The swim snorkel has become one of the more popular items in swim bags across the country in recent years. It’s design, pioneered by swim ge...
The swim snorkel has become one of the more popular items in swim bags across the country in recent years. It’s design, pioneered by swim gear company FINIS and patented back in 1994, has become the ubiquitous with competitive swimmers during practice and in swim meet warm ups.
The use of the swim snorkel can help swimmers become faster and more efficient in a multitude of ways. From encouraging better head and hip position, to helping you develop a more even stroking motion the swim snorkel can help you no matter how ambitious your goals in the pool are.
Here are 3 benefits of training with a swimming snorkel the next time you hit the water for a swim practice.
1. It will help you even out your pull. Swimmers are like all athletes in that they are dominant on one side of their body. But unlike some of their athletic counterparts, swimmers need to be able to recruit equal amounts of power and velocity from both the left and right side of their bodies. Problems arise when swimmers favor their dominant side in the pool, the most notable and frequent of which is the dreaded swimmer’s shoulder. By using a swim snorkel you don’t have to worry about picking a side to breath to—you put your head down and can focus on swimming with equal power and with equal technique on both sides of your stroke.
2. It promotes much better head position. For most swimmers the tendency to pick up their eyes when they are swimming is almost impossible to correct. This technical “fault” has instinctive origins—there is a wall coming, or other swimmers to dodge, and so we pick our eyes up in order to preserve our own safety. Totally understandable. But when we do this, we end up bull-dozing through the water, putting our head out of alignment with our spin, and creating far more resistance in the water than necessary. Using a snorkel, while it won’t completely override the natural instinct to look ahead of ourselves, will help you swim face down more often.
3. Your hips will be better aligned. With better head position, something else even more powerful happens—your hips naturally rise to the surface of the water. When you see elite-level swimmers cruising along in the water what is the one thing you most notice beyond the effortless speed? That their backside is nearly out of the water. By having a slimmer, more narrow profile in the water they avoid excess drag. This high hip placement is one of the most effective things you can (and one of the quickest, too!) in order to become a faster swimmer. After all, we spend so much time thinking about how to get stronger and doing more yardage when we should be focused on being more efficient. When you can swim faster with the same amount of effort you will be stunned at how quickly you can improve. Using a swimmer’s snorkel, and having those high hips in the water, will teach you how to have that high body position in the water.
