Here are two reasons to focus on relaxing your neck in water.

Firstly, if you have any kind of fear, the first thing you’ll do, before and in the movement, is tighten your neck. When working on floating face down, if you doubt whether you can float or you’re thinking about trying not to sink (letting yourself sink is a good approach), you’ll tighten your neck and this will affect your breathing, balance, buoyancy and ability to think. It will stop you enjoying the moment. We can’t really float without a free neck.  

If you’re more advanced or confident in your swimming, you still need to think about your neck if you want things to go well. Any kind of agenda…. I want to get the stroke right/ I want to swim faster/ this bloke is catching up with me and I want to get away.. will cause your neck to stiffen and your freedom in the water will be gone.

So the first reason is prevention, from messing things up for ourselves.

The second reason is that the water offers a unique opportunity to free your neck. It’s an opportunity that we often miss, or throw away.

You can relax your neck in water like nowhere else.  If you float face down and submit to the support of the water, it will take the weight of your head, allowing it to release out of your back. It’s a chance to let go of tension in the neck so that your head is free at the top of the spine and your back can open so that you can breathe. If your neck is free, a friend should be able to move your head gently from side to side without resistance.

The less we do in water, the more simple we keep things, the easier it is to keep our neck relaxed.

Floating vertically and enjoying the buoyancy of the head is another golden opportunity. In shallow water, keep looking straight ahead and drop as if you want to sit on the floor, in deeper water, drop as if you want to stand on the floor. The sense of the head being buoyed up under, maybe popping out of, the surface as the weight drops down through your pelvis, is worth getting in for.

Floating, especially with the face underwater, is underrated. Swimming for exercise, with exercise considered the most important outcome, is overrated. Float about and relax your neck. 

If lanes are too busy, get out. Find your own space. Swim your own swim. But my tip is, try seeing swimming as floating on the move, neck free, limbs dangling, letting air out without forcing it, looking at the fish. Can I get out of the pool with my neck freer than when I got in?