2.2. How to glide correctly?

When gliding, you should try to keep these 3 points as close to the surface as possible:
1. Shoulders, 2. Hips, 3. Heels.
“Keeping the upper half of the body up is usually not a problem, because in the chest we have lungs and air makes us buoyant. The lower half is worse; legs usually sink down for everyone, especially if the muscles are relaxed.” In general, fat and air float, bones and muscles sink. That’s why kids, women, and chubbier types of swimmers usually don’t struggle with position, while more muscular and lean types sink like anchors.
In training, we need to learn to engage the whole trunk and legs and shift the body’s center of gravity to the sternum, as if we wanted to flip our shoulders lower and get the back of the thighs up.
Sounds simple? Well, it’s a bit more complicated, because if we engage all the muscles we find in our back, glutes, and thighs, water punishes us by pulling us down.
Why? A tightened muscle pulls you downward. So the goal isn’t to tense everything. The goal is to engage only the deep muscles that are actually needed. Every extra engaged muscle also pulls you down.
A not-so-technical but helpful tip for gliding (we got it from instructors at FTVS) is: the whole body must be maximally firm, but relaxed.
To improve our body position, it’s enough to include a few gliding drills into each practice. Let’s go over a few of them now.
If You Haven’t Learned Freestyle Yet: Start practicing gliding in place, while stationary in water. Great drills include:

• Star on the belly, where you try to keep your toes from sinking—press your heels toward the surface instead.
• Egg on the surface transitioning into a star—this is a bit harder because you need more effort to get into the star position and be more aware of your surroundings.
• Or maybe a star on the back, where you need to compose your body very slowly, because every sudden movement will sink you and water will get into your nose—here, press your toes toward the ceiling instead.

The next step is practicing gliding with a push-off from the wall. The goal is for your toes not to drop right after the push-off. Try to keep them at the surface as long as possible. To reach proper body alignment, you must set your body correctly during push-off.
You’ll see this in the videos from the practical section, but generally:
When pushing off the wall we always have:
Arms together, one hand ready against the wall
Take a deep breath, tuck the head down (this is key), Then push off from the wall, and keep the air in your lungs. So again: arms together, deep breath and tuck the head under the arms, push off, hold the breath, and push your heels up to the ceiling.

Another great drill: A more advanced way to practice gliding is to stop mid-stroke during freestyle and hold the glide at any point. You might not picture that clearly now, but I use it often in training and get great results with it.

• You can, for example, pause on your side after every third or fifth stroke—you can also incorporate a breath for a challenge or any kind of tool. Fins and a snorkel generally help and make it easier, while a kickboard will rather increase instability.
• For an easier version, you can pause after a few strokes purely in a gliding position, as if you pushed off the wall.
• Or for a harder version, you can stop with your arm pointing toward the ceiling, which causes your body to sink significantly—this is already for more advanced freestylers.

Spend 10 minutes of every training session on gliding, and I guarantee you’ll soon swim faster and with less effort than if you spent those 10 minutes on heavy training.
It’s the best cost-performance ratio out there.