How To Stop Snaking | Tips For Fixing Over Rotation When Swimming

- In order to get anywhere fast it makes more sense to take the most direct line. And swimming is by no means any different. Therefore snaking our way down the pool is not only going to require more effort, it's going to take a lot longer. - [Heather] Yeah, this whole body wiggling technique is usually due to mistakes in your front crawl pull or poor breathing technique. So we're going to be breaking down your stroke to work out why it happens and more importantly how to solve it. (upbeat chilled music) - Now snaking as you can probably imagine is kind of wiggling our way down the swimming pool with each arm stroke moving our body from side to side and essentially a really inefficient manner which is going to result in us swimming quite a bit further than the 25 or 50 meters of our swimming pool length. - Yeah with your hand entering across the midline it's then naturally going to have to pull back across your body towards your hip in order for your arms to be able to at for the recovery and this is know as the crossover which is basically another term for snaking. - Yeah so this sort of overreaching action can happen one or both sides but if you're doing it on one side this can start allowing us to drift off in one or the other particular direction. Now when we're in the swimming pool the black line or the lane rope can allow us to compensate and over correct but if you're out in the open water you could start going off in all sorts of directions. - Yeah, excessive head movement is another cause because basically if you're moving your head too much when you breathe, then the rest of your body is naturally going to follow the way that your head moves. - Now aside from the obvious wiggling of our hips all the way down the swimming pool, having a poor entry and catch position can have a lot of knock-on effect with other aspects of our stroke. Now by overreaching past that central line, we're then going to start pulling in a diagonal motion this can put a lot of pressure on our shoulders, which in itself can promote injuries down the line. And even if it doesn't it just means that we're not making use of those strong shoulder and lat areas. - Well as this action obviously unbalances your stroke on one side your next stroke is then going to have to compensate, so you end up in this vicious circle of trying it on either side. And then your hips and legs also get involved all in an effort to try and keep you moving in a forwards direction. And you'll often see a wide leg kick known as a scissor kick. That tends to come hand in hand with snaking. And this, yes it will keep you moving forwards but it's going to be adding a lot of drag as well as using a lot of excess energy. - Now as Heather says you might actually be unaware that you're wiggling in equal amounts because you're still going to go in the same direction as planned but you're just unaware of what you're doing. So a really good tip is to get a coach or a friend to film you from pool deck to try and get a handle on it. (upbeat chilled music) - The stroke starts with a hand entry so it makes sense we address this part first. Now your hand obviously wants to go in in a forwards direction. Imagining that you're trying to reach towards the wall. But remember your shoulders are actually wider than your eyes so you need to make sure that your hand is going in more that direction. If you picture on a clock 11 o'clock and one o'clock respectively. That will give you a guide as to where your hand needs to be going in. But this is just a bit of a guide because we do need to add in rotation which then changes things again. - Yeah, so when we have that good rotation that naturally puts us in an ideal position to reach forward, get the catch and then take our pull directly back towards our hip which then moves us forward solely in a forwards direction rather than that wiggling that we want to avoid and also that allows us to recruit those really big and strong muscle groups too. - And a wide scissor kick is often synonymous with snaking so if you do manage to correct the arm movement and the body movement you will find that quite often naturally solves your leg kick. But still it's a good idea to focus on keeping your kicks small and fast. As this is going to aid propulsion and obviously reduce any drag. So finally our head position and movement as such needs to be addressed. Whether its a cause or an effect from snaking doesn't really matter because by moving our head side to side in all likelihood the body's going to follow suit. - Bilateral breathing is known for balancing out the stroke but it can have a detriment effect if you move your head too much to breathe. Because you're then going to be having to move your head from the right hand side all the way to the left which can cause excessive wiggle. And this then brings us back to rotation, as if you don't have an efficient body roll or enough of a body roll then you're going to be naturally having to lift your head out of the water as well which will be adding to this excessive movement and all contributing to not moving in that direct line that we want. Working out which is the cause and which is the effect can be useful but all of these following drills will help reduce snaking irrelevant of where the problem actually originates. (upbeat music) - Taking out your arm pull and focusing purely on your body position will help you to get body awareness in the water. So just like you would be at the start of your stroke you're going to have one arm extended and the other arm by your side. Now it's a good idea to pop some fins on for this as they will help propulsion but also prevent your legs from sinking. Your extended arm needs to be underneath your body with your other arm resting on top facing the ceiling. And your whole body needs to be facing to the side of the pool or the lane rope. Obviously this is an exaggerated amount of rotation but when you add it back into full stroke it should hopefully help you to find the correct amount now make sure you repeat it on both sides and try to add in a little bit of head movement just enough so you can get your breath in but taking your head back down to the center line in between. (upbeat music) - Now for the single arm drill we're obviously just going to have one arm swimming at any time which allows us to focus on keeping our head movement to a minimum. And also it lets us really think about where we're putting that hand entry in. Now to start off with we're going to have our non-pulling arm extended out in front of us which acts as a guide and allows us to stop having that other entry crossing over too much. We can progress the single arm drill by then taking that resting arm away and popping it down by our side. And then that allows us to focus a lot more on rotation. Which helps with our breathing too. - Sticking with the concept of using one arm at a time and having one arm there to guide you leads us on to catch up. So for this push off the wall with both arms extended and then leave one arm out extended whilst you take a full stroke with the opposite arm and not until you get back to the start do you then take a stroke with the other arm. Now you continue this for the whole length but do make sure you still concentrate on rotation as it can start to cause you to flatten your stroke out a little. - Now if you think you've got a very good or even perfect hand entry then you can use a set of finger paddles or if you don't have a set of those some normal paddles are perfectly fine too but you just remove the wrist strap. Now by doing this it really forces your hand to have the absolute perfect entry into the water because everything gets a lot more floppy with the paddle without that wrist strap or the finger paddles too. So the paddle will simply fall away if you're entering the water at the wrong angle. So using these really forces you to think about your hand entry and get that perfect catch. - It's now time to head to full stroke without the paddles but we are going to use a snorkel now using a snorkel is going to eliminate breathing which should hopefully actually take away any excessive head movement as your head can remain directly still with an eye gaze facing forward now with this you should even be able to get a glimpse of your hand entry as it comes past your eyes. - Finally visualization, as you use all those drills to bring your full stroke back into play. Try and think of a clock face with your left arm going in at 11 o'clock and your right arm going in at one o'clock. And that will just give you a really good way to stop any of this crossing over action kicking in . But also try get somebody to film you to really help you work on what you've been doing with all these drills try and get everything going in the right direction. - Why swim further than you need to? You'll be amazed at the improvements you can make in your swimming time by reducing and hopefully eliminating snaking. - Yeah absolutely, now also you hopefully noticed the nice brightly colored swimcaps that we were using in the video today so head over to the shop to get yourself one of those as well hopefully you did enjoy this video so please hit that thumb up like button find the globe on screen to subscribe and get all the other videos that we do here at GTN and if you want to see a video about three essential swim workouts then you can get that here. - And if you've got a problem with sinking legs and you want to know how to solve it the video to help you just here.

Channel: Global Triathlon Network

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Keywords: swimming snaking, swimming crossover, snaking, over rotation, freestyle technique, front crawl technique, frontcrawl technique, freestyle swimming, how to swim, how to swim front crawl, how to swim freesyle, swimming technique, open water swimming, learn to swim, GTN, Global Triathlon Network, triathlon, Triathlon (Sport), tri, ironman, Sports, swimbikerun, triathlon training, triathlon skills, iron man, tri bike, triathlete, traithlon, Ꮮ, 3717, Ꮵ, Ꮽ, Ᏸ, Մ, Շ, Ꮲ, Ս, Ց, ཙ, ཎ, ፕ17

Id: IIpM27vagfo

Length: 8min 17sec (497 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019