I try to press my chest down when I butterfly. That action usually causes the hips to rise.
The cue of pressing the chest down has a very sound anatomical basis, but does require some details to be fully effective. A big key is to actually press the chest down and not simply lower the entire front end of the body, as the latter results in a series of dives rather than efficient butterfly strokes.
In terms of the anatomy, if you look at someone with a rounded upper back and caved chest, they usually have an excessively flat lower back with too much posterior pelvic tilt. Now if you pull the shoulders back and extend the chest forward, the pelvic tilt in the anterior direction will happen automatically (with the butt going out and back, which would be up if we were prone as in swimming), in large part because many of the upper body postural muscles have insertion points in the hip and pelvic region. Just as with focusing on the pelvis, you can save yourself some frustration if you first look at whether you have this postural skill on land without the stress of the water.
The chest responds especially well to manual therapy. Great if you have access to a skilled manual therapist, but you can also achieve good results with the use of "ghetto" implements like tennis balls or foam rollers to restore lost mobility in the pectoralis major and minor (especially the latter). Again, a lot of people think they are pressing the chest down when in reality they are just diving with each stroke. Often the chest is immobile because we tell it to be immobile 20+ hours a day in crappy posture.
I try to press my chest down when I butterfly. That action usually causes the hips to rise.
The cue of pressing the chest down has a very sound anatomical basis, but does require some details to be fully effective. A big key is to actually press the chest down and not simply lower the entire front end of the body, as the latter results in a series of dives rather than efficient butterfly strokes.
In terms of the anatomy, if you look at someone with a rounded upper back and caved chest, they usually have an excessively flat lower back with too much posterior pelvic tilt. Now if you pull the shoulders back and extend the chest forward, the pelvic tilt in the anterior direction will happen automatically (with the butt going out and back, which would be up if we were prone as in swimming), in large part because many of the upper body postural muscles have insertion points in the hip and pelvic region. Just as with focusing on the pelvis, you can save yourself some frustration if you first look at whether you have this postural skill on land without the stress of the water.
The chest responds especially well to manual therapy. Great if you have access to a skilled manual therapist, but you can also achieve good results with the use of "ghetto" implements like tennis balls or foam rollers to restore lost mobility in the pectoralis major and minor (especially the latter). Again, a lot of people think they are pressing the chest down when in reality they are just diving with each stroke. Often the chest is immobile because we tell it to be immobile 20+ hours a day in crappy posture.
