How to stop crossing-over & snaking to swim much straighter freestyle in the open water or pool!

How to stop crossing-over & snaking to swim much straighter freestyle in the open water or pool!

Paul Newsome · 2 minute read

With this amazingly simple training aid by Finis, I believe I can literally teach anyone how to Swim Smooth and cut minutes off their open water swim times specifically. Let’s find out how in today’s 3rd instalment of our Stroke Correction Hierarchy.



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This week’s 3rd stage in our Swim Smooth Stroke Correction Hierarchy will focus on “A for Alignment”:

This covers off a large magnitude of aspects of the freestyle stroke, including:

  1. The distance you reach forwards in front of your head

  2. Hand alignment as you enter into the water

  3. Hand depth as you extend forwards in the water

  4. Lateral positioning of your hand and arm as you extend forwards in the water

…and most importantly, the effect that any issues with these aspects of your alignment have on the other areas of your stroke, vis-à-vis, welcome to the Cause & Effect aspect of our Methodology ✅

Alignment can really be thought of as anything that will help set you up for a better stroke, specifically the catch (as we’ll discuss next week).

These four aspects of your alignment can all be brought together with a drill I designed specifically for this in 2013 which I named the “Javelin drill”.  The drill progression starts with simply kicking on your side, which is a great way of testing your stability and alignment in it’s raw form. If you can improve on this simple aspect, your swimming will improve in leaps and bounds no matter what your ability level or core issue facing your stroke.

To see exactly how this all works, please watch our latest YouTube video and remember to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE 👍

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