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How to Improve Your Swimming Technique - Genetic Nutrition

How to Improve Your Swimming Technique

, by Sandesh Prasannakumar, 7 min reading time

Mastering any sport takes discipline, focus, and sacrifice. The same is true for swimming. With its variation in styles and strokes, perfecting the swimming technique for each stroke takes a lot of time and practice. Professional or elite swimmers usually start training at an early age, building their bodies and lifestyles to match an endurance athlete’s. Swimming, even for amateurs, is a great exercise that requires minimum preparation in terms of equipment or accessibility. You can swim in any water body, and it has minimum risk of injury, unlike other forms of exercise. The water acts as a natural cushion for weakened or injured joints. It also has a huge impact on your cardiovascular health.

Skills Needed to Improve Your Swimming Technique

There are always the basics that you need to learn before you can master an art or a sport. These skills might seem rudimentary to some, but they are the first hurdles any professional swimmer has to overcome before becoming an expert in their style.

Floating

This is the most fundamental skill that every swimmer needs to learn to be able to become a professional. Being able to stably float on the surface of the water and tread without making too many big movements is the most time-consuming part of this sport. In some countries, it is believed that human beings have the innate ability to swim; only our fear or inhibition of water hinders many of us from relearning it. In these countries, parents let their toddlers tread in deep waters on their own and watch them miraculously learn how to float with minimum assistance.

Water Safety

It might not seem much when you are an adult, but to ensure minimum to no injury, beginners should always start with the awareness of how to get in and out of the water safely. They should be made aware of the risks of certain movements, dives, and playfulness in water. Especially children should be taught how to quickly get out of the water, even without the help of a ladder.

Balanced Breathing

The biggest fear for those who hesitate to learn this life skill is not being able to breathe underwater. The trick here is to learn how to release your breath underwater, come out of it to take a full breath, and hold it in to release it again when inside. This skill builds a lot of confidence and capacity in swimmers.

Coordinating Extremities

Swimming is a sport that requires movement from your entire body - your back muscles, legs, arms, chest, etc. Ensuring that all of them work in tandem with each other is a skill that later helps in developing control of your muscles to switch from one style to another.

Improving Swimming Technique for Different Strokes

There are four basic strokes in swimming. However, a few combination styles have been developed by masters in the field over the years. Once you have mastered the basic styles, you can then go on to learn these combination styles to enhance your skills.

1. Developing Swimming Technique for Freestyle

This is the image most people get when swimming is mentioned. You keep your body parallel to the water and make a windmill-like motion with your hands to propel yourself forward, with your legs moving in up-down motion to keep you floating. While moving forward, you also have to remember to draw breaths by lifting your head up at regular intervals. 

Here are a few tips to master this stroke:

  • Keep your head straight in line with your torso, and look at the bottom of the pool. If you bend your head up to look forward, your hips and legs will drop, slowing you down.
  • Learn how to press your chest and head down to lift up and keep the lower half of your body steady.
  • The most common mistake people make is to lift up their heads to breathe. Move your body sideways instead to breathe above the water.
  • Spend more time on your sides with each arm stroke than on your chest. This improves your propulsion and speed.
  • Learn the high-elbow technique of keeping your arms flexed and your elbow high underwater before pulling it out.
  • For longer races, use the two-beat kick.

2. Developing Swimming Technique for Backstroke

For leisure, this style of swimming is the most relaxing; however, it requires quite a bit of skill and technique to develop professional-level speed.

  • It is important to keep your head in a neutral position, looking straight up at the sky during backstroke. Keeping a low chin or tilting your head back too much can make your hips and legs drop, slowing you down.
  • You need to kick from the hips and not from the knees. If your kicks are coming from your knees, it means your knees are getting bent, causing you to slow down.
  • Keep your body streamlined and flat, legs right under the surface.
  • Keep the water level covering your ears.
  • Coordinate your breathing with your arm movement. Holding your breath for too long can hinder your movement.

3. Developing Swimming Technique for Breaststroke

If not freestyle, breaststroke is the next choice for beginners and children to start learning swimming. The simple loop of pull, breathe, kick, and glide sums up the basics of this stroke.

  • Your shoulders, legs, and hip need to be as horizontal as possible while letting your legs stay submerged during the kick.
  • After gliding, your hands need to immediately pitch down before coming out.
  • Your arms should be as close to your body as possible; the propulsion in this style comes from the legs.

4. Developing Swimming Technique for Butterfly Stroke

This style is known to be the most difficult to learn and master. You have to masterfully coordinate the timing and rhythm together to execute a powerful butterfly stroke.

  • Though the more popular arm movement in butterfly stroke is done with a bent arm, keeping a straight arm can give your shoulders a smoother rotation.
  • Always aim for a dry back position in which most of your back is visible during the stroke.
  • Keep your chin to the surface during breathing.
  • Breathe late during the stroke loop by keeping your hands under the chest.

Conclusion

You can use the above-mentioned swimming techniques to improve each stroke to gain speed and better movement. Whether you are a professional or an amateur, these tips will help you swim in the right manner to gain maximum expertise. You can start slow by picking up easier styles like the freestyle or breaststroke and move on to the more difficult butterfly stroke. Keep your breathing and arm positions in check to increase stamina and pace. Keep yourself updated with new tricks of the trade to improve your game.

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