Tricks to help you engage your "core" in Freestyle

These are not tips or drills, just sort of focal points I use from my personal experience. 1) focus on extending the arm to the front until you feel some stretch in your lats, then make your catch and focus on starting your pull with your lats rather than your deltoids. For me there is also a feeling of the two arms being locked together such that the forward arm is pulling back and the recovering arm is moving forward as one unit. They talk about this in the youtube popov video. If I feel my deltoids are getting tired it usually because I have stopped the full extension and start of pull as described above. I can't say that I've ever felt my lats get tired or sore though, I think that's because my lats are never the weakest link in the kinetic chain. 2) If I swim really super slow I find I need to think a bit about keeping a rigid core and a full extension or else I lose the straight and streamlined as an arrow feeling with my hips and legs moving around. 3) Bill Boomer uses the phrase "hide your ribs" when talking about engaging your core muscles to maintain good body position in backstroke and I find that works for me. For the drill that you are already doing, try concentrating on extending the forward arm until your lats stretch and then begin the catch and the recovery at the same time to see if you can get that feel of the two arms working as one. Pausing my stroke at the point of full extension and the other arm at my waist is one of my favorite drills but for people with a different timing it might not work. Boomer called that position the "reset position" for freestyle and noted that if you put a glide in at that position the stroke should be restarted with the first movement being the back hand starting the recovery rather than the forward hand starting the catch. I haven't done a particularly good job of describing this stuff but I hope that if you just play around with it a bit you'll hit on and recognize what at least some aspects of core engagement feel like.

These are not tips or drills, just sort of focal points I use from my personal experience. 1) focus on extending the arm to the front until you feel some stretch in your lats, then make your catch and focus on starting your pull with your lats rather than your deltoids. For me there is also a feeling of the two arms being locked together such that the forward arm is pulling back and the recovering arm is moving forward as one unit. They talk about this in the youtube popov video. If I feel my deltoids are getting tired it usually because I have stopped the full extension and start of pull as described above. I can't say that I've ever felt my lats get tired or sore though, I think that's because my lats are never the weakest link in the kinetic chain. 2) If I swim really super slow I find I need to think a bit about keeping a rigid core and a full extension or else I lose the straight and streamlined as an arrow feeling with my hips and legs moving around. 3) Bill Boomer uses the phrase "hide your ribs" when talking about engaging your core muscles to maintain good body position in backstroke and I find that works for me. For the drill that you are already doing, try concentrating on extending the forward arm until your lats stretch and then begin the catch and the recovery at the same time to see if you can get that feel of the two arms working as one. Pausing my stroke at the point of full extension and the other arm at my waist is one of my favorite drills but for people with a different timing it might not work. Boomer called that position the "reset position" for freestyle and noted that if you put a glide in at that position the stroke should be restarted with the first movement being the back hand starting the recovery rather than the forward hand starting the catch. I haven't done a particularly good job of describing this stuff but I hope that if you just play around with it a bit you'll hit on and recognize what at least some aspects of core engagement feel like.