I know how to swim but I suck at it

Recreation Sports
1

So I’ve been visiting the community pool lately to try and stay in shape. It closes around 10:30pm so been getting there around 9:30 when it’s a little less crowded.

For long term health, I would have to say that swimming is right up there near the top. But one thing that bothers me is that after I do 300 meters (50m then rest, 50 then rest, etc) my form really goes bad. I feel like a drunk dolphin flapping around in the water.

I don’t know how many swimmers are on here, but curious to know: how do you know if you have good form when you swim freestyle? What can I do to try improve my endurance?

Just looking for some tips if there are any people that also swim for exercise.

2

I “learned” proper swimming over dinner over a period of a few months when I was in Vietnam. Amazing really this Aussie guy would ask me what I was doing and then show me the correct form, how to breathe every 3rd stroke etc and then I went off and practiced. The only real “lesson” he gave me was how to swim in the sea but he reckoned my technique in the pool was pretty good when he eventually saw me swimming. Don’t think he believed I got it all from talking to him. Anyway I guess what I’m saying is you can “fix” your stroke yourself if someone explains it to you.

3

Endurance is obviously based on your level of fitness. So to improve keep pushing yourself, set yourself goals. maybe do some other form of exercise to improve your cardio levels

As for technique it depends on which stroke you use. I improved my breast stroke by simply doing it more often and concentrating on what i was doing. I don’t claim that it’s perfect but it gets me from one of the pool to the other without looking like a complete idiot.

My crawl is Ok butI got taught as kid how to do that.

As for butterfly, I can’t do one stroke, so never try.

I find swimming quite boring, so maybe get a waterproof ipod cover to help with going for longer.

4

Some tips to improve your kicking/breathing technique:

  1. Use a kicking board. Hold it out in front of you, head up, arms straight and learn to kick properly. Do a few lengths, kicking gently, trying to find a rythym that suits you.

  2. Continue with the kicking board, but put your head face down in the water, and focus on rythmic kicking and breathing. Turn your head sideways to breath, alternating between left and right. Do regularly.

Practice often.

  1. Repeat # 2, but without the kicking board. Breath on every third stroke, alternating between left and right.
5

Don’t suck. Blow!
I’m a bad swimmer, but I do the ol’ frog kick. I like it because it’s good exercise for the arms, whereas most stuff is just for the legs. I can’t coordinate my breathing like you’re supposed to.

6

[quote=“Anubis”]Some tips to improve your kicking/breathing technique:

  1. Use a kicking board. Hold it out in front of you, head up, arms straight and learn to kick properly. Do a few lengths, kicking gently, trying to find a rythym that suits you.

  2. Continue with the kicking board, but put your head face down in the water, and focus on rythmic kicking and breathing. Turn your head sideways to breath, alternating between left and right. Do regularly.

Practice often.

  1. Repeat # 2, but without the kicking board. Breath on every third stroke, alternating between left and right.[/quote]

You’ll look like a tosser but practise the breathing movement out of the water. Everyone can do one side its the other side that you need to practise. 3rd stroke is optimum but once you can breathe both sides it doesn’t matter how many strokes you take before you need to breathe. Its very liberating

7

Busy, but some major pointers are:

Relaxing and making sure all your movements are limited to what’s required to propel you through the water. Pointing your toes while kicking with legs relaxed aligns you properly and can reduce that silly problem of moving the trunk of your body at each stroke.

HG

8

I’ve picked up swimming again, and I’ve become a much fast and efficient swimmer in the last few months, but not merely by doing more laps.

On the contrary, I would say I’ve been doing less laps by concentrating on form and efficiency (because there is no logic in the more bad laps you do, the better you get).

So, actually, in swims, I’ve got a better time, but using less strokes, so I’ve improved my stroke efficiency (it’s less tiring too - kinda like that Bolt guy running the 100m with much longer legs)

I’m gonna assume you’re doing the frontcrawl and breaststroke. And believe it or not, the breaststroke is the hardest to get right, not the butterfly. Obviously, I don’t know what level you’re at, so this may not be necessarily helpful for you.

Some advice which worked for me:

  1. Check out some websites online. They give you some of the basic principles. There’s a wealth of information on youtube (but buyer beware and grain of salt, because of course they’re not guaranteed to teach the right thing); I would focus on videos of olympic swimmers to look at their form; some of them have videos of their own talking about training.

  2. Buy swim aids such as floatboards and those floaties between your legs.
    2a. Break up your swim technique, and improve it bit by bit to make things easier
    2b. usually, break up the arms and legs.

  3. MORE is not better; focus on form. In principal, you should always be thinking about drag efficiency at all stages of your stroke (the push, pull, rest stage, etc.) How?

a. a lean form means smaller profile: for most beginners, this means tucking in your gut/core area, because that’s your center of mass, and that’s where people are usually weak.

  • start with a simple kickboard and flutterkick. Now get a sense of how your body is draggin through the water. Now suck in your gut, tighten your abs (but you have to relax other parts of your trunk so you’re not stiff and wasting energy being stiff). This is the single biggest improvement a beginner swimmer can make I think overall. A lot of swimmers are angled poorly in the water (like 35 deg for breast) and sink too deep (the up and down of breast too exaggerated)

b. stability (most evident on the front crawl, but applicable to all): don’t be flailing and squirming around. This means keep your center line on all axes (the center line for crawl will be parallel to the pool, but not for the breaststroke, nevertheless, there should be stability ie consistency in all strokes). Yes, there is some body roll in strokes like the front crawl, but you’ll see the center line (like a line penetrating the top of your head thru you butt) is stable.

Try and keep your head movements to a minimum, yes you need to breath, but practice a short roll of the head, just enough for the mouth to get air and no more.

c. lower leg stability (front crawl): you’ll need a good flutterkick to have enough propulsion to keep your lower body stable (like a rudder) while your top body acts like a water wheel and rolls the shoulder (and upperbody) for more efficient stroke and profile. A good flutterkick kicks from the big thigh/butt muscles not from the shins and calfs. Use the big muscle, relax the knees, point the feet straight. Your butt should be tired.

d. Efficiency (front crawl): don’t just pull with your hands, pull with the entire arm. Think of the entire arm as a sculling piece. Bend your elbow (your arm is like a spoon in the water or like in Tai Qi, you are grabbing the barrel stance)

e. Breaststroke: The key is the rhythm, and the wave motion to reduce drag. Usually, this means for beginners, the timing of the kick (subsequent to the upper body movement).

  • kick: kick all the way for a complete kick ie your feet should touch at the completion.
  • it’s a whip motion, your feet are the end of that whip motion, so the leg and ankle should be loose enough (ie not stiff), but not too loose, so the whip momentum is transferred correctly from the leg down to the toes. Lead with the outside of your foot.
  • concentrate more on the forward motion of the kick, it’s not about whipping the feet together (meaning don’t concentrate about the lateral sweep).
  • the head and neck actually doesn’t move too much. the eyes should be looking at the same angle; rather, its the lower back (and the arm’s wave motion) that’s raising the head above water. Think of the yoga exercise where the body is prone facedown on the floor; then the lower back muscles and abs tighten and bring the head (and then neck and upper body) up to about 70deg (or whatever)
  • arms: there’s various techniques on this, but i was taught the wave motion, so ymmv. basically, if you know the basic stroke, the key would be to vary to tempo to get the right motion: slow at start, slow when the hands “scull” to the chest, and now, very fast from the scoop to the push (where the hands shoot out in front). The scoop and squeezing the hands/elbows really gives you that strong back/shoulders. One olympic swimmer said he visualizes his arms were like pulling the body through imaginary rings in the water, like you’re hauling yourself from ring to ring.
  • you don’t need to sink so low in the water. This one kid i was watching spent more time going up and down (3-4 ft) then forward. you should be near the surface of the water consistently. Your goal is to go forward!

f. Like all sports, efficiency is about not just tightening the right muscles at the right time, but also relaxing other muscles at other times. This saves energy and maintains good form. Think about that the next time you swim.

g. Rest: In all strokes, there is a rest portion when after the push/pull, there is a momentum. At this point, use that momentum before continuing to the next push/pull phase.

FYI, I’m not a professional swimmer, so others may have better advice.

9

What does Benchley have to say?

[quote]The New Strokes
It will be interesting to see what the new season will bring out in the way of novel swimming strokes. I’ll bet it involves the use of an auxiliary motor strapped on the shoulders. When I was learning to swim, people just swam. The idea was to keep afloat and, in an orderly fashion, to get somewhere if possible. If there was nowhere you wanted to get to, you just swam quietly 'round and 'round until your lips got blue. Then you went in.

I never learned the names of the new strokes as they came along, but I gather that the instructions for some of them must read:

The Australian Wrench: Place the head under water up to the shoulder blades. Bring the left arm up, over and around the neck until the fingers of the left hand touch the right cheek (still under water). Shove the right arm sideways and to the left until the right shoulder touches the chin. Then shift arm positions suddenly, and with great splashing, propelling the body through the water by lashing upward and downward with the feet and legs. The head is kept under water during the entire race, thereby eliminating both wind-resistance and breathing. It is bully fun.

The Navajo Twist: Rotate the entire body like a bobbin on the surface of the water, with elbows and knees bent. Spit while the mouth is on the up-side. Inhale when it is under. This doesn’t get you much of anywhere, but it irritates the other swimmers and makes it difficult for them to swim.

The Lighthouse Churn: Just stand still, in water about up to your waist, and beat at the surface with your fists, snorting and spitting at the same time. This does nothing but make you conspicuous, but, after all, what is modern swimming for?[/quote]

Unless you don’t have a waterproof laptop.

Ouch! I’m not reading any more.

10

Excellent post, Mr Burton sir! :notworthy: :notworthy:

11

Agreed, great post Jack Burton.

Two things that stuck out:

I was just starting to realize this last night. My legs are probably the part of my body that has the most muscle since I play soccer fairly regularly. But I also think that has been weighing me down and I can’t quite kick on top of the water. As I was doing a lap late in the session, I started tightening the core of my body and it helped. Will pay more attention to keeping my gut/core area more in line.

:roflmao:

It’s almost like you were there standing beside the pool the other night. It was after this particular lap that I realized I needed help. I just know there has to be a way to get through the water more efficiently. Will try to think about some of the things you mentioned the next time I get in the water.

Thanks again JB for the useful info.

12

Agreed, great post Jack Burton.

Two things that stuck out:

I was just starting to realize this last night. My legs are probably the part of my body that has the most muscle since I play soccer fairly regularly. But I also think that has been weighing me down and I can’t quite kick on top of the water. As I was doing a lap late in the session, I started tightening the core of my body and it helped. Will pay more attention to keeping my gut/core area more in line.

:roflmao:

It’s almost like you were there standing beside the pool the other night. It was after this particular lap that I realized I needed help. I just know there has to be a way to get through the water more efficiently. Will try to think about some of the things you mentioned the next time I get in the water.

Thanks again JB for the useful info.

13

Anybody have any info on pools at Tai-Da, the (gigantic!) Junior High just south of Da-An Park, or at Cheng-Da in Muzha? Will be living/working near all of the above for the next year & really want to get back in the pool. Membership/student status required? Cost? Need a cap/shave my waiguoren carpeting? Lockers/equipment available?

For the OP, some additional tips:

  1. Kick from your hips w/legs mostly straight (not lock-kneed, but not too floppy either) and toes pointed. Many people just kick from the knees, which isn’t very powerful at all.

  2. “One-eye breathing” already mentioned - no need to turn your head entirely to breathe - one eye out of the water is enough. This helps limit flailing & unnecessary wobble. Takes practice to avoid swallowing a lot of water - just pay attention.

  3. Freestyle/crawl:

  • Long strokes reaching way out front (causes what little rotation you really want around your center-line);
  • hand should exit the water near your body & enter almost directly in front of your head, not way out to the side
  • pull w/your hand down along the center of your torso until it reaches your hip,
  • end of your stroke at the hip should be quick! Your hand should just brush your thigh & quickly leave the water
  • keep your elbows high
  • breathe on alternating sides;
  • remember to kick! Repeat.

Breaststroke:

  • key is the “Pull->Kick->Glide” rhythm.
  • Only pull to about where your hands are just outside your shoulders - not wider. Hands come together at your chest.
  • Bring legs up @ same time as pull. Begin your “frog kick” when your hands come together & your head is at its highest point out of the water. Don’t hyper-extend your knees.
  • Arms then shoot forward to a streamlined position (outstretched, squeezing your ears w/your shoulders & attempting to have as little drag as possible) while you “glide”
  • The streamlined “glide” uses less energy, but only lasts so long. Figure out what timing works best for you.

Backstroke:

  • Kick hard from the hips & keep toes pointed.
  • focus on keeping your head back and your hips high in the water.
  • Your hand brushes your thigh & exits water thumb first
  • A bit more center-line rotation is good, as it allows you to pull deeper, but make sure you’re still making more forward progress than you are twirling around :slight_smile:
  • Hand enters the water pinky finger first at the top of your stroke.
  • Pull is sort of an S-shape (deeper at first since you’ve rotated a bit to one side, then shallower as you begin to rotate back, and should end with a motion like you’re throwing a basketball toward your feet).
  • Kick hard…from the hips… with toes pointed
  • You will probably hit the lane lines a lot - it takes practice not to. Learn how to conserve energy by not wandering all over the pool.
  • Don’t hit the wall. If your pool has flags and/or lane lines, spend some time figuring out how many strokes it takes you from the flags to the wall. When swimming, stop 1 stroke short of that number, just in case :slight_smile:
  1. Freestyle stroke drills:
  • high elbows (self explanatory, I hope - focus on elbows up)
  • “fingertip drag” (fingertips just at the water’s surface and dragging along the side of your body while your arm is out of the water).
    Backstroke: really rotate & pull deeply. Can also just kick on your back w/arms outstretched & streamlined (tightly!) above your head. Make sure you’re always keeping your fingers together & hand slightly cupped (otherwise you won’t be moving any water, will you?)
  1. Best way to build endurance is to keep swimming. Mix up your workouts - sprint a little. Go slower for longer distances. Try paddles & buoys (smaller paddles if you have shoulder issues) to build arm strength. Good advice already on kicking - very important, although guys tend to rely more on upper body than girls, who always whooped my butt while kicking.

Good luck! Have fun.

14

Tight core helps. You could also try “swimming downhill.”
Waterline should still be somewhere on your forehead, but pretending to pull “downhill” with your arms may help keep your hips up a bit. Kind of strange, but worked for me after my coach suggested it. Also, be sure you’re kicking from your hip flexors & not your knees.

15

sjhuz01 summarizes it nicely in an organized fashion.

The other things I would add is which may be commonsense, but not always obvious:

  1. pick one of our points and work on it one at a time; don’t try to incorporate everything at once. This is where the swim aids help; you can focus on one thing at a time, improve it, see the difference, work it into muscle memory (incorporate into your form), and then tackle the next thing.

  2. it helps to have a friend or instructor watch your swim and evaluate your weak points even if he’s around only periodically. He can see more clearly from the ground e.g. if your profile is ok, if your knees are too stiff, if you’re not doing a complete stroke (e.g. your arms or your frog-kick), etc.

16

I’ve been swimming since 1996, at times, everyday. Everything in this thread is excellent advice. I’ll add one bit of advice for anyone trying to reduce the number of strokes per length.

Extend your arms as far as possible in front of your body. This will actually twist your body somewhat. Do this for every stroke and complete each stroke by pushing the water as far back as your knee.

As for endurance, it’s simply a patience thing. The first time I swam lengths, I barely finished two lengths in a 25m pool.

I swam 2.5km yesterday.

It comes in time.

17

Don’t eat anything less than an hour before swimming.

18

Just for interest sake…why is every three strokes optimum?
I do every four strokes, breathing only on one side. If I’m not really tired, like at the beginning of laps I might do eight. Is that wrong? Is it better to do both sides?
I also find that working on the kicks with a kicking board is the best way to train yourself not to swing your body from side to side when swimming.

19

[quote=“rocky raccoon”]So I’ve been visiting the community pool lately to try and stay in shape. It closes around 10:30pm so been getting there around 9:30 when it’s a little less crowded.

For long term health, I would have to say that swimming is right up there near the top. But one thing that bothers me is that after I do 300 meters (50m then rest, 50 then rest, etc) my form really goes bad. I feel like a drunk dolphin flapping around in the water.

I don’t know how many swimmers are on here, but curious to know: how do you know if you have good form when you swim freestyle? What can I do to try improve my endurance?

Just looking for some tips if there are any people that also swim for exercise.[/quote]

I used to be a lifeguard for a few years and a qualified swimming instructor, although I didn’t maintain my qualification with regular courses.

The two greatest tips I could offer when swimming any style are 1st breathing and 2nd keep the bubbles down to a minimum.

Breathing is absolute key for endurance exercise of any type, but swimming especially as your stroke depends on when and where you need air. I haven’t watched the Olympics for a few years and I was surprised to see this time that unlike years ago, swimmers tend to now breath more often than they used to. You see front crawl demands that your face always be down in the water to maintain a good streamline angle, and turning the head to breath disturbs that angle and slows you down, so breathing was often done once every two strokes, but I guess it must have been proven to be more efficient over specific distances to breath on every stroke. Power versus drag in this case.

Without getting too much into things, first slow your stroke right down and learn it properly. when powering forwards keep your neck straight and your face in the water, the top of your head should be almost submerged. The more buoyant your upper body shoulder area is however and/or the heavier your legs will cause your head to rise out of the water. This can be cured by tilting your head down further, and taking in a little less air to begin with (remember this is keeping things slow to get your stroke right before you go full out thrashing).
When extending your arm out in front before your hand enters the water, angle your palm slightly so that your thumb enters the water first. This minimizes the air trapped under your hand when submerged and makes your stroke more efficient. As I said in the beginning, keep your bubbles down to a minimum as they cause a large amount of drag.
Once your hand is in the water, cup it very slightly, turn it in so your palm is angled towards your toes and push your hand through the length of your chest, down an imaginary centre line. Once your hand is down to the last third of its stroke it is almost completely out of power and so straighten it out and with your elbow at around 100% exit your arm elbow first out of the water, hand trailing little finger out first, thumb last. Your hand coming out sideways obviously offers less drag.
The trick to front crawl is to not loose your momentum causing you to loose your inertia in the water. You must also not build up a wake in front of your body by lifting your head. Your head must turn sideways as your arm on the same side exits the water elbow first. At this point there will be a very narrow opening on the water’s surface where the water level actually drops slightly in the space between your head and your protruding shoulder. take a very quick breath and then head down again in the water.
Your breathing out can be done over the course of your stroke through your nose, but don’t expel all of your air or you will loose your good flat buoyancy angle. This is why I said the key to good swimming is good breathing. People often end up burning themselves out because they speed up their stroke to get in more breaths, but the speed up actually requires more air than they get between strokes, so they end up stopping.

Legs and feet:
Toes pointed down like a Swan Lake ballet dancer, legs straight allowing about five degree flex at the knees. Think of how a sea diver looks with flippers, you are aiming for the same effect. Your legs will be high in the water to keep a straight body position, but don’t allow your feet to keep bringing down lots of air from outside the water. You are trying to keep the bubble number down, so flip water not air. Some air will be dragged into the water by the water and that’s inevitable, but as long as you keep the bubbles in mind. It’s all about bubbles!

Just like cycling up a hill, start off slowly and let your heart and lungs find a comfortable rhythm over lets say five minutes of warm up. Once you feel that breathing is easy, speed up your stroke, very little at first until your heart and lungs speed up and you can control your rhythm. Keep each quicker speed going for at least thirty seconds by which time the additional oxygen demand will have sped your heart and lungs up and you can go about adjusting your speed once more.

You should be aiming for consistency, not speed. Stopping every fifty meters and panting a lot is telling you as you have quite accurately recognized that your stroke is not correct and your speed is too great for your system to manage. Better than stopping every several meters is to slow everything right down until you can maintain a good rhythm first. Remember you are aiming to increase your fitness, not outstrip everyone else. Speed will increase over time, trust me, but get the foundation right first. fits and spurts, blasting then stopping will shock your heart, and its not good in the long term.

A little unrelated but useful info:
Many lifeguards and hard core swimmers overtime report of poor breathing conditions. Asthma is not uncommon in long term lifeguards as the chlorine in the pool may eventually take its toll on the breathing system and cause allergic reactions. Swimming in public pools can also be very harsh on the hair and can even turn it green over prolonged periods. There are many specialized shampoos on the market which claim to eliminate the chlorine from the hair and according to users it does work.
Likewise chlorine being a bleach kills your swimming garments, so rinse them thoroughly after soaking with normal tap water, but this explains how they can become thinner and less elasticated over time.
Chlorine is a very nasty substance, and if you feel it is too strong in your local pool, then report it or change pools. Its one of the reasons I will not go swimming in Taiwan public pools. That, and I’m afraid I’m very bored of swimming.

20

[quote=“sulavaca”]
I haven’t watched the Olympics for a few years and I was surprised to see this time that unlike years ago, swimmers tend to now breath more often than they used to.[/quote]

I was told that they will vary the breathing depending on sprints versus endurance runs.

Oh, and another thing about keeping that line (trunk straight); it’s not just a matter of sucking in your gut, I find it helpful to imagine that your butt or rather the monkey bone is being suspended from above; that way, you may pull up your butt (and then you will be straighter), but again have someone look at your line when you swim crawl.