Can anyone achieve this?

[Zenturtle]

No kick balance and alignment. Rotating the wholoe body from shoulders to toes like a treetrunk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYqQJtcirqQ

What does it take to do it?

[sclim]

Originally Posted by Zenturtle

No kick balance and alignment. Rotating the wholoe body from shoulders to toes like a treetrunk.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYqQJtcirqQ

What does it take to do it?

Interesting drill. But on the topic of tightening up the rigid body core line, during my recent long boring open water swims with no breaks to stop, regroup and think of another drill, I thought of various improvement strategies to try on the fly. Or break up the monotony. One of them was to make my body core (our dear correspondent Talvi referred to it as a "pencil") more rigid. Once I formulated the task, I realised that I was flopping slightly. Once I specifically aimed for pencil like stiffness, and aligned that stiff pencil exactly in the direction of travel, it became perceptibly easier to roll left and right. Oddly, despite this ease, it seemed mentally tiring to hold the stiffness -- maybe because of unfamiliarity. Or maybe, being new at this, I was using too much core muscle tension to be efficient, and the tiring was more than purely mental. In theory, assuming no more net muscle power usage, it should be easier in the long run.

[sclim]

Mind you, in thinking things over, I notice core and quads soreness when swimming strongly after hard running or biking days. To work backwards from this, I have to assume overuse of these muscles in swimming can be detrimental to my land performance in a triathlon race.

I have to learn to exert just the right amount of core muscle usage to maintain rigidity for efficient rotation, without overblowing the kick, even though I am strong enough to do it, to preserve my hip and leg strength and endurance for biking and running later.

[Zenturtle]

A lot of fast swiommers see this basic core tautness as the foundation of their stroke. Its always there.
The girl has a very tight swimline, where even the feet move totally in sync with the rest of the body.
I think thats a bit too much tension in the legs. You can keep most of it and relax the legs a bit. Do some faint 2 Bk kicking as people do when using a pull buoy, By keeping everything tense you cant get into a action reaction core rhythm.
Its a greast starting point for learning 2BK though.
First no kick and then help the bodyroll a bit with a straightleg 2BK until the roll is taken over from the kick and the hips and you can let the arms idle along, only using the push phase.
This is very close to Terrys light pressure at the pull, patient lead arm slow catch stuff. Not so easy.
Working on it some time on it every swimsession myself too. High elbow relaxed recoverystuff is helpfull to tie it all together. This girl has a very good front paddle/recovery action as well.
If you have been there you can go back to frontwheel drive and back off the rearwheel drive going back to no legs etc.
Everybody has an optimal personal balance between rear and frontwheeldrive. It takes some time to find it.

Hi Zenturtle,

I came across 2 videos on youtube (for the life of me I can't find them since) that explained the following:

1. Breath deep such that one feels the air the get down into one's stomach area
2. Tighten core muscles at end of back / bum

Both of the above if one can do them assist in distributing the centre of buoyancy from the chest / lung area to the stomach area thus moving the centre of buoyancy nearer to the centre of gravity in a horizontally aligned person (i.e. almost perfect balance).

How this applies to the average day to day person versus the athletic person is a different interpretation though. I notice I was very lean and fit back in the day but now I carry a tummy and all the other ageing criteria :-)

Keith

[Zenturtle]

I agree on both points.
Belly breathing can pull the buoyancy center of your lungs a bit firher down toward the hips, making balancing easier.
The difficult part is to combine it with the required swim core tension.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMNo2oois94
Relaxed-> belly breathing -> better balance (withn the minmal required postural tension.)

You ask "What does it take to do it?"

I'm new to swimming but fairly fit. I've noticed recently that holding my breath with arms angled down, head looking down that the hips / legs will naturally rise to surface, grand.

However, I've also noticed that if i let air out slowly I can feel that the legs stay up but as the air is leaving me I have to "tighten" (for want of a better word) the lower back area / bum and feel like I'm lengthening the legs. I can maintain this for a few moments but I can see I'd have to do some serious type core training to build strength in this area in order to try and maintain this effort for a longer period of time.

What do you think it takes to do it?

That was 1 of the videos alright.
The other showed a diagram of the centre of buoyancy / centre of gravity and core tightening - it had a nutty professor type with a chicken type glove on his head?

[bx]

Originally Posted by keithbowden

T
The other showed a diagram of the centre of buoyancy / centre of gravity and core tightening - it had a nutty professor type with a chicken type glove on his head?

How to Swim Faster Freestyle. . . with High Legs and Low Drag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW5nE5FBPsQ

Jamie Shaules. Search for his name on this forum for the historical discussion on his ideas.

IIRC the convention is to flatten the back slightly by pulling navel to spine, not the opposite advocated by J. Shaules, extending the lumbar region to pull the hips up.

[daveblt]

This is another one of his videos . I want to mention that using the info. in these videos really help my freestyle balance quite a bit in the past months. Even after swimming with TI techniques for over 20 years I still thought my balance could be even better because it would seem sometimes as if my legs had a mind of their own .Engaging the lower back muscles especially has helped me to keep my legs up and feeling lighter and my 2 beat kick feels better and more coordinated .



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2n_AceCr-c