In this blog we examine the importance of balance in the water and demonstrate how the head is often responsible for a chain reaction of issues with the stroke.

Here you can see initially that the swimmer's arm is too straight on the overarm cycle.

Generally, especially in pool swimming, the arm should bend at the elbow, the classic 90 degree angle is a good aiming point, a bent elbow is far more efficient in terms of stroke efficiency, staying relaxed and balance of the body in the water.

However, this alone is not the biggest problem and certainly in open water swimming latest techniques promote a straighter arm to help with getting through waves.

When the swimmer exits the right arm however, and breathes to the right, the head is over extending on the breath.

If you look closely you can see the swimmer's eyeline is looking to the roof. The head is also tilting upwards, see the small wave in front of the swimmer's head?

This results in a loss of balance, which in turn causes the legs to over compensate, splitting them apart and causing them to kick incorrectly, dragging in the water rather than propelling the swimmer.

In addition the left arm drops too far down and goes under the body instead of out to the side and the arm is too straight, resulting in further loss of balance and loss of power on the pull.

Whilst there are other factors to consider such as shoulder strength and flexibility, much of the chain reaction in many areas of the stroke are caused by loss of balance, which is caused by incorrect head positioning and thus body rotation during breathing.

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The head is probably the most important element of your swim stroke - basically the body will follow whatever the head does: over turn the head during the breathing, you will over rotate the body; keep the head up too high, you will lower the legs.

Tim is a newcomer to the sea swimming scene and - hats off - has done the LCW weekend half distance swim and embarked on his training for the full distance swim next year!

On this assessment session we saw how his legs are clearly causing excessive drag in the water, which is mostly caused by his head position in the stroke.

Tim was sighting quite frequently, not necessarily a bad thing in open water, but sighting is a whole technique in its own right, and this frequent sighting had the effect of keeping the head raised too high, which in turn lowered his legs.

Upper body / back flexibility and strength training is required to counter act the effect of raising the head, something that water polo players train for years to achieve.

The effect in most cases will be that the legs are spread as well to sub consciously stop them from sinking.

The effect of the lowered leg angle and spread leags and knees is a drastic increase in resistance moving through the water on areas like the thighs, knees, calves and heels.

It's important to keep your legs together, straighten the legs but keep the knees flexible on the kick, kick from the hip and keep the legs raised so the heels just break the surface of the water.