Watching the Hips

This season I am spending a lot of time committed to watching the hips of my athletes. I emphasize swimming from the core, and the hips tend to be a great indicator of the use of the core.

After spending some time watching the hips I noticed that some of the athletes actually pull before the initiation of the hip rotation. This causes the hand to reach the hip without it being fully rotated having the swimmer press their hip out of the water (looking like butterfly hips) or the slide their hips to the side to allow their hand to exit without hitting their hip.

Backstroke I am also looking at the rotation, or the lack thereof. I know there those out there who like the flat backstroke, but I still prefer the rotation. Rotation in the shoulders doesn't seem to be the biggest importance, as much as the rotation in the hips. I watched Peirsol's video where he slides his hips, but in the slide his hips do seem to rotate as well. The upper body does seem to have not much rotation. I coach age-group swimmers, so I like the idea that they learn the rotation, and if they need to create more power as a senior swimmer then they can see if the slide works for them. I am still a fan of rotation though.

Breaststroke is where I like to emphasize hips a lot. A lot of swimmers don't realize how to drive the hips forward, and many who do drive the hips, actually push them down to create the same type of motion, but in the wrong position in the water. We do core building during dryland on some days, which is going to allow athletes to drive the hips and keep it high in the water. Some of my swimmers haven't created the core strength to do this yet, but I still try to get them to learn the motion.

As I teach the hips to drive forward in breaststroke, I have learned that I need to be careful on the butterfly hips. I have used body dolphins to teach the hips to pop by pressing the chest down and lean on the lungs, but they want to come up to breathe by pressing their hips down or forward like in breaststroke. This has created some pretty deep hips on the "uphill" phase of butterfly, almost created a dead spot of forward motion, and a very energy spending effort to get the body to "downhill" because how far the hips must rise to break the surface of the water. I plan to go over the idea of lifting the body during the downward press of the stroke, and to leave the hips be due to what has happened to many of the swimmers hips on the "uphill" phase.

Hips, the strokes starting all of its motions from the core of the body. This has always been something I talked to the swimmers about, and did some corrections for it in the past, but now I am just spending a little extra time on it. Every season I try to cover a different aspect with more emphasis, as many of the swimmers are starting their second or third season with me, so I try not to make it the same old thing. Last Fall it was emphasizing the Relaxation of the 3 R's of swimming speed. Although I still talk about it, I haven't emphasized it as much as last fall. This fall so far has been all about the hips (the core).