Swimming from your Hips

Swimming from your hips is critical in being a long distance freestyle swimmer. It's a point that Nort Thornton (my college coach at UC Berkeley) really hammers home to his athletes. You really should be spending about 2/3 of the time on your side in freestyle with the other 1/3 being utilized to rotate from side to side. A very easy way to think about the "body roll" would be to do all of your freestyle kick sets on your side. You can do the 12 kicks per side drill or the 6 kicks per side drill - both work well. All power in freestyle is generated from the hips - it's no different than the quarterback, the pitcher, the golfer, or the tennis player. When you watch Tiger Woods tee off in golf, look at his tremendous roll/range of motion of his torso. He is not rigid, but rather rotates his body from the top of his swing all the way through to the end. Swimming freestyle is no different.