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An exercise that I enjoy doing is swimming - I currently swim 1km twice a week. Since young, I've used breaststroke pretty much all the time. I can swim 1km in about 28 mins using breaststroke and can sustain this speed effortlessly for long distances. I did 3km once due to a challenge (still kept the 28 min per 1km pace) and I felt I could at least go for 7-8km before I'll start feeling tired.
Recently, I have an interest in swimming faster and this brings the freestyle stroke to my attention. However, it's a dismal stroke for me. For instance, my first attempt at the stroke landed me a poor 30 mins for 1km, which is of course very bad since freestyle is supposed to be faster. Furthermore, I expanded much much more energy.
I've made some technical improvements, but the best I can do is still around 28 mins per 1km and I've used so much more energy compared to breaststroke (so in terms of efficiency, it's non-sensical). The problem is I feel that I'm tiring and hence I'm forced to conserve energy and slow down. I've done more experimentation and tried swimming freestyle once every 4 laps (200m) and did the 20 laps in something like 27.5 mins (hence, the freestyle shaves about 5 sec per lap). The problem is that I'm pretty much drained of energy whenever I do the freestyle lap. However, on the plus side, my freestyle top-speed is faster than my breatstroke top-speed.
Hence, any tips from freestyle swimmers? Is it just the case that my "freestyle muscles" are not built yet, so maybe I just need to keep persevering for a year and it'll naturally get stronger and I won't tire as fast? My technique? Or is it in the kicking? Or breathing - I breathe every 2 cycles or 4 strokes, but I think that leaves me too breathless. Maybe I should do 1.5 cycles but I have a preferred breathing side though...
Is this something you can learn on your own? Perhaps I need a swimming coach? Anyone with similar experiences? I've watched people swimming freestyle and it seems that I'm doing it right but of course I can't tell...
My goal is to do the 1km in freestyle in 25 mins in about a years time.
 
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Hong Kong9152 Posts
Sounds like you are sprinting too hard and tiring yourself out, especially because you are trying to go very long distances with the stroke. Freestyle, in comparison to breaststroke, is indeed faster, but is fundamentally less efficient in the long run. Breathing every 4 strokes is a bit often, that might be part of why you are tiring out; build up your lung capacity.
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breasstroke is the besst stroke!
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I've always naturally been terrible at Breaststroke and very good at Freestyle, so I'll try to give you some tips.
The first thing I'll say is that you should breath on an odd number of strokes. You should probably be doing every 5 or 7 once you're comfy with freestyle, but every 3 is a good starting point if you're just trying to work on your form. The reason for this is that you want to alternate the side that you breath on because breathing strokes tend to alter your stroke and by alternating the side that they come on, you'll start to notice the hitches that you put into your stroke in order to get breaths. What you should really be aiming for with your breaths is to be turning your head to the side and very slightly backward, rather than pulling your head up so that you're minimizing the effect that breathing has on staying streamlined.
Also, if you're running out of breath every 4 strokes and getting winded, I'd guess you're not breathing out enough when your head is under water. Essentially, pay attention to each breath and make sure that you're blowing out bubbles with your head under the water and then just drawing in breath when you raise your head. I'm in pretty terrible shape these days, but just by being disciplined with my breaths I can keep up 1 breath/5 strokes without difficulty.
Are you doing flip turns? Wearing goggles? I find that flip turns will wind you pretty badly until you're in good shape for them and if you're not using goggles, you'll tend to pull your head higher than you need to for breaths.
Make sure you keep your knees more or less locked and your toes pointed outward in freestyle too. A lot of poor freestyle swimmers will be bending their knees and not keeping their toes pointed, but what you should be aiming to do is keep your legs mostly straight and get almost all the motion and power from moving your leg-hip joints.
For your arms, try to pull them out of the water by bending your elbow and dragging your hand past your face and out of the water. Some people will be doing windwill motions with their arms in free style, but really you should be doing sleek motions when you bend elow, pull hand past your face and out of the water, extend and glide smoothly into the water, pull water behind you right underneath your torso, repeat.
I can't know exactly what's wrong with your stroke without seeing it, but those are some general tips that should help you work on it. Good luck!
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Awesome tips! The first thing I'm going to work on is breathing every 3 strokes and then evaluate the results from there!
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I was a high level competitive swimmer for about 6 years and taught for 2, and you cant really give advice until I see your actual stroke.
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
The other common issue is elbow positioning and length of stroke, make sure you are pulling water all the way down to your hips before you lift your arm out of the water. Also when lifting out of the water your elbow should always stay above your hand.
If you want real help though, see if you can record a little video clip of you swimming, it should be easy for me or anyone with a bit of expertise to take a quick look and get you on track.
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The main difference is between breaststroke and freestyle is the timing. while Breaststroke is a lot more ''jerky'' freestyle is a lot smoother and the longer you are the faster you go and the less energy you use. For example turning your shoulders when reaching on your forward stroke to increase pull back makes you expend a lot less energy, moreover pulling your arms back in an S shape like when doing butterfly also increase efficiency. But like the poster above me said without a video we can't really give you advice without a video.
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I miss swimming, swam competitvely for about 5 years nonstop, but we're gonna need to see a video if you want help.
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I'm with sob3k. It's hard to say without seeing you swim, but it's got to be almost entirely a technique problem.
Try seriously exaggerating the length of your strokes. Stretch your arm out all the way in front of you every stroke. As long as you're not overly concerned about speed, it's fine to let yourself glide through the water. Every time you pull an arm through the water, stretch your other arm out in front of you. Take your time bringing your arm back over the water. Roll side to side, so that you're slightly on your side when you're stretching your arm in front of you. This should help you get the feel for the stroke. Once you get it down, you can worry about speed/pacing, but rhythm is the key when you're starting out.
Some pools will have buoys you can place between your legs to help with buoyance. This will let you work on the stroke without having to focus on what your legs are doing. Freestyle is much more about the upper body then breaststroke.
I also reccomend breathing on odd number strokes (3/5/7) to help with rhythm, but it's really not that big of a deal.
If you swim around people who know what they're doing, ask someone for a little help. If you're just starting, even a little nudge in the right direction can make a huge difference. You'll be impressed by your learning curve. If you're in decent shape and comfortable in the water, a 25 min 1k is VERY doable. You'll likely want to reevaluate your goal as you progress.
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On April 06 2012 03:19 sob3k wrote:
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
As a ex-semi pro swimmer (qualified for European Junior Championships in 2006 and won countless u-18 nationals [not showing off here]) I can fully agree with this post. You shouldn't worry too much about your breathing frequency, I find it actually helps you to keep a rythm of sorts while you are swimming. The biggest problem in freestyle for amateurs is the fact that they cant keep their body streamlined and parallel to the surface of the water. You should also pay attention to your swimming depth, you should be as close to the surface as possible. Have you watched any instructional videos online? Some of those are pretty good. Be careful not to get into the too advanced stuff tho, it usually isnt worth your time to try to learn some trick pro swimmers use to shave a 0.1 s of their personal best  .
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Man, I'm a bit in the same boat (haha!). I've been swimming a lot lately (for me[up to 2 miles]), and I'm so slow! I'm stuck in a 25 yard pool, but it's the best I can get around here. I've been training for triathlons and I think I'm going to have to break down and get some lessons, or even a coach.
I consider myself a pretty good swimmer, but in order to start winning my age group, I'm going to need to be better than good.
I'm almost sick of swimming at this point. I'm a runner, and if I want to run faster, I just exert a bit more effort. If I want to swim faster, I have to work on my macro (sc reference). Nobody wants to hear they have to "macro better." Grr.
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On April 06 2012 04:49 rkarhu wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 03:19 sob3k wrote:
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
As a ex-semi pro swimmer (qualified for European Junior Championships in 2006 and won countless u-18 nationals [not showing off here]) I can fully agree with this post. You shouldn't worry too much about your breathing frequency, I find it actually helps you to keep a rythm of sorts while you are swimming. The biggest problem in freestyle for amateurs is the fact that they cant keep their body streamlined and parallel to the surface of the water. You should also pay attention to your swimming depth, you should be as close to the surface as possible. Have you watched any instructional videos online? Some of those are pretty good. Be careful not to get into the too advanced stuff tho, it usually isnt worth your time to try to learn some trick pro swimmers use to shave a 0.1 s of their personal best .
I hope I'm not hijacking this blog... but how do you keep your body near the surface? I have an extremely low body fat pct. and even with full lungs (not exhaling whatsoever), sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. My breathing is good I think. I've gotten to where I can keep 1 of my goggles under the water while breathing, but as soon as I go to take a breath, my body drops in the water so that I need my lead arm to start the stroke, even if I'm not ready, so that I don't sink.
Should I be kicking harder/more? I have a very relaxed kick as is. I know I'm stabbing in the dark here, but it'd be nice to at least draw some correlations and test some stuff.
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Hong Kong9152 Posts
On April 06 2012 05:06 danl9rm wrote:
Should I be kicking harder/more? I have a very relaxed kick as is. I know I'm stabbing in the dark here, but it'd be nice to at least draw some correlations and test some stuff.
Yes. With a very relaxed kick you are relying almost completely on your arms at that point for forward motion, and you will have little buoyancy.
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On April 06 2012 05:06 danl9rm wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 04:49 rkarhu wrote:On April 06 2012 03:19 sob3k wrote:
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
As a ex-semi pro swimmer (qualified for European Junior Championships in 2006 and won countless u-18 nationals [not showing off here]) I can fully agree with this post. You shouldn't worry too much about your breathing frequency, I find it actually helps you to keep a rythm of sorts while you are swimming. The biggest problem in freestyle for amateurs is the fact that they cant keep their body streamlined and parallel to the surface of the water. You should also pay attention to your swimming depth, you should be as close to the surface as possible. Have you watched any instructional videos online? Some of those are pretty good. Be careful not to get into the too advanced stuff tho, it usually isnt worth your time to try to learn some trick pro swimmers use to shave a 0.1 s of their personal best . I hope I'm not hijacking this blog... but how do you keep your body near the surface? I have an extremely low body fat pct. and even with full lungs (not exhaling whatsoever), sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. My breathing is good I think. I've gotten to where I can keep 1 of my goggles under the water while breathing, but as soon as I go to take a breath, my body drops in the water so that I need my lead arm to start the stroke, even if I'm not ready, so that I don't sink. Should I be kicking harder/more? I have a very relaxed kick as is. I know I'm stabbing in the dark here, but it'd be nice to at least draw some correlations and test some stuff.
Well first of all, no human will sink like a rock with a full lung of air. So you are doing something wrong. Your legs are the only part of your body that will naturally sink, and even they will be supported by the lungs. Don't pretend you cant stay up because of body fat, there are plenty of nationally ranked swimmers especially in youth divisions who look like wet monkeys. Its like saying you cant keep your money under 1k in SC because you are left handed, dumb excuse
Practice some floating drills first. You should get completely comfortable kicking with no arms floating on your back, and then move on to your side. These things can be tricky.
An issue many have is that your breath timing is wrong, which is actually one of the most basic swimming skills that becomes natural the more you swim. Inexperienced swimmers breath like they would outside the water, with a nice long inhale followed by an immediate nice long exhale. Air is constantly moving either in or out of the lungs. When swimming you have to adopt a different method, because you need to keep as much buoyancy as you can throughout the stroke. A swimming breath will be more like this: very quick inhale, hold air, very quick exhale, very quick inhale, hold...etc. The thing to remember is you want to minimize the time you are are moving air in and out of your lungs. So the actual exhale-inhale should be short and quick, followed by a long pause of holding the air.
Alternately you can also just work on the power of your kick and pull. If you can use one of these, put it between your knees and do some swimming with no legs at all and just pulling with your arms. Work the kick with a kickboard. with a sufficiently strong pull and kick, you can easily stay ontop of the water even with no air in your lungs at all an zero bouyancy.
Again, cant REALLY help without seeing you swim
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On April 06 2012 06:02 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 05:06 danl9rm wrote:On April 06 2012 04:49 rkarhu wrote:On April 06 2012 03:19 sob3k wrote:
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
As a ex-semi pro swimmer (qualified for European Junior Championships in 2006 and won countless u-18 nationals [not showing off here]) I can fully agree with this post. You shouldn't worry too much about your breathing frequency, I find it actually helps you to keep a rythm of sorts while you are swimming. The biggest problem in freestyle for amateurs is the fact that they cant keep their body streamlined and parallel to the surface of the water. You should also pay attention to your swimming depth, you should be as close to the surface as possible. Have you watched any instructional videos online? Some of those are pretty good. Be careful not to get into the too advanced stuff tho, it usually isnt worth your time to try to learn some trick pro swimmers use to shave a 0.1 s of their personal best . I hope I'm not hijacking this blog... but how do you keep your body near the surface? I have an extremely low body fat pct. and even with full lungs (not exhaling whatsoever), sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. My breathing is good I think. I've gotten to where I can keep 1 of my goggles under the water while breathing, but as soon as I go to take a breath, my body drops in the water so that I need my lead arm to start the stroke, even if I'm not ready, so that I don't sink. Should I be kicking harder/more? I have a very relaxed kick as is. I know I'm stabbing in the dark here, but it'd be nice to at least draw some correlations and test some stuff. Well first of all, no human will sink like a rock with a full lung of air. So you are doing something wrong. Your legs are the only part of your body that will naturally sink, and even they will be supported by the lungs. Don't pretend you cant stay up because of body fat, there are plenty of nationally ranked swimmers especially in youth divisions who look like wet monkeys. Its like saying you cant keep your money under 1k in SC because you are left handed, dumb excuse Practice some floating drills first. You should get completely comfortable kicking with no arms floating on your back, and then move on to your side. These things can be tricky. An issue many have is that your breath timing is wrong, which is actually one of the most basic swimming skills that becomes natural the more you swim. Inexperienced swimmers breath like they would outside the water, with a nice long inhale followed by an immediate nice long exhale. Air is constantly moving either in or out of the lungs. When swimming you have to adopt a different method, because you need to keep as much buoyancy as you can throughout the stroke. A swimming breath will be more like this: very quick inhale, hold air, very quick exhale, very quick inhale, hold...etc. The thing to remember is you want to minimize the time you are are moving air in and out of your lungs. So the actual exhale-inhale should be short and quick, followed by a long pause of holding the air. Alternately you can also just work on the power of your kick and pull. If you can use one of these, put it between your knees and do some swimming with no legs at all and just pulling with your arms. Work the kick with a kickboard. with a sufficiently strong pull and kick, you can easily stay ontop of the water even with no air in your lungs at all an zero bouyancy. Again, cant REALLY help without seeing you swim
When I was in peak condition for swimming, I would sink to the bottom with a full breath of air. So, it does happen. For example, the floating/kicking drills you describe would have been very difficult if not impossible, especially on my side. That being said, no one sinks "like a stone." As long as you can provide yourself with a little forward momentum, you should be fine.
There's a drill that I like for getting used to staying on top of the water. Start out fully streamlined, with both hands pointed out in front of you. Take a stroke with one arm, and bring it back to the top so that you hands meet before taking another stroke. Let your hands meet after every stroke. This will help with balance, teach you to control your core and rotation, and should help you get the feel of moving on top of the water.
I'm also a big believer in using aids like the pull buoy you linked when working on strokes. Kicking drills are generally less helpful, especially if you only intend to practice the kind of distances discussed in the OP (and only casually at that). Kicking doesn't provide a tremendous amount of propulsion in freestyle, and is a really inefficient use of energy for someone just trying to swim casually. You want to be sure that you kick is actually helping, but it's probably not worth devoting a ton of time to.
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On April 06 2012 06:26 Omnipresent wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 06:02 sob3k wrote:On April 06 2012 05:06 danl9rm wrote:On April 06 2012 04:49 rkarhu wrote:On April 06 2012 03:19 sob3k wrote:
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
As a ex-semi pro swimmer (qualified for European Junior Championships in 2006 and won countless u-18 nationals [not showing off here]) I can fully agree with this post. You shouldn't worry too much about your breathing frequency, I find it actually helps you to keep a rythm of sorts while you are swimming. The biggest problem in freestyle for amateurs is the fact that they cant keep their body streamlined and parallel to the surface of the water. You should also pay attention to your swimming depth, you should be as close to the surface as possible. Have you watched any instructional videos online? Some of those are pretty good. Be careful not to get into the too advanced stuff tho, it usually isnt worth your time to try to learn some trick pro swimmers use to shave a 0.1 s of their personal best . I hope I'm not hijacking this blog... but how do you keep your body near the surface? I have an extremely low body fat pct. and even with full lungs (not exhaling whatsoever), sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. My breathing is good I think. I've gotten to where I can keep 1 of my goggles under the water while breathing, but as soon as I go to take a breath, my body drops in the water so that I need my lead arm to start the stroke, even if I'm not ready, so that I don't sink. Should I be kicking harder/more? I have a very relaxed kick as is. I know I'm stabbing in the dark here, but it'd be nice to at least draw some correlations and test some stuff. Well first of all, no human will sink like a rock with a full lung of air. So you are doing something wrong. Your legs are the only part of your body that will naturally sink, and even they will be supported by the lungs. Don't pretend you cant stay up because of body fat, there are plenty of nationally ranked swimmers especially in youth divisions who look like wet monkeys. Its like saying you cant keep your money under 1k in SC because you are left handed, dumb excuse Practice some floating drills first. You should get completely comfortable kicking with no arms floating on your back, and then move on to your side. These things can be tricky. An issue many have is that your breath timing is wrong, which is actually one of the most basic swimming skills that becomes natural the more you swim. Inexperienced swimmers breath like they would outside the water, with a nice long inhale followed by an immediate nice long exhale. Air is constantly moving either in or out of the lungs. When swimming you have to adopt a different method, because you need to keep as much buoyancy as you can throughout the stroke. A swimming breath will be more like this: very quick inhale, hold air, very quick exhale, very quick inhale, hold...etc. The thing to remember is you want to minimize the time you are are moving air in and out of your lungs. So the actual exhale-inhale should be short and quick, followed by a long pause of holding the air. Alternately you can also just work on the power of your kick and pull. If you can use one of these, put it between your knees and do some swimming with no legs at all and just pulling with your arms. Work the kick with a kickboard. with a sufficiently strong pull and kick, you can easily stay ontop of the water even with no air in your lungs at all an zero bouyancy. Again, cant REALLY help without seeing you swim I'm also a big believer in using aids like the pull buoy you linked when working on strokes. Kicking drills are generally less helpful, especially if you only intend to practice the kind of distances discussed in the OP (and only casually at that). Kicking doesn't provide a tremendous amount of propulsion in freestyle, and is a really inefficient use of energy for someone just trying to swim casually. You want to be sure that you kick is actually helping, but it's probably not worth devoting a ton of time to.
uhh,what?
allow me to voice disagreement
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I used to swim competitively for quite a few years, and all throughout high school, and my favorite drill my coach made us do was what he called the T-20. It was essentially swim as far as you can for 20 minutes straight. I absolutely loved it because once you got in the rhythm you could just free your mind from the burden of thinking/worrying for 20 minutes while focusing on all the exertion you're putting out. I still remember my best record, since I was very proud of it. If I recall correctly I think I did 1350 yards (about 1235 meters) in the 20 minutes allotted. And this would usually be at the end of our practice sessions, so I would usually swim these after 2 hours of swimming beforehand. So your goal, OP, is very attainable.
On April 06 2012 06:26 Omnipresent wrote:
When I was in peak condition for swimming, I would sink to the bottom with a full breath of air. So, it does happen. For example, the floating/kicking drills you describe would have been very difficult if not impossible, especially on my side. That being said, no one sinks "like a stone." As long as you can provide yourself with a little forward momentum, you should be fine.
Uh, I don't think that's exactly true... I remember that when I would fool around with my friends in the pool before swim practice what we would do is fill our lungs with air, swim to the bottom, and in order to counteract the natural upward buoyancy of our bodies, we would release all of the pent up air at once in one giant bubble in order to be able to literally sit on the bottom of the pool. It was hilarious, we would sit cross-legged on the bottom in a circle and pretend we were playing cards or something. Must have been quite the sight from the outside. A picture would have made a real cool poster, 'mindfuck' image, or something similar.
Edit: Oh, and also OP I would disagree with the tips that tell you to breath every 5th or 7th stroke. IMO, those techniques at your level of swimming are only efficient in the 100-500 meter workouts. For someone more experienced in long distance swimming, sure, these techniques will help them shave some time off their previous best but I think doing it will only end up hurting someone of your experience. If you want to swim long-distance take a breath every 3rd stroke, since more oxygen to your muscles means you get less tired which means you can swim faster for longer.
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Yeah, as these people who are likely much, much better at swimming than I am have said (I swam year-round through most of middle school/high school, currently swim about 1.5k or so 3 days a week for exercise and coach summer league), it's almost definitely your technique, and it's really impossible to tell what's wrong with it without actually seeing you swim.
I can offer a few words, though. To start with, your body position is really important, and something that it's easy for new swimmers to disregard; when you're swimming freestyle, you always need to be looking down, not forward, and you need to keep your head as still as possible while you swim. As others have said, especially if you're new to the stroke, slow things down and try to just focus on catching and pulling the water.
Ironically, I'm absolutely horrible at breaststroke, which wears me out and seems to go nowhere. Perhaps you could offer me some tips?
If you're actually sinking every time you breathe, then you're almost definitely taking too long to breathe, breathing at the wrong time, and/or not continuing your stroke while breathing. Your breath needs to be fast, like sob3k said, and it really shouldn't slow down your pulling appreciably--your arms should never just stop moving while you breathe. I'd practice the breathing techniques sob3k mentions, and just work on maintaining your stroke rythym, body position, and form through your breath. Kicking helps, too, but I frankly never kick while swimming freestyle anymore (which is one of the reasons I wasn't a very successful swimmer ) and I never have flotation problems. If you have good body position and continuous pulling, you shouldn't have any trouble staying afloat.
Hope that helps!
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On April 06 2012 06:38 sob3k wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 06:26 Omnipresent wrote:On April 06 2012 06:02 sob3k wrote:On April 06 2012 05:06 danl9rm wrote:On April 06 2012 04:49 rkarhu wrote:On April 06 2012 03:19 sob3k wrote:
common issues are that you arent breathing properly, there should be no problem with breathing every 2 strokes (same side) as long as you do a bit of alternate side breathing to keep your stokes even for practice. The big thing that tires out poor freestylers is that they are lifting their head to breath instead of keeping their body strait and rolling from side to side. Your head should be locked in place at all times, and only rotating with your body.
As a ex-semi pro swimmer (qualified for European Junior Championships in 2006 and won countless u-18 nationals [not showing off here]) I can fully agree with this post. You shouldn't worry too much about your breathing frequency, I find it actually helps you to keep a rythm of sorts while you are swimming. The biggest problem in freestyle for amateurs is the fact that they cant keep their body streamlined and parallel to the surface of the water. You should also pay attention to your swimming depth, you should be as close to the surface as possible. Have you watched any instructional videos online? Some of those are pretty good. Be careful not to get into the too advanced stuff tho, it usually isnt worth your time to try to learn some trick pro swimmers use to shave a 0.1 s of their personal best . I hope I'm not hijacking this blog... but how do you keep your body near the surface? I have an extremely low body fat pct. and even with full lungs (not exhaling whatsoever), sink like a rock to the bottom of the pool. My breathing is good I think. I've gotten to where I can keep 1 of my goggles under the water while breathing, but as soon as I go to take a breath, my body drops in the water so that I need my lead arm to start the stroke, even if I'm not ready, so that I don't sink. Should I be kicking harder/more? I have a very relaxed kick as is. I know I'm stabbing in the dark here, but it'd be nice to at least draw some correlations and test some stuff. Well first of all, no human will sink like a rock with a full lung of air. So you are doing something wrong. Your legs are the only part of your body that will naturally sink, and even they will be supported by the lungs. Don't pretend you cant stay up because of body fat, there are plenty of nationally ranked swimmers especially in youth divisions who look like wet monkeys. Its like saying you cant keep your money under 1k in SC because you are left handed, dumb excuse Practice some floating drills first. You should get completely comfortable kicking with no arms floating on your back, and then move on to your side. These things can be tricky. An issue many have is that your breath timing is wrong, which is actually one of the most basic swimming skills that becomes natural the more you swim. Inexperienced swimmers breath like they would outside the water, with a nice long inhale followed by an immediate nice long exhale. Air is constantly moving either in or out of the lungs. When swimming you have to adopt a different method, because you need to keep as much buoyancy as you can throughout the stroke. A swimming breath will be more like this: very quick inhale, hold air, very quick exhale, very quick inhale, hold...etc. The thing to remember is you want to minimize the time you are are moving air in and out of your lungs. So the actual exhale-inhale should be short and quick, followed by a long pause of holding the air. Alternately you can also just work on the power of your kick and pull. If you can use one of these, put it between your knees and do some swimming with no legs at all and just pulling with your arms. Work the kick with a kickboard. with a sufficiently strong pull and kick, you can easily stay ontop of the water even with no air in your lungs at all an zero bouyancy. Again, cant REALLY help without seeing you swim I'm also a big believer in using aids like the pull buoy you linked when working on strokes. Kicking drills are generally less helpful, especially if you only intend to practice the kind of distances discussed in the OP (and only casually at that). Kicking doesn't provide a tremendous amount of propulsion in freestyle, and is a really inefficient use of energy for someone just trying to swim casually. You want to be sure that you kick is actually helping, but it's probably not worth devoting a ton of time to. uhh,what? allow me to voice disagreement
For someone swimming relativelty long distances at a casual level?
I'm not saying you shouldn't kick. You need enough to keep yourself buoyant, but the vast majority of your speed in freestyle comes from your rhythm and arm strength/motion. A good kick isn't going to get the OP from a 28 min 1k to a 20 min 1k. An improved stroke will.
Let me put it this way. If your pull isn't significantly faster than your kick, you're doing something wrong.
On April 06 2012 06:47 PolskaGora wrote:Show nested quote +On April 06 2012 06:26 Omnipresent wrote:
When I was in peak condition for swimming, I would sink to the bottom with a full breath of air. So, it does happen. For example, the floating/kicking drills you describe would have been very difficult if not impossible, especially on my side. That being said, no one sinks "like a stone." As long as you can provide yourself with a little forward momentum, you should be fine.
Uh, I don't think that's exactly true... I remember that when I would fool around with my friends in the pool before swim practice what we would do is fill our lungs with air, swim to the bottom, and in order to counteract the natural upward buoyancy of our bodies, we would release all of the pent up air at once in one giant bubble in order to be able to literally sit on the bottom of the pool. It was hilarious, we would sit cross-legged on the bottom in a circle and pretend we were playing cards or something. Must have been quite the sight from the outside. A picture would have made a real cool poster, 'mindfuck' image, or something similar.
I admit, sinking with a full breath of air is not exactly common. But I mean it; I would sink with completely full lungs. I would also sit on the bottom of the diving well, only I didn't have to swim down to get there. My bodyfat was pretty low, but the big factor was muscle mass and density.
It doesn't actually matter for anything we're talking about, as it's essentially a non-factor for improving freestyle. I only mentioned it because someone else asked and other discounted him outright.
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On April 06 2012 02:59 Mogwai wrote:
I've always naturally been terrible at Breaststroke and very good at Freestyle, so I'll try to give you some tips.
The first thing I'll say is that you should breath on an odd number of strokes. You should probably be doing every 5 or 7 once you're comfy with freestyle, but every 3 is a good starting point if you're just trying to work on your form. The reason for this is that you want to alternate the side that you breath on because breathing strokes tend to alter your stroke and by alternating the side that they come on, you'll start to notice the hitches that you put into your stroke in order to get breaths. What you should really be aiming for with your breaths is to be turning your head to the side and very slightly backward, rather than pulling your head up so that you're minimizing the effect that breathing has on staying streamlined.
Also, if you're running out of breath every 4 strokes and getting winded, I'd guess you're not breathing out enough when your head is under water. Essentially, pay attention to each breath and make sure that you're blowing out bubbles with your head under the water and then just drawing in breath when you raise your head. I'm in pretty terrible shape these days, but just by being disciplined with my breaths I can keep up 1 breath/5 strokes without difficulty.
Are you doing flip turns? Wearing goggles? I find that flip turns will wind you pretty badly until you're in good shape for them and if you're not using goggles, you'll tend to pull your head higher than you need to for breaths.
Make sure you keep your knees more or less locked and your toes pointed outward in freestyle too. A lot of poor freestyle swimmers will be bending their knees and not keeping their toes pointed, but what you should be aiming to do is keep your legs mostly straight and get almost all the motion and power from moving your leg-hip joints.
For your arms, try to pull them out of the water by bending your elbow and dragging your hand past your face and out of the water. Some people will be doing windwill motions with their arms in free style, but really you should be doing sleek motions when you bend elow, pull hand past your face and out of the water, extend and glide smoothly into the water, pull water behind you right underneath your torso, repeat.
I can't know exactly what's wrong with your stroke without seeing it, but those are some general tips that should help you work on it. Good luck!
As a guy who swam for about 4 years, this guy knows exactly what hes talking about. Especially the odd breathing.
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Wow, so many good tips!
I think I'm going to concentrate on the following steps in this order:
- Breathing: probably try odd cycles (i.e. 3) first.
- Body position: keep my body parallel. I've also seen people swimming with those buoyancy things between their legs, I may try that as well.
- I'll work on upper body strokes then kicking.
- I may take a couple of professional lessons to nail some basics down.
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I swam in high school,and was the EXACT same as you
I swam a 50m breast in ~39.5 seconds, which was enough to qualify for provincials, but my 50m freestyle was a ~37, more than 11 seconds above what you needed to make provincials
Just couldn't ever figure out the grove. Something about keeping your ass above the water that never really worked
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One thing I've noticed among fast sprinters (I actually first noticed when I raced Vladimir Morozov  that was embarrassing he owned me) is that kind of like a ship, if your body rotates left and right, and this motion is in harmony with your reaching as far as you can per stroke, you get a lot more out of it. It's kind of like cheating in arm wrestling.
Watch Michael Phelps, he does this amazingly ^_^
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I may take a couple of professional lessons to nail some basics down.
do that first.
iv been doing swim training for triathlons, the odd breathing is a good tip to keep your stroke even, but what i like to do is breath every stroke, but what i do is i switch the side i breath on every 25yrds. so ill breath to the right for 25yrds, then on the way back i breath to the left. you see a lot of pro sprinters do this, watch a michael phelps vid
the key to fast efficient swimming is using your core and body rotation. the reason why baseball pitchers "wind up" is they engage their core to be able to whip their arm to throw 90mph. same effect happens with swimming. you kick will be stronger and you will be able to pull harder.
a strong core also helps keep your legs up, i like to practice this with back stroke as i wont have to worry about breathing, but try and swim slowly and see how much you need to kick to keep your feet just below the water. have your hands above your head in a stream line or at your side. try not to use them for balance.
as for head position, you should be looking down and letting the water support your head, this helps me stay relaxed. when you want to breath turn your body and not your head.
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On April 06 2012 09:25 Azzur wrote:
Wow, so many good tips!
I think I'm going to concentrate on the following steps in this order:
- Breathing: probably try odd cycles (i.e. 3) first.
- Body position: keep my body parallel. I've also seen people swimming with those buoyancy things between their legs, I may try that as well.
- I'll work on upper body strokes then kicking.
- I may take a couple of professional lessons to nail some basics down.
This looks like a fine plan. You may be overemphasizing the breathing rotation, but it's such an easy thing to get down that you might as well do it first.
I just wanted to clarify about the body position real quick. You should be keeping your body's axis (the line from head to toe) roughly parallel to the water. The plane of your body should not be parallel at all times. This is a common mistake for beginners. Instead, you should be rolling slightly from side to side with each stroke in order to extend your reach, strengthen your pull, and reinforce rhythm.
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mogwai has it right on the money, but i will simply be reiterating/adding my own perspective.
the key to freestyle is in your core and how well you are able to rotate your upper body while simultaneously keeping your legs straight and constantly kicking. you want to rotate your waist in unison with the stroke of your arms. this allows you to maximize the amount of power you get from the arm underwater while also setting up the arm that is above the water for the best possible stroke.
you also want to make sure that your arms are not CRASHING into the water with each stroke. this actually forces you to expend more energy with your legs. you want to make sure your arms glide smoothly into the water and pull the water past you, moving you forward.
my last tip is to make sure you are kicking strong and you do so by using your buttocks to lift your legs as opposed to bending your knees to kick. this promotes good stabilization so that your upper body has the freedom to properly rotate and also gets you the most power and speed out of your kicks.
gl in the pool. once you master your form you will start to see some great changes in your stamina and cardiovascular. now if only i could learn how to properly do butterfly...
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Gonna have a brag coz I want to, I was fastest in Australia when I was 13 in 50m freestyle broke national records like a boss. Now I'm just putting on weight n smokin cigs.
Beside the point, if you can't see what youre doing wrong you won't know how to fix it. Either record yourself swimming and fix technique problems or get a coach.
Breast stroke is a lot less taxing on the body the freestyle. You can choose the intensity obviously for each, but in long distances freestyle will tire you faster. It's all about technique with freestyle and then you need to be fit enough to maintain it (long arms and regular kicking is tiring but good technique for example. $
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On April 06 2012 09:37 PleasureImWallace wrote:
I swam in high school,and was the EXACT same as you
I swam a 50m breast in ~39.5 seconds, which was enough to qualify for provincials, but my 50m freestyle was a ~37, more than 11 seconds above what you needed to make provincials
Just couldn't ever figure out the grove. Something about keeping your ass above the water that never really worked
Man, 37 seconds is ridiculously slow for 50m free. :D I think I was doing 27 seconds around the end of my swimming years but that was a long time ago so I can't remember any more precisely. I have always been astounded by the number of people I knew who were great at Breaststroke but couldn't swim anything else for the life of them. I swear it was some mental/comfort thing.
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On April 06 2012 09:25 Azzur wrote:
Wow, so many good tips!
I think I'm going to concentrate on the following steps in this order:
- Breathing: probably try odd cycles (i.e. 3) first.
- Body position: keep my body parallel. I've also seen people swimming with those buoyancy things between their legs, I may try that as well.
- I'll work on upper body strokes then kicking.
- I may take a couple of professional lessons to nail some basics down.
A) The hip floaters are awesome
B) Focus on kicking from the hip, you generate more power
C) I'm not certain what "keep my body parallel" means. When you reach with your right arm you should be reaching a little bit across and pulling under the center of your body
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EPT
