Good tidings, everyone!
As you can all see, I am incredibly new to this site. I joined due to a simple question I had. Now, I am a sophomore in high who just learned how to swim last year. My 50 free time went from 1:09 to 28.5 within the course of six months. Now, I desire to go even faster.r I was told last year to swim with my head down, with my eyes looking towards the floor of the pool. Now, I have a new coach, and he is telling me to lift up my head. I am incredibly confused, especially since I swim about the same regardless of which position my head is in. If I could get some advice, that would be fantastic.
Thanks so much!
That is a remarkable time for 6 months of swimming.
Your head should be in line such that your spine is straight as possible . Usually this means facing directly down. When the head is up, the legs sink out of the streamline. But if you're faster tilting your head up just a little, maybe it is needed.
Steve is right, in line with your spine, primarily down. The big thing is to maintain this head down position during breathing and also not picking it up for the turn.
I think you should ask your coach for more clarification on what he means when he tells you to lift your head, and to what extent he wants you to make this change. Is he trying to get your overall body position higher, or is he literally telling you to lift your head higher than the rest of your body?
Head position still raises quite a debate in the swimming world, especially since there are many world class swimmers who use the head-forward position to great success.I don't think there is one unequivocal answer to give to all swimmers because it really depends on what type of swimming you are doing. In a pool, you have the black line at the bottom to guide you. But in the open water, you don't have that guide, so you need to have the ability to look forward to be able to see where you are going. The ideal, regardless of the particular swim, is to maintain a horizontal body line in the water. Some coaches suggest the head-down approach as an easy way to generate that horizontal position and this may have been the case for you when you first started swimming.
It used to be the rule that the water should hit your forehead just above your eyebrows. Meaning that you used to lift your head. That is no longer the case for the reasons already stated. You should be looking straight down at the bottom of the pool. If you continue to be a 50 swimmer you will want to take maybe one breath on the first length and a max of two on the second length. That of course is your goal. You probably won't start off with that number of breaths, but you can work up to it.
Head down is the correct position now.
Good luck, it sounds like you have made excellent progress so far! Stick with it!
As a HS coach of 34 swim seasons, I say to ask your coach more questions about how much to lift the head, why in doing so will help you & many of the different things you are about to learn work for some & not others. You will spend much more time with your HS coach that any of us. Get to know what the coach is asking of & why. God time drop for you. It will get very hard to get that kind of drop any more.
