What is freestyle swimming?
The term ‘freestyle stroke’ is sometimes used as a synonym for ‘front crawl’. Freestyle is the fastest swimming stroke. It is now the most common stroke used in freestyle competitions. Freestyle can train multiple muscles and is a very good cardio exercise. Yes, better than running actually 😉
Step 1: Gliding
First step, you need to learn how to glide as it’s the basic of all styles. Put your head in the water, then jump forward. Keep your head down while you glide. The most important thing is learning how to relax while you are at it.
Step 2: Kicking
After you are gliding, you start to kick. How you do the freestyle kick is essential to prevent you from sinking and to keep the balance. So how do we do the kick ? You kick from hips and thighs. The most common mistake beginners do is bending the knees to kick. You will find this is not only inefficient but also wastes a lot of your energy. Repeat after me “kick from the hips and thighs”. The rest of the joints move while you kick. For example, the knees and ankles. Lastly, you make sure your toes are not pointing to the floor while you kick because when your toes point down to the floor, it will drag you back the in reverse direction.
Step 3: Stroking
We start to do the strokes after we glide and kick. Let’s break it down to two parts of each stroke. Push and Recovery.
(i) Push – My recommendation is that you start with the straight arms because it’s easy to control the direction. You can start the left or right arm whichever you are used to. The key here is to make sure that the point where you start to stroke and the point where you end the push should be a straight line. The straight line ensures your push is efficient and your direction is forward.
(ii) Recovery – After you push back, you finish your push under the water. We then do the recovery, moving your armpit forward to the front and the rest of the arm goes along. Easy, right?
Step 4: Change Breathe
For beginners, here is the sequence that you should remember:
Breath out – turn the head – stroke – breath in – turn the head back.
No matter which side you change the breath. You want to make sure that you exhale enough air out so that you can inhale. So before you turn your head, you exhale the air. Turning your head first then you move your arm. This gives you a wider window to inhale. Be conscious that you open your mouth while your mouth and nose are out of the water. That is, observe where the water level is so that you know when to open the mouth. Many people just open their mouths by feeling. It’s so easy to let the water in the mouths. After you inhale enough air, you close your mouth and turn your head back.
Step 5: Put Everything Together
Let’s put everything together and coordinate. You glide first and start to kick once you feel yourself floating. You can start to do the stroke after a few seconds you kick. Don’t stroke like a treadmill. After you stoke one arm, you wait a few seconds while you keep kicking. You do another stroke after you wait a few seconds because you want to balance your body first to do the next stroke. It’s also important for the beginners to change their breaths. Change your breath every two strokes.
There you go, your guide to freestyle swimming is done.
Be patient if you learn the freestyle from scratch. Enjoy swimming!
Contributor:
Vic Chen (Certified Personal Swimming Coach with 10 years of coaching experience)
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