I often get asked by swimmers if they should be rotating while swimming which the answer is yes you should. You should be rotating the upper body and hips to 45-60 degrees on every stroke, not just the breathing stroke.
Many swimmers new to swimming tend to swim a bit too flat which makes it difficult to recover the arm above the water. By adding the correct amount of body rotation into their swimming the arm recovery above the water will be a lot easier and it will also help reduce drag as lying flat in the water is like a barge moving through the water.
Some drills to assist you to focus on your rotation are 6/1/6, 6/3/6, 6/5/6, corpse drill and the corkscrew drill.
Note: you can end up rotating too much. Back in the early 90's they experimented with rotating the body to 90 degrees but this ended up causing other issues. So stick with the 45-60 degrees shown in the below picture.
You don't want to end up rotating too much though as back in the early 90's they experimented with going to 90degrees but this ended up causing other issues. So stick with the 45-60degrees noted in the below picture. e. .
Super great tips there Russel.😀