Floating and balance are two important foundations of efficient, fast and graceful swimming. With the help of coaches, most swimming champions have mastered and applied these two basic skills through repeated practice and continuous exploration.
1, basic training
Push and slide on the left side, put your arms on your sides, and kick the water easily with your legs. If the effect of drawing water is not very good, you can do this exercise with flippers on. Practice from the head down (nose down). Look at the bottom of the pool, don't look up at the other side of the pool wall.
The left shoulder leans down until it feels supported by water. The right hip and arm should be above the water. You may think that doing this exercise is not as easy as it looks. To feel comfortable doing this exercise, you can stand up and breathe. In fact, it is smart to practice in shallow water. Once you feel balanced, turn your head and breathe. If you feel uncomfortable lying on your side or turning your head to breathe, you can turn back a little. The head should be hidden in the water, and the chin should be upturned (chin and forehead are just at the waterline), but the head and spine should be in line. Practice on both sides in turn.
2. Basic exercises
Once you feel completely balanced and relaxed, stretch your left arm forward and keep your body posture unchanged. Keep your arms straight in front of your head (palms away from water). The ideal posture is that there is almost no gap between the back of your head and the shoulders/arms below. The lower shoulder should be tilted downward, so that the right hip and arm are out of the water. Practice on both sides in turn. Ask someone to observe you from shore or underwater and give you feedback.
When you need to breathe, stick your head out of the water (nose up). Your head should be hidden in the water, and only your face will emerge from the water. See basic training 1 for other movements.
If you are satisfied with doing this exercise, try backstroke or freestyle.
Believe it or not, excellent swimmers use this freestyle technique: please see [awarded? Hackett and Ian? Thorpe swimming skill analysis]
If you want to swim fast, don't stir violently, relax and feel the water. Olympic coach Gennady? Turesky told us: [Swim as efficiently as popov and Kerim].
The following excerpts are taken from the basic training introduced by Heinz in fitness swimming as a supplement to this basic exercise.
The following set of exercises teaches you how your body feels when you keep the right posture and move forward in the right way, making it a part of effective freestyle technique. Before you have a complete training, you need to spend some time practicing every basic skill. When doing every sport, it is required that the legs can easily draw water. For those movements that are not mastered, it is recommended that you wear flippers when practicing.
What is water balance?
Generally speaking, the balanced body posture of freestyle is that the head, trunk, buttocks and lower limbs are in a straight line and horizontal. This posture can minimize the biggest resistance that swimmers encounter-shape resistance. The concept of balance is the basis of effective swimming techniques.
Many swimmers know that their bodies should be horizontal, but they go the wrong way. They kicked their legs hard and raised their hips and lower limbs to the water. But it takes too much effort to kick. Excellent athletes use different methods to achieve a balanced posture with little or no energy.
The head and body are in a straight line. The weight of the head is 12~ 16 pounds (about 5~8 kilograms), and the position of the head can greatly affect the balance of the body in water. The top of the head should be in a straight line with the spine. Looking up to make it deviate from this line will form a downward couple on the buttocks and make the lower limbs sink. Therefore, the position of the head plays a very important role in maintaining a balanced body posture. When you get a balance in the water, no matter whether you lie on your stomach, side or back, only the heads of 1/4 to 1/3 will be exposed to the water, and the rest will be underwater.
Press "float" in the body. The lungs make the body float like a float. On the contrary, the center of gravity near the navel tends to sink the hips and legs. Imagine an oar floating on the water. If you press one end of the paddle, the other end will rise. If you press the floating body in your body, that is, let your upper body lean down, just like pressing an oar, your hips will rise. The feeling of pressing the "floating body" in the body is that the body leans slightly downward.
Body balance exercises can be divided into two categories: static balance exercises, learning the feeling of keeping balance in various postures; Dynamic balance exercise, learn how to keep balance when changing from one posture to another.
1, static balance exercise
(1) prone balance exercise (prone balance). Lie prone, put your arms on your sides, kick the water easily with your legs, keep your head straight, keep your head in a straight line with your spine, and point your nose at the bottom of the pool. Gently press the "float" in the body to make the hips rise to the water. When you need to inhale, raise your head directly, then lower your head after inhaling, and the top of your head will return to its original position, in line with your spine, and then press "Gone with the Wind". Hips and legs sink rapidly when you look up and inhale. But as long as you lower your head, keep your head in line with your spine, and press "float", you can restore a balanced body posture.
Feedback point: When the body shape balances his posture, the back of his head, shoulders and buttocks should be above the water.
(2) supine balance exercise (supine balance). Push on your back, put your arms on your sides, nose up, and breathe freely. Start to draw water easily, and gently press "float" (with the midpoint of both shoulders as the fulcrum, tilt down).
Feedback point: when the body is in a balanced posture, the head (if only the face) is only about 1/4 above the water. The ears are underwater, the distance between the pelvis and the water is no more than 3 cm, and the knees and feet are close to the water when fetching water.
(3) Lateral sliding balance exercise (sideslip balance). Lie on your side, push the side, stretch your forearm forward, put your upper arm on your side, nose up, and breathe freely. Start to draw water easily. Try to touch your arm with the back of your head. Throughout the process, keep your side facing up and practice on both sides in turn.
Feedback point: when the lateral posture is formed, a part of the skin of the arm placed on the side is exposed from the shoulder to the wrist. Tilting down with the armpit as the fulcrum can play the role of pressing the "floating" in the body and help to achieve a balanced posture. The outstretched arm should have no weight. Pay attention to the balance of the body, the position of the head is exactly the same as that of the supine balance, that is, the ear is underwater, the tip of the nose is up, and the head 1/4 is out of the water.
(4) Vertical water pulling exercise (vertical hitting). This exercise is conducted in deep water. As the name implies, when doing this action, the body is in a vertical position. Hold your arms on your chest, kick your legs alternately, keep your head above the water, and expose your nose and mouth. Keep your back and head straight and avoid leaning forward. When pumping water from the hip, the knee joint bends slightly under the pressure of water and the ankle joint relaxes. The pumping range is small and the frequency is fast. Draw water 15 seconds, then rest 15 seconds (lane line or pool side). Don't practice too much at first, you can do six groups 15 seconds to draw water, and rest between each group 15 seconds. Increase the number of repetitions after mastering the movements. Increase the difficulty and load of practice by changing the position of the arm, such as putting your hand above the water, putting your hand on your head or straightening your arm up into a streamlined shape.
From a technical point of view, vertical kick is not a kind of body balance exercise, but it is a good practice method in early training. Many adult swimmers consume a lot of energy when swimming. The reasons are as follows: first, they try to improve the position of hips and legs by swimming (you already know that pressing "float" can solve this problem); Second, the flexibility of their ankles is too poor (you know that wearing flippers is a solution); Third, there are some mistakes in the technique of drawing water, such as pedaling a bicycle or exerting force from the knee joint. Vertical pumping is faster than any method I know to correct wrong technology. The instinct of survival allows the neuromuscular system to quickly identify what actions are most effective in maintaining the position of the head and mouth. If it is difficult for you to keep your mouth and nose dry by practicing this way, you can practice with fins for a few days first, then remove the fins and start from scratch.
2, dynamic balance exercises
The following exercises can help you learn how to keep balance when changing your body posture.
(1) Lie down, slide, balance and breathe (sideslip, balance and inhalation). The initial movement is the same as the sideslip balance exercise, but when the body is balanced, inhale a few times with the face up, then turn your head so that the tip of your nose is down and your nose and mouth exhale underwater. After breathing, turn your head and let the tip of your nose go up again, then inhale several times, and then return to underwater to exhale. In this exercise, the only thing that can move is the head, and the body is always lying on its side. Gradually reduce the number of breaths when your face is up until you only breathe once at a time. Practice on both sides in turn.
Feedback point: When the tip of the nose is up, the posture of the head is the same as that of the sideslip balance exercise, that is, the ears are underwater. When the tip of the nose is down, only the back of the head can emerge from the water. Your head should turn like a barbecue fork (through the top of your head and around your spine), but you can't bend this "barbecue fork" Arms placed on one side of the body should always be out of the water. When the head turns upward, it usually looks up, which will lead to the sinking of the hips and the feeling that the arms are submerged by water, indicating that the balance is destroyed.
The most common mistake in doing this exercise is that when you turn your head to inhale, the outstretched arm sinks, which is caused by lifting your head up. The way to overcome it is to consciously imagine that the outstretched arm is weightless, and pay attention to making the tip point to the other side of the pool wall. When the body rotates, gently press down the side and back of the head. The back of the head should be in contact with the outstretched arm as much as possible. When you turn your head to inhale, you can even lift your outstretched arm slightly up by 2-3 cm.
(2) Rotating body balance exercise (rotating balance). Start pedaling like a prone balance exercise, put your arms on your sides, nose down, kick the water easily, keep your head and spine in a straight line, and gently press "float" to balance your body. When you need to inhale, turn your body into a supine position, keep your arms at your sides, and continue to press "floating body" while rotating. Turn before you turn your head. If you can do this and keep pressing the "float", when your body turns to the supine position (the same posture as the supine balance exercise), you have reached balance. Keep this balanced supine posture and inhale freely. When you are sure that your body is balanced and you have inhaled several times, turn your body back to the prone position. Remember, turn around and press "Gone with the Wind" before turning your head. Practice turning in two directions.
Feedback point: When the body rotates from prone position to supine position, you should feel the process of one arm coming out of the water from shoulder to wrist and from supine position to prone position. You may find that you need to use more force to press "float" when lying on your side. You will feel that your head can easily turn before your body turns, which will cause your head to rise and upset your balance.