swimming bouyancy (without wetsuit)

Zupe - 2009-09-10 5:56 PM Just got home from Masters swim practice.  Coach says that I need to become more bouyant.  It is true, because I always feel like I am sinking.  When I swim, I feel like I am fighting to stay afloat instead of pushing forward through the water.  The problem is that he said he is not quite sure how to fix it.  Any suggestions?

nevergivin - 2009-09-11 11:43 AM
I would be concerned if your coach can't offer any suggestions after looking at your stroke, this is very common for age group men, experienced swimmers should be versed in this. Work on your core strength, ab,obliques,lower back,hip flexors,etc. to strengthen your posture when you swim, you probably notice you sink more as the workout progresses, as your core fatigues so will your position leading to hips and legs sinking. As with biking,running,walking,etc. when you slouch or posture gets out of wack things get difficult real fast. I disagree with using a pull bouy, while it may keep your hips up and strengthen your pull, it does nothing to help your balance and leads to over or under rotation, its not designed for that, toss it! Strengthen your kick ,swim more, work on core and you ride with your hips on top of the water for longer periods.

agarose2000 - 2009-09-11 7:43 PM

Definitely disagree ith your "toss the pull buoy" assessment .

From direct experience, it was the BIGGEST help in adjusting my rotation correctly, balancing correctly, and developing a proper balanced upper body stroke. I can't imagine a coach even being able to verbally point out the numerous things it fixed for me, and the best part is that all I did was focus on swimming with the buoy while minimizing my kick and stabilizing my lower body for minimal movement. That's it. No extra drills, no complicated coach analysis, or anything else needed. If you have balance and rotation problems, they become painfully obvious when you do this with a buoy; itwill bring up flaws that you never even realized you had.

Over-rotation is a common one that gets fixed quick with the buoy - if you're over-rotating, you'll feel the buoy lurching between your legs - it should feel relatively stationary. I found that I had to swim "flat as a board" to get it right. (I later had my form checked by a OWS champion swim coach who said my rotation was perfect and who even called me a "natural swimmer!" when it was really all from pull buoy work - and I have a video of my pre-buoy technique to prove it.)

I did freestyle drills seriously up the wa-zoo for months prior to using the pull buoy - pretty much every one in the book, and not one of them yielded the technique benefit of pull buoy swimming.

I also found that weaning yourself off the buoy is EASY if you're swimming with minimal kick with the buoy. It took me 3-4 entire weeks of feeling like I was re-learning to swim all over again with the buoy, but once I felt comfortable with the buoy, the transition to buoy-less swimming was nearly instantaneous, and I had no dropoff in speed.

Best part is that the buoy also translates DIRECTLY to wetsuit swimming - you'll know intuitively after training with the buoy how to take advantage of the added buoyancy in your legs and hips.