Do your legs constantly sag when swimming freestyle? Hone your technique.
Well-trained runners and cyclists with muscular legs in particular struggle with sinking legs.
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Leg sinking during the front crawl is a nuisance that many adult swimmers and triathletes encounter on their learning journey; and for once it really mainly means men.
The following physical facts explain why this is the case: two forces act on a person resting in water: the weight of the body’s center of gravity – called the center of mass – which pushes the body downwards due to gravity. And the buoyancy force, which begins at the center of volume of a body and is responsible for an object rising to the surface of the water. If the buoyancy force is greater than the weight force, a body floats in water.
Things get exciting when this equation is supplemented with the factor “human in a horizontally extended position”. You have to know that the center of gravity and the center of volume rarely touch the same place in this position. If this were the case, a breathing person could lie on the water like a piece of wood. Numerous factors influence an adult’s ability to float in water. The most important of these are: body structure and proportions, ratio of muscle mass to fat tissue and individual fat distribution.
Fat tissue floats, muscle mass decreases
While fat and connective tissue have a lower specific weight than water and increase buoyancy, muscles are heavier than bath water and add weight. Now it should be clear why men, especially well-trained runners and cyclists with muscular legs, particularly suffer from a sinking lower body when crawling.
Women have a natural muscle content of around 30 percent of their body weight, while for men this is significantly higher at up to 50 percent. In addition, women naturally have better padding in the pelvic and thigh areas. The hollow uterus also has a positive influence on the body’s center of gravity when swimming and increases buoyancy.
In adult men, the center of gravity is approximately at the level of the sacrum, while the buoyancy is centered in the lung space, depending on the figure. The fact that when swimming the lower half of the body sinks while the air-filled upper body keeps adult men afloat is, to put it bluntly, a law of nature. So much for the theory.
Water position self-test
In order to draw the right conclusions for practicing freestyle swimming, it is worth carrying out a simple self-test. It shows how strongly and quickly the legs really sink.
To do this, push off the pool wall while lying on your back, fill your lungs fully with air, arms stretched in the arrow, keep your head in line with the spine: now glide on the surface of the water with your body tense as long as you can. If the legs sag after a few meters (women and children glide up to ten meters effortlessly in this position), this indicates a suboptimal position in the water with the center of mass under the hips.
This must first and foremost be accepted. Secondly, the following technical details must be given maximum attention when swimming in front crawl:
Low-lying legs mean high frontal resistance. To avoid this, use a continuous front crawl to keep the body horizontal. To do this, aim for a narrow but quick leg kick with a small amplitude. The water should always appear slightly bubbling at your feet. Because crawling leg kicks require a lot of oxygen and you quickly get out of breath, series of leg kicks with and without fins are part of every training session. When breathing, make sure that the head is not lifted, but only turned to the side with the upper body rotated. If you lift it, you shift the body’s center of gravity even further backwards, the legs sink even more. With each pull of the arm after diving into a complete extension with a clear rotation of the upper body in order to make the body as long as possible. The further you stretch out horizontally, the longer the lever is and the better the center of gravity, which moves forward. Also helpful: tense your body slightly when swimming in front crawl and actively lift your legs to the surface of the water using your lower back and abdominal muscles . Regular core stability training and sports such as yoga and Pilates help to strengthen these muscles. If nothing works, try triathlon competitions that allow you to wear a wetsuit. The swimming suits keep even the strongest legs on the surface of the water if they have a material thickness of five millimeters at the bottom.
What to do if fins cause pain or cramps?
Fins are an indispensable, extremely useful aid in swimming training. They enable beginners to acquire and consolidate elementary movement patterns such as arm pulls, leg kicks, body and breathing positions in the front crawl, back crawl and butterfly swimming styles. Advanced athletes and triathletes use it to fine-tune technical details, strengthen the foot and leg muscles, complete intensive intervals at or above the anaerobic threshold or consolidate neuromuscular movement sequences at excessive speeds.
What measures can help if cramps in your feet and calves or pain in your Achilles tendon make swimming with fins difficult?
Newcomers, amateur athletes and moderately talented triathletes should pay attention to a short and, above all, very soft, movable fin blade, which requires hardly any effort. In the trade, such fins have names such as “ultrasoft”, “lightweight”, “superflex” or “easyfins”. The models from well-known manufacturers often have hard fin blades with little flexibility, which can only be used by trained swimming athletes without any problems.
Fins are a useful tool.
PD
If you are prone to cramps, it is best to use fins in the first third of training (after swimming) and slowly work your way up to higher speeds. Drinking enough fluids and eating salty snacks in the hours before exercise can help keep cramps away.
Triathletes who, in addition to swimming, train for high running volumes, occasionally complain of pain in the Achilles tendon when wearing fins if the model only has a narrow heel band that presses into the tendon with every up-and-down movement of the foot. In such a case: definitely try out softer models with a closed heel cap.
If that’s not enough, you can wear high-quality running socks with reinforced heels in the fins, although the latter may have to be chosen a shoe size larger.
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