Front Crawl Stroke, Freestyle Technique
Head Position & Body Position

This article about front crawl swimming technique explains how to position your head and your body so that you can swim with the greatest efficiency and also avoid injuries.

Neutral Head Position

There are still swim coaches that recommend that you look in front of you while swimming front crawl. The idea is that if you position your head in that way, a larger part of it will emerge above the water surface and as a consequence create less drag.

However, there are two problems with that approach:

  1. Your hips and legs have often a tendency to drop when you lift your head up by looking in front of you. As a consequence, you create more drag instead of less. You also need to kick harder to keeps your hips and legs up.

  2. If you look in front of you at all times while swimming front crawl, you put your neck in an awkward position. If you do this for several years, you can develop neck injuries.

So, in my opinion, it is best to keep your head in a neutral position so that it is aligned with the rest of the spine. This helps you keep your body horizontal, creating the least amount of drag. It also preserves your neck from injuries. In this neutral position, you should also look straight down at the bottom of the pool.

Please note that it may still be necessary to look in front of you from time to time to avoid obstacles or to orient yourself. As long as you keep this to a minimum this shouldn't be a problem.

Head Position and Breathing

When you need to inhale, you'll have to rotate your head (and your body) towards air so that your mouth clears the water. You should rotate your head as little as is needed to inhale, because rotating it too much can again disrupt balance and strain your neck.

Ideally, you will keep your head in a neutral position for as long as possible and let it simply follow along your body when it rotates on the side. At the end of your body's rotation, you will rotate your head a little bit more so that you can inhale.

In fact, if you watch the pros swim, you will see that they inhale with the mouth slightly to the side and in the trough of the bow wave created by their head, so that they rotate their head as little as possible. While they do this, one lens of their swimming goggles is below the water surface and one lens is above the water surface. However, being able to do this takes a lot of practice.

Finally, a common error less experienced swimmers do is that they lift their head first before they rotate to the side. As explained previously, this disrupts balance and causes your hips and legs to drop, increasing drag.

Neutral Body Position

While you swim freestyle, you should aim to keep your body as horizontal to the water surface as possible. This is called being balanced. When you are balanced you will create the least amount of drag. And as explained above, your head position has a big influence on your balance.

When you swim front crawl, you should let your shoulders and hips roll from side to side instead of keeping them locked parallel to the water surface. This allows you to engage larger muscle groups (chest, back, abs in addition to shoulders and legs) and improve propulsion. It also reduces drag because your shoulders clear the water more.

Body Position and Breathing

To inhale, you rotate your body further to the side than when not breathing. The rotation is initiated by the opposite action of your legs. Your body should rotate as a single block. As explained above, your head simply follows along when you are about to breathe in and rotates a little bit further than the rest of your body.

How to Become Balanced in the Water

It should now be obvious that having good balance in the water is essential to swim the front crawl stroke. If you are balanced, you will be able to relax, rotate with ease and swim efficiently.

If you have still problems with this aspect of your swimming technique, the first few drills to learn how to swim freestyle will teach you this important skill.

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