Get Hip: Lessons in Rotation and Timing

By DEAN CARPENTER

Having played sports most of my life, I never thought I would encounter a sporting challenge as great as I did when I started swimming. I took up the sport four years ago as a way to keep fit without the skeletal and joint stresses common in basketball. I was surprised to find myself captivated by the incredible challenge of being in the water and learning freestyle; I was also fortunate to be exposed early on to the common sense approach described in the original Total Immersion book. Soon I found I anticipated every visit to the pool to practice the “human-swimming problem-solving” described therein; it seemed as though I experienced a new “Kaizen” moment in each pool session. I realized this was primarily because of the flow state that naturally emerges from TI Practice; as psychologist Mihalyi Czikszentmihaly wrote, flow is “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.” The aspects of flow that I personally experienced include intense concentration on clear goals, direct and immediate feedback and a sense of personal control.

Despite all my study and effort, I eventually stopped improving. Unknowingly, I had been over-rotating my hips. This resulted in poor balance, and to compensate I gradually widened my 2-beat kick. This miscue resulted from a desire for an ever-lower stroke count. The more I rotated, the further I could glide and the fewer strokes I took. I was very proud to be consistently at 13-15 spl for 25 yards; however, I was also slow – about 62 seconds per sustainable 50 yards – and I could not swim faster no matter what I did.

I eventually stumbled upon a method to correct this inefficiency: I kept my hips flatter (not rotating them as far), which allowed me to find my core and keep it engaged without the twisting associated with over rotating. Watching this YouTube video of Ian Thorpe helped me understand how much hip movement to strive for. With his core engaged he is always able to generate ample power. With “just enough” rotation, my spl has gone up a bit but my effort level has not and I am swimming much faster.

With my core engaged it was easy to find my stroke timing. For proper stroke timing, my hips and my shoulders needed to turn in unison while spearing forward with the lead hand. In my previous over-rotated stroke, my shoulders would turn first and the hips would follow, and it was difficult to generate much power this way.

If you are a golfer you know the repercussions of “late hips;” this translates well to what happens in swimming when your timing is off. I was amazed to find that just a few degrees of firm and crisp rotation gave me the power that I had previously been missing.

What about my too-wide 2-beat kick? Well, first I tried to not kick at all at. I found that my legs kicked anyway, but it was the result of my controlled hip movement. Once I felt my legs respond naturally to rotation, my kick greatly improved and I have experienced far less cramping in my calves.

I have immensely enjoyed the incredible challenge of learning freestyle. The feeling of accomplishment and well being that has resulted from discovering these principles is almost incommunicable; now that I have cured my over-rotation, I’ll concentrate on further nuances of the TI stroke!


In High School, at 6'9" Dean Carpenter was voted First Team All-State in basketball for Louisiana as a high school senior, and nominated to the McDonalds All-American team. Dean received a basketball scholarship to the University of Virginia, where he played four years. Virginia earned its first ever #1 national ranking during this time, and reached its first Final-Four.

Dean and his wife Sharon have been happily married for over 20 years and raised two teenage daughters. Dean is finishing an M.B.A. while working as Business Administrator at First Baptist Church in beautiful Western Kentucky. Dean enjoys competing in triathlons and is a member of USAT and US Masters Swimming.