Work Your Weaknesses

Need I say more? Some thoughts that I am contemplating prior to my 4k swim atthe World Champs:

Positioning
You need to have your body in the best possible position to both minimize drag and increase the potential muscle power available. Get your body straight and long, parallel to the water surface, as you swim.
Check what you see. You should be looking down at the bottom, sideways or almost up to the side as you breath, but never forward. If you look forward, your legs will tend to drop towards the bottom, and you will lose your parallel alignment with the water.
The top of your head always points towards your destination.
Imagine that you are swimming in a long tube. Keep yourself within that tube as you move forward. It may require a gentle kick, it may require looking a little more backwards than down, but practice your positioning.
Grabbing
You must grab or catch the water so you have a way to transfer your muscle power from your body to the water.
You need to put your hand and arm in a position that allows this to happen. Trying to grab the water with just your hand and you will be losing a lot of your grip.
Try to use your hand and forearm.
Imagine that you are reaching forward and down over a wall as you swim, with the edge of the wall at your elbow. Point your fingertips towards the bottom of the pool, point your elbow up towards the sky or out towards the side, and think of everything from the elbow joint down your forearm and through your fingertips as one large paddle.
Pressing
You must press on the water with the largest muscles available. For most swimmers that means the muscles in your chest and back, not in your arms or shoulders.
You should feel a pocket develop in your armpit as you apply force to the water.
As you press on the water, your back and chest muscles pull your arm from ahead of you to under and behind your chest (but do all you can to maintain the fingertip down, elbow up "grab" position).
Imagine yourself grabbing the water first, then pressing on the water. Feel your body surge forward over your arm as you press......... never felt this myself!!!
Rotating
To fully use your position, your grab, and your press, you must add body rotation.
Your body should rotate about an axis defined by a line from the top of your head through your neck, back, and legs.
When the arm is grabbing, the body body is rotated so that the grabbing arm side is under water and the opposite side is above the water - or at least closer to the water's surface than the grabbing side. The body rotates as one unit, from shoulders through hips, with the hips and shoulders in line with each other (this means you need to use your core muscles to hold it all together).
After you have grabbed the water you are going to press on the water. As you press, you also rotate your body, moving the body slightly ahead of the press. moving the body so that the side that was lower is moving up towards the surface and the side that was up is moving lower (and that moving lower side's arm is moving into the water ahead of you, sliding forward and extending, but not moving into the grab or catch yet). Imagine a string going from your hip to your palm. Move the hip to start the press by pulling on that string when the hip begins to rotate from a deeper to a shallower position.

I know all the theory.................putting it into practice is another thing altogether!