Heard a high school coach tell team to swim flat?

I was swimming laps yesterday and I overheard the swim coach tell the high school swim team that they should be swimming flat with no rotation of the hips. He told them that at no point they should not be kicking on their sides and that swimming flat decreases drag. I've had one other person tell me the same thing when I first started swimming and I ended up with severe shoulder (rotator cuff) pain. It wasn't until I learned how to rotate from side to side that the pain resolved. No worries here.. well. No worries... I reckon it could be worrisome. Here's the full story. Not that long ago (at least I believe), some paper got published on swimming. Some researchers found out that the fastest swimmers in this study happened to be the ones that were rotating less. That's all. Now where things are starting to drift is, well twofold: 1. They found out that the faster swimmers (in this study) were the ones rotating less, but that doesn't mean they're not rotating or avoiding rotating or even trying to rotate as little as possible. 2. (more importantly). I believe that this observation is probably due to the fact that faster swimmers did have the higher stroke rate (bare in mind that they studied Sprinters, not distance swimmers) and that logically, the higher the rate, the less time to rotate, which probably explains that the fastest folks, displaying the fastest stroke rate, were as a result of this rotating less. I think that some new swimmers learning through these coaches that are always keen to apply new theories at large, regardless of the level, will suffer a bit from bad advising for a whilst. That's unfortunate, they will be asked to rotate as little as possible. Other coaches will certainly understand how this principle should be applied, but not all will do. I think it's worth remembering at this point that body rotation in FreeStyle should be sufficient for allowing the arms to recover over water with a high elbow, but not any higher (especially applied to Pool swimming). The best possible drill I can think of to define a fair individual rotation level is certainly the finger trailing drill. It is often used to teach relaxed high elbow recovery (and it performs well at this task), but it can (and should) also be used to shape a symmetrical recovery with just enough rotation (not more) to allow for arms to recover above surface. Anyway, my :2cents: And of course, my ref: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../18981935

I was swimming laps yesterday and I overheard the swim coach tell the high school swim team that they should be swimming flat with no rotation of the hips. He told them that at no point they should not be kicking on their sides and that swimming flat decreases drag. I've had one other person tell me the same thing when I first started swimming and I ended up with severe shoulder (rotator cuff) pain. It wasn't until I learned how to rotate from side to side that the pain resolved. No worries here.. well. No worries... I reckon it could be worrisome. Here's the full story. Not that long ago (at least I believe), some paper got published on swimming. Some researchers found out that the fastest swimmers in this study happened to be the ones that were rotating less. That's all. Now where things are starting to drift is, well twofold: 1. They found out that the faster swimmers (in this study) were the ones rotating less, but that doesn't mean they're not rotating or avoiding rotating or even trying to rotate as little as possible. 2. (more importantly). I believe that this observation is probably due to the fact that faster swimmers did have the higher stroke rate (bare in mind that they studied Sprinters, not distance swimmers) and that logically, the higher the rate, the less time to rotate, which probably explains that the fastest folks, displaying the fastest stroke rate, were as a result of this rotating less. I think that some new swimmers learning through these coaches that are always keen to apply new theories at large, regardless of the level, will suffer a bit from bad advising for a whilst. That's unfortunate, they will be asked to rotate as little as possible. Other coaches will certainly understand how this principle should be applied, but not all will do. I think it's worth remembering at this point that body rotation in FreeStyle should be sufficient for allowing the arms to recover over water with a high elbow, but not any higher (especially applied to Pool swimming). The best possible drill I can think of to define a fair individual rotation level is certainly the finger trailing drill. It is often used to teach relaxed high elbow recovery (and it performs well at this task), but it can (and should) also be used to shape a symmetrical recovery with just enough rotation (not more) to allow for arms to recover above surface. Anyway, my :2cents: And of course, my ref: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/.../18981935