Streamlining with Your Head Down Reduces Drag Bigly
For someone who spends much of his time in perpetual motion, keeping streamlined is a fundamental skill for smooth sailing.
Reducing drag is a major waste of energy that could otherwise be better used for speed and agility. There are many reasons why we turn our heads when we swim, the most common being to check our surroundings and to check for traffic in the river, pool or ocean before we make a turn. The problem with turning our heads is that it adds resistance to our forward movement and creates drag which slows us down.
Some ways to streamline like a champion:
- Keeping your head down, this will reduce drag created from turning your head to look for your surroundings. This helps you to turn head over heels more efficiently.
- Stay focused on your hands, they will provide you with the most warning for obstacles.
- Maintaining love hand position will improve your confidence in your strokes and reduce drag around your body.
- Use a kick board in the surf. Using a kick board will help you to improve your hip action and help you to work on your balance and breathing.
A Simple Drill to Tighten Up Your Streamline
Swimming is obviously an important physical component in triathlon. And they say that it’s not so much about how fast you can swim but rather how fast you can swim for how far that determines your success in the triathlon.
Coach John Laudeman emphasizes the fact that streamline is critical in achieving this success. It is so important that he daily drills into his team the importance of streamline.
A standard drill he uses is to calmly direct a swimmers’ eyes to the bottom of the pool then keep them there for a solid five seconds. Then ask, while she is maintaining the position of looking at the bottom of the pool, to roll her head to look up at the walls of the pool. Then ask her to smoothly roll her head, eyes and nose to where her hands are creating the smallest pocket of resistance possible.
Repeat for ten minutes. The result is that each swimmer becomes acutely aware of her body position while swimming. The result is and is noticeable difference in her stroke speed and distance.