What it is
The three elements of a good streamline (SL): lock your thumb, squeeze your ears, and look down. All feedback on streamline focuses exclusively on these three cues.
Essentials
- "Lock your thumb" — stack the hands and wrap the top hand's thumb around the bottom hand's palm. Tight, strong, locked hand on top of hand.
- "Squeeze your ears" — target word is ears; goal is just behind the ears.
- "Look down" — head aims at the floor during most streamlines.
- Backstroke SL: the cue flips to "Look up."
- SL = streamline (shorthand used throughout instruction).
- Focus all feedback on the 3 things; do not dilute with additional cues.
Progression
- Establish the hand lock and ear squeeze on land (standing, laying) and in the water (floating).
- Add "Look down" once the first two elements are stable.
- For the ear-squeeze cue specifically: start with "squeeze your ears with your elbows" (relatable target for younger swimmers), then as mastery grows shift to "squeeze the back of the head with your elbows."
What goes wrong
- Forgetting to streamline at all: The swimmer pushes off the wall without a streamline. Correction: build the habit so that pushing off without one feels "weird."
- Looking forward / incorrect body position: Swimmers want to see where they're going, so they lift the head. Correction: cue "Be Pinocchio and drag your long lying nose on the ground." Place mirrors on the bottom of the pool so swimmers can see themselves aiming the face down.
- Loose or unlocked thumb: If the thumb isn't locked, the rest of the streamline position becomes harder to hold. Correction: press into the thumb to make the ear squeeze easier; ensure a tight, strong, locked hand on top of hand.
How you know it worked
The swimmer feels "weird" when they push off the wall without a good streamline. Streamlining well has become an ingrained, automatic habit.
How you teach it
An excellent streamline is a habit; over-emphasize building it. Repeat the 3 things over and over and over. Speak in "streamlines": "Do a streamline first, then do 3 free." Practice on land (standing, laying) and in the water (floating). Help swimmers by physically squeezing their elbows together. Comfort in SL comes with a LOT of practice — do not rush it.
The feedback strategy is narrow: every correction maps back to one of the three elements. For the thumb, the mechanical reason it matters is that locking the thumb makes the ear squeeze easier, and if the thumb is locked the rest of the streamline position becomes easier. For the ear squeeze, the elbow reference is a scaffold for younger swimmers who think in relatable, familiar body parts; the actual target is just behind the ears, and the cue language graduates as the swimmer matures. For "look down," the underlying issue is that swimmers lift their heads because they want to see where they're going; the Pinocchio cue and pool-bottom mirrors both redirect the gaze downward without adding a new element to the three.
In lesson integration, "3 × Streamline w/ all 3 things" is a standard opening activity (use a lane if possible; otherwise a space of about 5 yards/meters). It appears as Activity 1 in Level 3 Day 1 plans and recurs throughout the curriculum as a warm-up or reset between stroke work. The shorthand SL shows up constantly in set notation (e.g., "3 × SL + 2 × (3 FR + 18 K)"), so swimmers should be fluent in the abbreviation by the time they encounter it in a set.