FORM Smart Swim Goggles capture a deep set of data on your swim and technique. With HeadCoach™, we turn that data into advanced metrics and personalized insights that help you improve how you swim.

One advanced HeadCoach™ metric is your Peak Head Roll, which measures how much you are turning your head when you take your breath.

You can find more information about HeadCoach™ and Peak Head Roll by going to our Introduction to HeadCoach™ blog. In this blog, we’ll take a deeper look at why Peak Head Roll matters, share tips on how to improve it, and explain how FORM goggles can support your progress.

What Is Peak Head Roll and Why It Is Important

Breathing is a necessary part of your swimming, but moving your head too much while you breathe can be a massive hindrance to your speed through the water. The less that your head moves to breathe, the better that you will be able to keep your body streamlined and minimize unnecessary movements while you swim. This will help you minimize the amount of drag you create when you’re breathing and help you swim straight down the pool.

FORM goggles can measure your Peak Head Roll in real-time by measuring the angle between when you are looking at the bottom of the pool and the highest point of your breath.

Breathing already increases your drag in the water, but turning your head too much will make a bad body position even worse. By improving your Peak Head Roll, you will minimize how much you slow down while you take your breath while keeping your stroke in a more consistent and natural rhythm.

The lower your Peak Head Roll angle is, the less drag that you will create during your breath which leads to easier and faster swimming. At FORM, we measure Peak Head Roll on a scale of 1-100 to help swimmers easily understand their benchmark and how much they can improve their Peak Head Roll.

General Coaching Tips

Any time you are trying to improve your technique, it is best to start on sets where you are swimming easily and with lots of rest so that you can stay fresh and focus on your technique.  Try a set of 6 x 25s with 20-30 seconds in between each one. A set like this will make it easy for you to focus on improving your Peak Head Roll without getting tired.

To improve your Peak Head Roll, try these breathing tips:

1. Look to the sides of the pool, not the ceiling, when you breathe.

2. Breathe with one goggle in/one goggle out of the water.

3. Breathe with your ear close to your shoulder.

Once you’re comfortable breathing with a lower Peak Head Roll swimming easily, you can start increasing the difficulty. It’s best to match the difficulty with what you’re prepping for:

• Getting ready for a Pool Race? Stay with single lengths, but go faster while keeping your breath low, with lots of rest in between each length.


• Prepping for a Triathlon or Open Water race? Try holding your Peak Head Roll for longer intervals, such as 100s and 200s, so that you can practice maintaining your technique for longer periods.


• General Technique Improvement? Taking less rest between your intervals will make the end of your sets harder, so you can practice holding good technique even when you’re tired.

Using FORM to Improve Your Peak Head Roll

You can use FORM goggles to help improve your Peak Head Roll in real-time by activating the Peak Head Roll Skill in your goggles. The Peak Head Roll Skill will give you immediate feedback about where your Peak Head Roll is when you’re breathing and guide you to improve it.

You can activate the Peak Head Roll Skill in a few ways:

You can keep track of your progress using the FORM App, where you can see your current Peak Head Roll score, the history of your score, as well as some additional Coaching info about how you can improve your Peak Head Roll.

Conclusion

By helping you refine your Peak Head Roll and overall technique, FORM goggles can accelerate your progress toward becoming a faster, more efficient swimmer.