Last summer I received an email from Natasha Smith a school girl and age group swimmer from Auckland, New Zealand, asking for help with her science project. Several months later, I received Natasha’s completed report via email. Few people of any age have written more thoughtfully or informatively about what matters in swimming. —Terry

INTRODUCTION
Recently I was asked by my swimming club to be a demonstrator for a swimming coaches' course. I was asked to show different positions in the water and it made me wonder why there was so much emphasis on posture.

AIM
My aim in this project is to investigate changes in swimming coaching techniques that emphasize posture as a key item in teaching people how to swim.

When I was demonstrating swimming I was asked to do the following drills:
1. Swim with your hands by your side and rotate your body as you kick.
2. Lie on a stack of three flutter boards face down in the water, balancing on them with your stomach and try not to fall off. The coach tried to encourage me not to arch my back.
3. We had to curl into a ball with our face in the water and on command stretch into a streamline position. This was repeated several times.

PROCEDURE
To investigate posture and swimming I made a list of questions about the things I wanted to know and researched the answers by surfing the internet, talking to coaches here in New Zealand and by e-mailing coaches in the United States who I had read about with an interest in posture.

1. How are humans able to swim in the water?
In my research I found that speed of competitive swimmers relates to a subject called fluid dynamics which seeks to explain how fluids move and interact with solid surfaces. Both the thrust used to push swimmers along and the drag that slows them down is caused by the interaction between the swimmer's body and limbs with the water.

2. Why is swimming such a drag?
The word drag actually refers to the resistive force of water to any body passing through it. Because water is almost 1,000 times more dense than air, anything that tries to move through the water gets pushed back by it. Therefore a great deal of energy is used to break through this "wall" of water.

In fact world class swimmers who use their bodies most efficiently use only about 9 percent of their energy to move forward. The other 91 percent of energy is used up pushing water out of the way. Recreational swimmers probably use only about 2 to 3 percent of their energy to move forwards which is why it is very tiring swimming, trying to stay afloat and get enough oxygen into the lungs. It is not really energy efficient.

From human-like swimming to swimming like a fish!
Some coaches believe that humans need to swim more like fish and forget their human instincts. Instead of muscling your way through water which increases the drag on your body, Coach Terry Laughlin who runs a company called "Total Immersion Swimming" in the United States says swimmers need to think like a fish and that means making the body more streamlined. He recommends swimmers aim to swim with their whole body, like a fish, rather than relying on your arms and legs. Fish he says are perfectly balanced and swim through water with very little effort, they barely leave a ripple no matter how fast they swim compared to humans who churn up the water and make heaps of bubbles. This is why posture becomes so important. Another TI Coach Dave Obwald who is based in Hastings, New Zealand says it is important that your body is in a straight line from the top of your hand to the bottom of your toes whether a swimmer is pushing off a wall or being on your side after every stroke. Anything that is not in alignment will cause drag and slow the swimmer down.

Remember I wondered why I was asked to demonstrate different positions in the water? It was all to do with demonstrating balance and posture.

I corresponded with swimming coach Michael Collins who is also a TI coach and who was voted United States Masters Swimming Coach of the Year in 1990. He told me that posture is critical to swimming and that people with bad posture in the water swim much slower than they are capable of or have to work much harder to swim at the same speed. If a swimmer can spend less time using his energy to work harder and therefore have a lower heart rate he will be able to keep a better body position and speed for a longer period of time.

One of my coaches Gary Easthope from Parnell Swimming Club showed me how to have the best posture. By pulling yourself up tall and keeping your body in line (just as if you had a skewer running through the top of your head and through your torso) will give you a strong core. The core part of the body is from your shoulders to the hips and all of your power comes from this area. This is how your body should be when swimming freestyle of backstroke in the water. Your body is parallel with the bottom of the pool, the water line is in the middle of the head and the arms act as anchors and the body moves the arms. Rotation of the body swimming this way is caused by the body movement and not by shoulder roll as many people currently swim. Keeping the head down and in line reduces the drag and moving the body into a straight line reduces drag and increases core power.

Balance is also important because you roll back and forth as you swim. Many swimmers who roll in freestyle splay their arms and legs trying to stay flat. However if they learn to have a comfortable posture in a side-lying position, they stop fighting themselves and roll more easily.

In my demonstration I was showing ways that coaches could teach their pupils to become more comfortable in a side-lying position by rolling as I swam forward. Lying on a flutter board was a useful exercise to train swimmers to take the arch out of their backs and get their bodies more in line. Floating on the water and then stretching into a streamline position was used to show the different feel of your body in the water.

TESTING FOR POSTURE
I asked Michael Collins if I could experiment on myself to demonstrate the differences between swimming with good posture and swimming with bad posture and whether this would affect my speed.

He suggested the following exercises:

Freestyle
1. Swim 100 metres freestyle using bad posture with my head held very high and looking forward. Then rest three minutes.
2. Swim 100 metres freestyle as easy as possible with head down and pressing on my chest and armpits as I stretch forward with each stroke. I should try to move my arms slowly and smoothly, no faster than my body is traveling through the water. Rest another three minutes.
3. Do the same exercise as number two but use a little more kick and effort. Look down and keep the kick underwater. Try to keep an arm out front until the other is about to come back in.

Results
1. In this exercise I had very bad posture. It was uncomfortable swimming this way as my body began to sink and it made me very tired. 100 metres took 1:44.35 minutes to swim and I counted 89 strokes.
2. This position was an improvement but my bottom tended to rise up with my hips out of the water. It took me 1:42.88 minutes to complete 100 metres and I counted 80 strokes.
3. My posture in this final exercise was much more balanced and because my kick was under the water it took less effort. 100 metres took 1:400 minutes and I counted 76 strokes.

CONCLUSION
As I improved my posture in each exercise I found it easier to swim, it took less effort and I improved my time.

Therefore:

Better posture + better balance = less effort and faster swimming.

OTHER STROKES
Another swimming expert Douglas Humphrey recommends the best postures for other swimming strokes are:

Backstroke
Have your head in line with your shoulders and kick beneath the water. Try and get rid of the dimple in your back without slouching.

Breaststroke
Breathe on the lift and lunge forward with your upper body while you kick. Keep your head and shoulders as low as possible. Return back to your line as soon as possible.

Butterfly
Try pressing your chest down to the bottom of the pool as your arms move forward. When you breathe lift your head forward, not up and keep your feet fast.

SOME FINAL QUESTIONS
I asked Michael Collins a few questions about coaching swimmers to have better posture.

Have coaching techniques changes over the years?

MC: "This method of teaching is fairly recent. A good source or method of teaching this is called 'Total Immersion'."

How important is it for swimming instructors to teach even small children correct posture?

MC: "I do believe it is excellent to teach this even to young kids because it makes it so much easier."

Is it ever possible to achieve the perfect posture in swimming?

MC: "I don't think we've really found the 'perfect' posture yet. Swimming technique is constantly changing, which is why swimmers are continuing to get faster."

SWIMMING COACHING IN NEW ZEALAND
I asked Total Immersion coach Dave Obwald who trained in the United States and is now coaching the Aim Heretaunga Sundevils based in Hastings whether this method of coaching was used much in New Zealand. He said not many people knew about total immersion but the kids and parents at his club loved the focus on technique and swimming properly. He also told me that famous swimmer Shane Gould who represented Australia at the Munich Olympics in 1972 would be coming to New Zealand in November to run a course on Total Immersion. And guess what? She will be conducting it at the same pool where I train!

SCIENCE CREST LOG BOOK
9 Aug I brought home my science crest and I read it through to myself.

12 Aug I showed my Mum and Dad the booklet and we discussed and brainstormed ideas for what topic I should do. Ideas we thought of included:
a. looking at how you could work out different daylight saving times indifferent parts of the world when it occurred at different times on the calendar.
b. Developing a system in your mail box that would tell you when the mail had arrived.
c. Finding out if there was some way to stop my bathing costume from disintegrating so quickly in chlorinated water.

14 Aug I put pen and paper by my bed so if in the night I had any ideas I could write them down.

16 Aug I slept on the ideas for one more night and while I was keen on the bathing suit idea and checked the internet it seemed there were companies that had developed chlorine resistant bathing suits already and that I would need to have quite advanced knowledge of chemistry to compete with such companies.

17 Aug I took my booklet downstairs and my Mum and I chose the most original topics from the list.

18 Aug Still not sure of my topic so I want to investigate other ideas. I thought about things I did at the weekend.
Saturday - swimming training, watching gymnastics, eat Thai food, watch the "Lord of the Rings" video.
Sunday - pondered over my Crest project, demonstrated swimming styles for coaches' course.

19 Aug While I was interested in looking at the design of bathing suits and how to make them last longer I decided it was too difficult to try and invent a new product. However swimming was still of interest to me as I train four times a week. I found it interesting that while I was asked to demonstrate swimming for the coaches' course the instructor was telling his students to look at my posture in the water. He asked me to do different exercises in the pool to demonstrate how posture could affect my style and speed in the water. This concept of posture intrigues me and I though it would be really interesting to investigate how different postures could influence your speed and technique in swimming races. My next step will be to research this area and will involve searching the Internet. Some of my investigations will look at the techniques I was asked to demonstrate at the course.

20Aug Collected my information off the internet and from coaches and now I am already to start writing my information.

27Aug I can't wait to start and all sorts of ideas are coming out of my head. My aim is to start on Saturday 31Aug.

31Aug I woke up early this morning to work on my project. I have just written my aim.

2 Sept My Mum and I found a swimming website on the internet with a Total Immersion coach’s e-mail address. We e-mailed him and within 24 hours he had responded and given me some very helpful tips. We wrote back straight away and thanked him.

5 Sept I went to the swimming pool and swam 3 x 100m freestyle with the different postures as in the e-mail. I am writing up my information. We spoke to my swimming coach Gary Easthope.

6 Sept I got up before school and typed out most of my information.

9 Sept Printed out all my work and put it into my folder

10 Sept Decorated pages and glued on my pictures

11 Sept Handed in my work.

Post Script by Natasha
Researching this project has made me more aware of the difference good posture can make in swimming more efficiently with less effort. I am learning to focus on working "with" the water rather than against it. This requires a totally different mental attitude but is an inspiring way to learn.

Biography
Natasha Smith (aged 12) lives in Auckland, New Zealand with her parents and two younger sisters. At the age of four, she had her first swimming lesson and joined the Parnell Swim Club two years ago. She trains four times a week and competed in the Auckland Junior Swimming Championships in December 2002 where she gained Personal Bests in backstroke and breast stroke. When she is not swimming she enjoys learning ballet, jazz dancing, flute and drama.

Bibliography
Private correspondence with Michael Collins, Terry Laughlin, David Obwald and Gary Easthope.

Websites:
Michael Collins www.spma.netposture.html
Terry Laughlin www.totalimmersion.net
Douglas Humphrey, University of Nebraska www.tc.unl.edu/dmhumphrey
Introduction to fluid dynamics, Edwin Demont, Assoc Prof Biology Dept. St Francis, Canada, www.stfx.capeopleedemont

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