Body Roll or not???

Mark re your query about whether to use Body roll in freestyle. The answer is that it is a must. Rolling your hip up while your opposite hand enters the water and extends into the catch position is essential. The body roll extends your reach and sets you up to use your core muscles to power the arm pull. The action of rotating your hip up also allows a relaxed bent elbow recovery where the hand can stay closer to the body and enter in line with the shoulder. If you swim with flat hips then you are forced to have a wide straight arm recovery with all the lateral deviation problems that this creates. One point that i see in almost all swimmers is that they roll onto the shoulder less on their non breathing side. So if you breathe to the right you probably do not roll fully onto your right shoulder on your next armstroke. This causes the hand to enter wider and you get less power on the arm stroke. Look at 45 degrees of roll, hips and shoulders roll as a unit. Do bi-lateral breathing often and be aware of this. Re you comment about British coaches. I have been here 1 year, after 11 years in Vancouver and i am shocked at the ignorance shown by the coaches here. In the main Uk coaches have not kept up with the developments in technique of the last 20 years. The training we receive is appaling. I have taken the ASA level-1 and level- 2 coaches courses and in over 100 hours of instruction have yet to hear any of the points of modern technique. The core theory in the syllabus is out of date and the instructional video on strokes that we are supposed to study shows very poor technique. My main advice would be to find another coach, Barnet-Copthall in London have an excellent set up.

Mark re your query about whether to use Body roll in freestyle. The answer is that it is a must. Rolling your hip up while your opposite hand enters the water and extends into the catch position is essential. The body roll extends your reach and sets you up to use your core muscles to power the arm pull. The action of rotating your hip up also allows a relaxed bent elbow recovery where the hand can stay closer to the body and enter in line with the shoulder. If you swim with flat hips then you are forced to have a wide straight arm recovery with all the lateral deviation problems that this creates. One point that i see in almost all swimmers is that they roll onto the shoulder less on their non breathing side. So if you breathe to the right you probably do not roll fully onto your right shoulder on your next armstroke. This causes the hand to enter wider and you get less power on the arm stroke. Look at 45 degrees of roll, hips and shoulders roll as a unit. Do bi-lateral breathing often and be aware of this. Re you comment about British coaches. I have been here 1 year, after 11 years in Vancouver and i am shocked at the ignorance shown by the coaches here. In the main Uk coaches have not kept up with the developments in technique of the last 20 years. The training we receive is appaling. I have taken the ASA level-1 and level- 2 coaches courses and in over 100 hours of instruction have yet to hear any of the points of modern technique. The core theory in the syllabus is out of date and the instructional video on strokes that we are supposed to study shows very poor technique. My main advice would be to find another coach, Barnet-Copthall in London have an excellent set up.