doing everyone a disservice.  In reality they are not ‘coaching’ in the true sense of the word; rather they are merely ‘supervising’ which takes no great training or skill and could be undertaken by any parent. 

There are some occasions when it can be justified to step back and just allow the kids to get the job done without interruption.  But if technique is deteriorating because of fatigue, what is the benefit?  Garbage laps produce bad habits.  Surely, even more reason why we need to be fastidious about developing it correctly from the outset. 

It may also benefit the swimmer to de-emphasise technique for short periods, particularly during a rapid or extreme growth phase around puberty.  Some children lose all co-ordination as ligaments weaken, and will just get more frustrated as they struggle to control their elongating limbs.

I like to see coaches active and inter-relating to their swimmers every moment they are on pool deck.  They should rarely if ever sit down during the course of a practice.  Developing hand signals and gestures to indicate how to adjust a stroke while in motion will eliminate time wastage and keep the programme moving.  The coach must train the swimmers to look for him as he roves the deck.  By positioning yourself at the end of the lane you can gesture to the swimmer as he swims toward you and breathes on Breaststroke or Butterfly.   Standing on the block will enable the Backstroker to maintain eye contact for some time as he swims away from the turn.   Freestyler’s can swim breathing to the sidewall where the coach may be walking.  Not only can the coach maintain eye contact with an individual, but also an additional benefit to the swimmer is the ability to breathe equally well to both sides, hence better balance and equilateral muscle development.

The coach has plenty of opportunities to offer praise, feedback or adjustments during rest intervals.  Some swimmers can do drills and technique at the back of the lane line if they need additional work, without interfering with the others and individuals will certainly benefit for the coach pulling them out of the water to miss a repeat every now and again to reinforce and refine actions on land.  Land based drills should not be discounted as they can be used to great effect. 

A creative coach will find ways of giving individuals what they need without compromising the integrity of the overall programme.  For instance, if lane space is a problem, and you have a set of 10 x 100 Freestyle on a set interval at a moderate to fast pace, the swimmer who requires technique could go at the back doing 50’s drill on the same time interval, or could do 100’s as drill, but using fins so he can swim slowly and correctly, thus keeping with the lane.

What has this got to do with flow state swimming?  EVERYTHING! I would like to reiterate my opening statement.  

The Teacher is involved with “building” the stroke.  The Coach is involved with “repairing” and “refining” the stroke.

When we do look at the swimmer and detect a fault, what we see is usually the END result of a chain reaction.  Most “repairers” either try to fix the obvious end product, or only go back to fix one or two links in the chain without fixing the root cause.  (For the want of the nail the kingdom was lost!) To give an analogy, the Leaning Tower of Pisa can be used as a metaphor for a swimmer with a stroke fault. 

When one looks at the base of the Tower, you are hard pressed to see any deviation from the vertical.  In fact it is only very slight and hardly perceptible to the eye.  But the further up the structure one looks, the more obvious it becomes and at the top, one can clearly see the tower unbalanced and listing dangerously.  Unless we take corrective measures, the structure will weaken and topple over – perhaps not today, tomorrow or even in the near future, but rest assured, it will happen eventually.  We could patch it up - for example propping it up.  This may serve as a temporary solution, but ultimately it is not getting at the fundamental problem at the foundations and will probably not produce a satisfactory long lasting result.  The best result would be to dismantle the structure and rebuild it correctly from the ground up.  This will of course be at great cost and time, but will ensure the building survives for future generations.  Of course all this time and effort and cost could have been avoided had the building been built correctly on a more stable base.  Rebuilding it will create a stronger structure better able to withstand the ravages of wear, tear and time.

When a swimmer comes to me with stroke faults, I usually end up having to do exactly that.  Dismantle the stroke and rebuild it, because like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, virtually ALL stroke faults can trace their cause back to one fundamental problem.  That is balance.

Part 2

The H2O philosophy embraces the concept of swimming as a sport for life – not so much from a competitive aspect (although this is certainly available with the proliferation of Masters events), but from the improved quality of life that it brings through fitness.  Not all young swimmers want to compete, but if we can inspire a love for the sport from an early age hopefully many will still be swimming well into their old age.  It is not uncommon for swimmers to have 50 years of regular swimming ahead of them.  I am in my 39th year of swimming regularly since I learnt to swim, so I have the benefit of hindsight and personal esxperience.  If the strokes are built correctly, the swimmer will have few problems over their lifetime with overuse injuries, or back or neck problems.   Many young swimmers I see today will have all sorts of structural problems when they are older through the sheer repetition of bad training practices (such as kicking on overly large or buoyant kickboards) and poor technique. 

To maintain a swimmer in the sport for the next ten years (or for life), it is important that we ‘hook’ them by fostering a love of the water.  For a swimmer to truly experience the pure joy, exhilaration, beauty and grace in the water (which can include, but is not limited to “fun”) they need to find total harmony in the aquatic environment.  And in order to achieve this harmony and fluidity (or ‘flow state’), they must be balanced.  Balance is the end result of a swimmer’s buoyancy and body position and will only be achieved by learning 2 fundamental skills: complete relaxation and total breath control.  Further, relaxation and hence good flotation, body position and balance can only occur when the swimmer has mastered breath control first. 

A balanced swimmer therefore is conditional upon the following 5 points which in order are:

1. Breath Control
2. Flotation, which is the product of both body position and head position.  Incidentally, posture alignment (as discussed in my introduction to Part One) is playing an increasingly important role in body position.  Also head position is significantly lower in the strokes today than compared to ten years ago.  Swimmers have always notoriously had poor posture and this is one aspect that coaches need to address.
3. A relaxed but solid, steady, propulsive and continuous kick.
4. Good body rotation skills
5. And finally, if the first four points are well established, the ability to control all aspects of arm movement.

If we are to develop great swimmers at the top end of our programme, we need to teach our swimmers from the outset the pleasure and freedom that water brings.  The swimmer who is well balanced will be in complete control of the aquatic environment and every facet of their movement within that environment.  The better they become the more freedom to move and explore within that environment.  Ironically, even many top international swimmers never achieve this. 

Only when fluid, harmonious swimming is reached can a swimmer truly feel the Zen like qualities of movement in the aquatic environment, similar to those experienced in Marshall Arts where there is total body/mind control.  Symptomatic of these swimmers is their heightened feel for the water, their ability to detect and adjust to subtle fluctuations in the water and the marrying of what they think they are doing with what they really are doing – something that even many elite level swimmers are not able to do.

Swimming is like no other sport.    It is a sport conducted in a totally unnatural environment where none of our land based instincts work; we are deprived of most of our senses including severely restricted vision; and with one false move or badly timed action we can be on the receiving end of at least a highly unpleasant dousing of water up the nose or in the lungs – at worst a potentially life threatening experience.  Added to this, it is one of the rare sports performed lying down.   You can begin to see why it is an extremely hard sport to teach and requires more practice time than virtually any other sport.

From the time we are born, our natural instincts aim toward mastery of vertical balance.  If we think of an ice skater learning to skate, his principle aim is avoidance of injury by attempting to remain stable and vertical.  Any slight movement that is unbalanced will result in a hard fall and perhaps injury.  In short, the moment the skater is not perfectly balanced, they suffer the consequences.  Swimming however is much more forgiving.  A lack of balance won’t result in injury, but it will result in the swimmer finding other ways of compensating.  They do this by reverting back to strategies that thousands of years of Darwinian evolution have taught us; strategies that are largely unsuccessful in water and result in inappropriate movements that manifest themselves as stroke faults. 

For example, the fearful swimmer with poor breathing technique is unable to set his head in the correct position in backstroke without water going up his nose.  Consequently he drops his hips, ‘sits’ down in the water, and raises his head to avoid water washing over his face.  We can teach the swimmer to relax and lie better in the water and also to move with minimum disturbance through the water.  But unless we teach the swimmer a better breathing technique to control the water and prevent it from flowing up his nose, he will resort back to his old habits every time water washes over his face.  If we get our swimmer to the point where he can blow bubbles from his nose when this happens, and to control the rate of airflow, he will never be troubled by it.

Similarly many fine swimmers are successful despite holding their head too high or not horizontally aligned when breathing, or crossing their legs as they turn to breathe.  How much better could they be had these subtle but significant balance flaws been corrected.  Perhaps only marginally but as every coach knows, every microsecond counts.

Swimming is no different to any other sport.  In order to maximise his power and make the best drive in a golf swing, the professional golfer must be perfectly balanced.  Hitting the ball in an unbalanced position will result in a far from satisfactory drive.  Power will be reduced or the ball will be deflected away from the desired direction.  So too in swimming.  Any imbalance will result in awkward movements with reduced power.   Yet in swimming, balance skills are rarely afforded the amount of attention they deserve with teachers all too quickly moving on to arm and leg propulsion resulting in a swimmer with limited ability and hard to fix stroke faults.

No matter what level, ability or standard -  from beginner to elite squad swimmer, the teacher or coach should continually revist the basics refining them until the swimmer is completely at ease in the water.

In short, if we are to truly master our aquatic environment as the sea creatures have, we must override our natural instincts and replace them with what Terry Laughlin calls ‘fish like’ strategies. 

For the swimmer, these natural or reflex reactions influence the beginner and their ability to learn.  They cause tension and rigidity.  Swimmer tries to ‘muscle’ or fight their way through the water.  These I call the B&T’s or the Bashers and Thrashers.

Natural instincts are not conducive to harmonious swimming.  It is the natural instinct of humans that, from the moment they are born, they spend the rest of their lives developing and mastering a land based, gravity defying sense of balance.  NONE of these instincts however, can be applied in water.  For this reason, I don’t believe that swimmers should be allowed to develop their stroke ‘naturally’. Certainly play and experiential learning are valuable tools for the teacher, but the swimmer will usually learn alternative ways of balancing in the water (that are not necessarily the best), unless guided by a teacher.  

What the swimming teacher must do then, is teach the swimmer how to over ride their natural instincts and re learn an entirely different set of balancing skills.  A swimmer in an unstable medium that is constantly moving and shifting is more akin to a parachutist in free fall, but without the benefit of most of their senses.

It is very important therefore that we get it right early, and that we continue to work at the fundamentals throughout a swimmer’s career. 

Breathing and head position are inextricably linked and critical to harmonious swimming.  In Butterfly, the mouth should be kept down low on the water with minimum up and down movement.  This will result in a much flatter stroke than is often taught.  In Freestyle, the head should remain aligned with the water level roughly dividing the face in half during the breath.  Failure to do so results in a corresponding drop in the body usually at the opposite end, (the legs) much like a seesaw effect.  Even a minute drop will, in turn, result in additional drag and energy needlessly being expended to compensate.  When the face is returned to the water, the head should be set quite low, eyes looking directly down, not forward, with the neck muscles totally relaxed. 

Perfect balance then, will result in effortless swimming much like frictionless movement in a state of perpetual motion – the swimmer can just keep going and going….slipping through the water which supports and ‘opens’ as the swimmer moves through it.  To the observer, they will see a slow, relaxed almost lazy looking stroke which is quiet and with a minimum of splash or disturbance of the water.  Alex Popov is one of the best proponents of this technique looking almost leisurely at race speed.

The good news is that these are teachable and trainable skills and at H2O we have developed our own sound method to achieve this state.  Mastery of these fundamentals at all levels within your programme will pay large dividends for the swimmer and hopefully a love for the sport that will endure a lifetime.