Body Balance

As most of you might already know, body balance is one of the key aspects of fast swimming. Balance in the water helps you position the body right so that the arms and legs can simply work to propel you rather than keeping you afloat in the position you think you want.While balance is essential for all skilled movement, learning to relax in the water is invaluable for developing swimmers, it frees your arms and legs for more effective use.

Because our natural ''specific gravity'' leaves 95% of our mass submerged, we swim through the water, not over it. Its better to learn to relax into a horizontal position than fight that sinking feeling. When you accomplish that, your legs will rise closer to the surface. Balance actually turns sinking into an advantage because there's less drag just below the surface than right at it.

Since your back half is dragging you down why not use your front half to counterbalance it. Start by releasing your's head weight and allowing the water to support it. The alignement of your head's weight with your spine and extending your arms forward counterbalances your lower body, helping you achieve a horizontal position without kicking and greatly reducing drag. Releasing your head will also relax your neck and shoulders. 

There are a lot of great drills that can help you improve your body position and balance in the water, some of them can even be done on the land instead of the water. Because they are too many I'll name some of them. If you need more info just contact me.

Body position drills

1. Cannonball float
2. Dead swimmer's float
3. Standing streamline (dryland)
4. Streamline float
5. Sliding (front/back)
6. Pencil float
7. Pencil drop

Body balance drills

A few videos for these drills

1. Front to back body balance 
2. Side body balance
3. Side to side rotation