Posture(s) and Swimming

Mike Keeler in response to yesterdays post wrote to ask: What about aquatic postures? Posture and streamlining are crucial direct performance factors in swimming. Everything I said yesterday holds true in the water even though swimming is exclusively in prone and supine positions with the body “suspended” in the water. I think swimming coaches sometimes forget that the swimmers are still primarily land animals. They are bipedal and walk  upright. I have yet to see a swimmer with gills, fins – dorsal and otherwise – and webbed hands and feet. We try to get the swimmer to adapt to the aquatic environment and achieve a certain level of efficiency by working to make them more “fishlike.” With swimming I have moved away from the great majority of work done in prone and supine positions on dryland to more standing and moving postures that activate the reflexes that are innate to the human. The emphasis is on linkage and connections to enhance drag reduction and improve hip position (posture) in the water. All the “anti-gravity muscles” and the muscles of the core so important in land posture are equally important in the water. They dynamically align and streamline to put the hands in better position to catch and hold water. Dynamic posture is paramount – water is as unforgiving as gravity and in some ways more so.