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mastered balance, it's time to start "Swimming Taller."

Chapter 6
    How to Swim Taller: Regardless of Your Height
    As with balance, "swimming taller" is neither natural nor instinctive; in coaching thousands of triathletes, I've seen only a few who swam taller without having been taught. But, as with the other Fishlike skills, knowing how to lengthen your "vessel" in the water can be learned by anyone, given the right kind of practice.
    The most significant advantage to swimming taller is that the extra length makes your body more slippery. According to Froude's Law, as you increase the length of a vessel at the waterline, wave drag decreases and energy cost goes down. And though it may be a stretch to compare a 60-foot steel hull making 20 knots in open seas to a six-foot triathlete trying to make one meter/second in Kona Cove (and whose "vessel" is continually shape-morphing with each stroke), there is no doubt swimmers can benefit greatly from trying to be more "Froude worthy."
    The payoff is clear. If you watched the finals of the 100-meter freestyle at the 2000 Olympics, you might have noticed something striking about the finalists: They look like they would make a pretty decent basketball team. In fact, the fastest men averaged about 6'5" while the fastest women were 5'10" or taller.
    Common sense suggests several advantages of being taller: Longer arms to win close touch-outs. Long legs to turn a bit farther from the wall. Incremental advantages like those would help in a close race, but the more critical reason is that the maximum speed of a human swimmer is approximately one body length per second. All things being equal, this gives a 6'6" swimmer an advantage of approximately 10 yards over a 6'0" swimmer in a one-minute race. Thus, the price of admission to a final where everyone swims about two meters per second (48 to 49 seconds for 100 meters) is a body that's about two meters tall. And where do 6-footers find success? Generally, in events where the winning time might be only 1.7 to 1.8 meters per second, such as the 400- or 1500-meter freestyle.

    Most triathletes are not endowed with unusual height, nor can they expect another growth spurt, but luckily this is not really a handicap in triathlon - as it would be if you harbored a secret goal to swim the 100meter final in the next Olympics. The point is to do all you can to maximize the speed potential of the body you do have and to take back the advantage from taller rivals who haven't learned how to use their height to full advantage.
    Here's why this works: Drag increases exponentially as we go faster; thus it takes a HUGE increase in power to swim faster if nothing else changes. But it is in your power to change the equation: Keeping your bodyline as long as possible for as long as possible during each stroke cycle is among the simplest things you can do to reduce drag. And anything you do to reduce drag hugely reduces the power required to swim at any speed. The less power and energy it takes you to swim, say, 28 minutes for 1500 meters, the better you'll feel on the bike and run. Here's how you do it in freestyle:
    1. Hide your head and swim "downhill." First things first. Keep working on your primary balance cues until you feel a clear sense of a "weightless arm" before you actually start trying to swim taller. Remember, if you haven't mastered balance and learned to make the water support you, your arms will be so busy trying to keep you afloat that you won't be able to use them to lengthen your body.
    2. Lengthen your body with each stroke. As you swim, instead of thinking "Stroke...Stroke...Stroke," think "Reach...Reach.. .Reach" You'll still be stroking — the right arm strokes as the left arm reaches, and vice versa — but your focus will shift to the reaching arm, which has far more potential to increase speed and reduce drag. This will change the entire focus of your swimming, away from pushing water toward your feet (concentrating on what's