Is Balance In The Water Really About Balance?

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If you've been following Swim Smooth for a while you may have noticed we don't talk a lot about balance in swimming. That isn't because we believe achieving a high body position isn't important. In fact quite the opposite, we see a good body position as critically important and large sections of our coaching are about bringing the legs up high in the water. No, we just feel referring to low lying legs as a 'balance problem' is misleading:

Balance on land is about positioning yourself accurately over your centre of gravity. We do this through good spacial awareness and carefully coordinated movements to correct our position. With practise you can do this extremely well, when standing on one leg for example.

However in swimming sinky-leg-syndrome very rarely happens through a lack of spacial awareness or coordination, it is primarily caused by other flaws within the stroke such as:

- Holding on to your breath (pulling your front end upwards and so sinking the legs)

- Lifting the head to breathe (pulling the front end upwards and so sinking the legs)

- Kicking from the knee (adding drag and so pulling the legs downwards)

- Scissor kicking (adding drag and pulling the legs downwards)

- Poor ankle flexibility (introducing lots of drag and pulling the legs downwards)

- Pressing down during the catch rather than pressing backwards (pulling your front end upwards and so sinking the legs)

- Showing the palm forwards during the catch: "Overgliding" (stalling the swimmer in the water, causing the whole body to sink downwards)

Trying to focus on your sense of balance directly (e.g. through floating drills) is going to be completely ineffective if you have any of the above flaws in your stroke when you start to swim. Guess what, beginner and intermediate level swimmers will have at least one in their stroke technique and very often several!

So poor body position is a symptom of stroke issues that need correcting and very rarely an issue of a poor sense of balance in itself. The irony is that good balance in the water is actually very easy to achieve once you have a good stroke technique. So let's stop wasting time and get on with the important bit, correcting your stroke.

Swim Smooth!