FORM Smart Swim Goggles collect an immense amount of data about your swimming and your technique. With HeadCoach™, we leverage this data to bring you advanced metrics and unique insights about how you can improve your swimming technique.

One advanced HeadCoach™ metric is your Head Pitch, which measures how much you are looking up, or down, in the water while you swim.

You can find more information about HeadCoach™ and Head Pitch by going to our Introduction to HeadCoach™ blog. In this blog, we will be going into more detail about why Head Pitch is important, tips on how to improve your Head Pitch, and how FORM goggles can help enhance your improvement.

What Is Head Pitch and Why Is It Important

In swimming, your head will determine where your body goes in the water. Ideally, your Head Pitch stays neutral, with your eyes looking along the bottom of the pool about 1-2 metres ahead of you. This will keep your body flat on the water and minimize drag so that all of the power you create will go towards swimming fast straight down the pool.

FORM goggles can measure your Head Pitch in real-time by measuring the angle between your goggles and the bottom of the pool.

Head Pitch is too high

When your Head Pitch is too high, your hips and feet will drop down in the water, which will create a lot of drag and slow you down. By correcting your Head Pitch, your heels, hips and head can stay flat on the surface, which will improve your technique to swim faster and easier.

Head Pitch is too low

However, if your Head Pitch is too low, your head and shoulders will sink into the water, which also creates a tremendous amount of drag. Bringing the Head Pitch up to be in line with the body will help keep the body flat on the surface of the water.

In essence, a swimmer has to find the sweet spot where their Head Pitch is neutral and relaxed.  Based on the results of thousands of swimmers swimming millions of metres, our fastest and most efficient swimmers keep their Head Pitch between 30-37 degrees, while we consider swimmers that stay between 20 and 45 degrees to have Expert-level Head Pitch.

At FORM, we measure Head Pitch on a scale of 1-100 to help swimmers easily understand their benchmark and how much they can improve their Head Pitch.

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 Head Pitch without getting tired.

To improve your Head Pitch specifically, try these tips:

1. Look 1-2 metres ahead along the bottom of the pool.


2. Keep your head still.


3. Maintain a 'proud' posture.


4. Try a snorkel (removing the breath to help focus on Head Pitch specifically).


5. Be your best at the END of each length.

Once you’re comfortable holding your Head Pitch when 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 holding your Head Pitch with lots of rest in between.


• Prepping for a Triathlon or Open Water race? Try holding your Head Pitch 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 Head Pitch

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

You can activate the Head Pitch Skill in a few ways:

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

Conclusion

FORM goggles will help you improve your Head Pitch, and your technique overall much quicker so that you can be on your way to becoming a better, faster swimmer.