Hip Driven Freestyle: The Most Efficient Way to Swim Hip Driven Freestyle is the most efficient and common way to swim freestyle. This style uses the power of the hips and rotation to move through the water. This technique is used for longer aerobic distances. It is also to be used for warming up and cooling down. Getting the timing correct is crucial to Hip Driven Freestyle. Four things need to happen at the same time. We describe it as a four-point-connection: The hand above the water enters the water The hand under the water pulls through The hips rotate from one side to the other The foot closest to the bottom kicks down . . .Shoulder Driven Freestyle: Use to Reach High Speeds Shoulder Driven Freestyle is the fastest way to swim freestyle. It is to be used to reach top speeds. Since it is powerful, it uses a lot of energy compared to Hip Driven Freestyle This technique should be used for 50's and 100's. It can be worked into longer distances when needing to get into the next gear and finish strong. One of the key parts to masters Shoulder Driven Freestyle is keeping the scapula muscles connected in the top of your back. As one hand exits the water, the other hand should enter at the ‘same time. This is contrary to Hip Driven Freestyle, where you glide out ("skate") on each stroke and wait for the recovery arm to catch up.You will want to keep your hips flat in Shoulder Driven Freestyle. When the left hand enters, the right foot kicks. When the right hand enters, the left foot kicks. This will stabilize your hips, giving all propulsive kicks and no rotational kicks.Body Driven Freestyle: Use to Finish Races Strong Body Driven Freestyle is used for competitive swimmers to kick it into high gear and finish races. This technique is to be used when you are fading and need to finish the final 10-15 yards. The power and rhythm comes from your core. Use the momentum from your body to then throw your arms straight in the recovery. Do not take a breath — this is the end of the race.USING COUPLING ENERGY FORA FASTER FREESTYLE By Gary Hall Sr. | Nov. 20, 2019, 3:31 p.m. (ET)Coupling motions in freestyle may be the most powerful swimming technique that you've likely never heard of. A coupling motion is a movement that you do with a part of your body that generates no propulsion by itself, but adds to the propulsion of your kick and pull. An excellent example of a coupling motion is the swinging of your arms while walking or running. In freestyle, there are two principle coupling motions, body rotation and arm recovery. The two are linked — if you do one particularly well, you automatically get some of the other. Using a strong finish for your arm recovery may be the only BOGO technique in the sport of swimming. |. Body Rotation Let's start with body rotation. Of the two coupling motions, body rotation is potentially more powerful than arm recovery. There is simply more mass in your body than in your arm. The amount of kinetic energy you can generate from your body rotating or your arm recovering over the water is related to their mass, their radius (length of the arm, width of the body), and their angular velocity (speed of the body rotation or arm recovery). It is important to recognize that the last two factors are exponentially related to the energy produced.First, body rotation does not occur all at the same time. There are two critical components to body rotation, the shoulders and the hips. The peak rotational velocity in the shoulders occurs just after the recovering hand enters the water, and the peak rotational velocity of the hips occurs about two tenths of a second later. The pulling handis typically near the shoulder when the shoulder rotation peaks (depending on the freestyle technique used). The pulling hand is at the very end of the pulling motion (or releasing) when the hip rotation peaks. Depending on where and when you emphasize the speed of body rotation, using your shoulders or hips will often determine where you get the most propulsion in your underwater pull. Your peak pulling force could be in front of the shoulder, past the shoulder, or at the very end of the pull.Hip-driven Freestyle Technique Ahip-driven freestyle technique has a slower stroke rate of 55-70 arm strokes per minute, so the hands are held out in front longer. Using this technique, you will want to maximize your propulsion from each stroke because chances are pretty good that you don’t have a strong freestyle kick. To increase your pulling propulsion, you'll want to increase coupling energy from your shoulders and your hips. The best ways to do that are accelerating your recovering hand speed at entry (the end of your arm recovery), and pushing the hand hard out the back (rotating the hips at the same time). At the end of the pull, the hand needs to keep pushing backward, not upward. You do not want to be splashing water over to the next lane as your hand releases on the recovery—that is. wasted energy. ll. Arm Recovery Driving the hand down hard to the water on the recovering arm is the BOGO | was referring to. By doing so, you will automatically increase the speed of your shoulder rotation, increasing the propulsion from your pulling hand at that moment. This requires a little more thought and practice—nothing occurs automatically here. At The Race Club, we have developed several useful drills that will help you improve this technique. We can also demonstrate how to increase your kicking propulsion, which will serve your hip-driven freestyle technique well.Shoulder-driven Technique For those swimmers that prefer a shoulder-driven, faster-stroke-rate freestyle (80-100 arm strokes per minute), there simply isn’t time to push your hand out the back nor rotate your hips aggressively. Concentrate on using a more vertical arm recovery (rather than swinging the recovering arm to the side) and driving your hands hard to the water. The low, swinging-type arm recovery means that you will rotate your body less, minimizing the coupling effect. Using a vertical arm recovery and driving the hand down hard—piercing the surface of the water—you will maximize the coupling energy of your rotating shoulders for the pulling arm. To keep the stroke rate up, you'll need to. release the hand earlier at the end of the pull. Hybrid Technique Hybrid freestylers use a hip-driven technique on one arm and a shoulder-driven technique on the other (like Phelps, Ladecky, Lochte, and many others). They usually have stroke rates somewhere in the middle (70-90 arm strokes per minute) and depend greatly on using both their shoulders and hips for coupling energy. With this technique, the recovering arm speed is asymmetrical — the recovering arm comes down faster on the breath side than it does on the non-breath side.Catch-up Freestyle Technique For those of you using a catch-up freestyle technique, where one hand remains in front until the recovering arm strikes the water, it is a bad idea. It may be suitable for some drills, but that technique loses all of the coupling effects of shoulder rotation on your pulling arm. | haven't seen anyone using a catch-up freestyle technique win any races yet.Focus on these motions to swim faster Coupling motions are part of our everyday lives and help us move faster, but we don’t think about them much. These motions by themselves generate no propulsion. But when they're coupled or timed with a propulsive force, they act to make that force stronger. Consider walking. When we walk, we don’t allow our arms to simply hang by our sides. We swing them back and forth. As one of your arms swings backward, it reaches its maximum kinetic energy at the bottom of the swing precisely as you're pushing off the ground with your corresponding foot. Even though the arm-swing by itself generates no propulsion, the coupling of that motion with the propulsive force from our foot enables us to step farther than if we simply let our arms hang. If we were running, we'd not only push harder with our foot, but we’d also swing our arm backward more aggressively. Athletes in many sports learn to use coupling motions to augment power or propulsion, swimmers. included. To become faster on all four strokes, you should know what these coupling motions are and how to improve them.Freestyle and Backstroke The two major coupling motions are the same for freestyle and backstroke: body rotation and arm recovery. How quickly you rotate your body and how quickly your arm finishes the recovery phase of your stroke determine how much the propulsion from your pull and kick will be augmented. Couple the pulling motion of your stroke with the speed of your arm at the end of the recovery. Not only will throwing your hand into the water hard increase your swimming speed through a higher turnover (though you should be sure not to slap the water and find yourself with bubbles all over your hands), it will also automatically increase how quickly your body is rotating. This is the only BOGO | know of in swimming. Breaststroke There are three major coupling motions that you should be focused upon on breaststroke, one for your pull and two for your kick. During your pull, the elevation of your upper body, including your head, augments the propulsive forces of your hands. Similar to a rowing machine in the gym, you can generate more power by pulling with your arms and your back, than with just your arms. The more you elevate your shoulders, the stronger your pull should become. Of course, doing so requires that you have some flexibility around the lower part of your spine. During your kick, the two coupling motions are the pressing down of your upper body and the snapping down of your head.Your shoulders should be elevated as high above the water as possible during the pull, not just to assist the pull but to further help the kick. Then, rather than casually allowing your upper body to fall forward in preparation for the kick, you should increase the speed and energy of this movement by using your core and pressing your upper body quickly down toward the water. With a flexible neck, your head, which weighs about 12 pounds, can move in a larger range of motion than your upper body. During your breath, your chin should be lifted well off your chest, so you're looking directly forward. Then, during the downward motion, your head should snap down so that your chin actually touches your chest as your arms drive forward, putting you into what's called the racing streamlined position during the propulsive phase of your kick. Capturing the peak kinetic energy of your upper body and head crashing into the surface with your kick is challenging because you only have about .4 seconds to do so. That means you need to get your legs from a straight back position with your toes pointed (during the pull) into the propulsive phase of your kick (the insides of your feet moving backward) quickly. To do so requires lightning-fast legs. Without fast legs, you miss the opportunity to couple with your upper body and head. This is the primary reason why breaststroke is the most challenging stroke to teach and learn.