#423 : Why You've Been Taught To Over-Rotate with Brenton Ford
4/7/20267 min
One of the most common things I see in newer swimmers… is how flat they are in the water.
Their hips are flat, their shoulders are flat — and what ends up happening is they just spin their wheels.
They're putting in a lot of effort with the arms, kicking hard with the legs… but nothing is really connecting.
It feels like hard work — but it doesn't translate into speed.
So in today's episode, we're going to break down why swimming flat is holding you back… and how to start linking everything together s...
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsBrenton Ford· Host0:00
Welcome to the Effortless Swimming Podcast, the show that helps swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer, and live a better life. Here's your host, Brenton Ford.
Speaker 20:10
[upbeat music] One thing that's really common among swimmers who are quite new is that they tend to start too flat when they're swimming. So their hips and their shoulders are very flat, and they end up spinning the wheels, and a lot of effort has to go into their arms and their legs, and nothing really works together. Then what happens next is we often see people get taught to rotate, but it's really common to see people over-rotate, and over-rotating is just as bad as staying too flat. And so in this video, I'm gonna share with you how much you should rotate and how to know if you're doing too much or too little. And when you make this change, you'll likely find that other aspects of your stroke will improve a lot, especially your catch and pull. So recently I was working with a swimmer who had been taught that you should rotate your hips and your shoulders to 90 degrees because the longer you are, the more you are on your side, the longer your strokes will be and the easier it will be. But the problem with that is if you rotate all the way onto your side with your hips and shoulders, you're likely going to lose balance and stability in the water. And what happens when you lose balance? The first thing that tends to go is your legs. They will splay out behind you like a