Originally Posted by
Bill
I think mental imaging is helpful. I try to think of myself almost as a string, keeping the body straight and long. Keeping the face down with it looking at the bottom of the pool (if you are in one) is helpful. This tends to keep your butt and legs up a bit, which I think can be the hardest thing to do. Making sure that your elbows are relatively high as they come out of the water is helpful, too. And, of course, making sure that you have a suit that is not compromising your ability to be streamlined is important, too.
+1 for keeping the face down. It clicked for me in the pool yesterday and i went from head-forward-lift-up to breathe (therefore slowly everything else down) to head-down-rotate-head to breathe. It works a treat. Mentally it's hard because you feel like you're getting further under the water (and how's that supposed to help my breathing!) but in reality the neck was relaxing and in that position i had a longer and cleaner (less splash entering my mouth) chance to take a decent breathe.
It certainly made me feel a lot more comfortable for a continuous stroke...
Lewis.