Had a chance to swim with a pal over the weekend who swam D1. So fun to watch someone swim with that kind of knowledge. I noticed he has a very pronounced location of his cheek close to or actually pressing against his shoulder until his arm gets well into the insweep/propulsive phase. We chatted about it and he said the difference in drag is massive in his opinion if he doesn't do it.
I messed around with it and kinda sorta could do it, but methinks my inflexibility is a limiter. Obviously I don't want to contort my neck downward to get my cheek on my shoulder right? So it's a matter of bringing the shoulder up to my cheek? How does one go about this and still keep their shoulders wide enough? My biggest issue was that I felt I had to narrow up my shoulders so much that I couldn't catch quite like I'm used to.
Thanks for any insight.
I let my shoulder touch my ear on every stroke. Not my cheek you can get shoulder rash from your beard.
Funny you should say that. For this very reason I now try to shave before I go swimming in the morning. I had these symmetric dark spots in both anterior deltoid areas and for the longest time I couldn't figure out why. I considered my backpack and stopped wearing it on my back when shirtless, but that didn't help. That never used to happen because my technique was different.
