4. Take Your Mark – Below Water

Video Transcription: So as far as the Take Your Mark position below water, as I said before, you’re gonna have 45 degrees of knee Bend. You’re going to be in a deep squat. Your bum should still be in the water even though you’re pulling up. A lot of times, some swimmers pull up so high that their bum gets way above the water. That isn’t great. Make sure that still part of their bum is in the water. The heels as I said before, should be below the bum, which this is a great still frame, where you can see visibly that her heels are below. 

One thing about the toes is, the toes have to be flexed against the wall, no matter if you’re using a Wedge or you’re just pushing them against the wall. One way to think about it is if your feet, like hers here, look horizontal, it’s gonna be harder to push. You still want the toes above the heels, so your flexing the foot like kind of like you’re going to stand up on your toes, but not have them super horizontal. So it’s a flat foot straight back. Her heels are a little bit too high. I would like her to push them down a bit more. So she’d bring the middle of her foot more towards the wall, which would help give her a little bit more leverage when she pushes off. 

We can see her push here. She slips on one of her legs and a lot of that is due to the fact of just where Her heels are pointing compared to her toes. When she’s originally on the wall, you can see very visibly here, this is how I want the heels to be. I want them to be below their toes and then as she continues and pulls up, you’ll see how the heels raise up too. And now she’s looking like she’s trying to push down, but there’s nothing that is going to help her push down here. The only only contact she has right there is between the toes and the wall.