How To Swim Freestyle | Technique For Front Crawl Swimming

(upbeat music) - Today we are going to be teaching you the Free Style Stroke. We're going to be breaking down the full into sections so that you can become a faster and more efficient swimmer. Okay, so let's start with a few of the basics. Free Style is performed on our front, facedown in the water and we should be striving to keep our body as level in the water as possible. You should aim to keep your head in a neutral position inline with your trunk and looking down towards the bottom of the pool. As a guide, your eye line should be looking somewhere around one to two meters ahead of you, but try to avoid lifting your head too much, as looking forward can create tension in your shoulder and cause your legs to sink. Now let's take a look at the Hand Entry. Your fingers should enter the water first with your palms facing down. This should enter directly inline with your shoulder and this puts your hand in a position that allows you to flex the wrist just a little bit whilst keeping your elbow slightly higher than your wrist. Also aim to enter the water as smoothly as possible with your hand. As if you're slicing the water and then slide forward for the remaining couple of inches under the water to get that full extension of the arm. After this Hand Entry, we then enter what we call The Catch Phase. This is where we are starting to pull down through the stroke. This is important for maintaining your lift in the water and carrying your momentum. You should do this by pushing down with your hand and your forearm whilst keeping your elbow high. Search for a purchase of the water and hold onto this throughout The Catch Phase. A good way to imagine this action is that you're trying to put your arm around a barrel. And than from The Catch Phase, we move into what we call The Pull Phase. This is when the hand begins to move underneath your head. At this point the fingers should point directly down towards the bottom of the pool and the palm of your hand towards the end of the pool that you're swimming away from. It's fairly obvious I know, but to move forward we need to apply force in the opposite direction. To maximize this you should aim to keep your arm in a strong position. This means pressing with the hand, keeping that elbow in that high position and arm angle of somewhere between 90 to 120 degrees. A good way to picture this Pull Phase is that you're trying to pull your body past your hand and your arm. The hand should track more or less directly underneath the body rather than out to the side. This will maintain your balance and symmetry and avoiding any nasty snaking down the pool. And as your hand pulls through towards the hip it is important to finish the stroke by pushing backwards and extending your arm as your hand exits the water. And now we are moving into The Recovery Phase. As your arm exits the water at the back of the stroke you should start by bending your elbow as if you're trying to point to the roof of the pool with your elbow or sky if you're really lucky. To actually get the recovery effect of this it's important to try and lead with your shoulder so the arm stays relaxed. Your hand and forearm should more or less dangle as it comes through before extending the forearm out to reenter the water at the front of the stroke. Now there are a number of drills and tricks that can help you when you're trying to master the Front Crawl Stroke. One in particular is the Skull Drill. Now this really helps to build your confidence at the front end of the stroke when you're trying to get purchase of the water for The Catch Phase. Place a Pull Buoy between your legs, lie flat in the water, and keep your head up or relaxed into the water. Whatever feels more comfortable. Then begin skulling with your arms to repel yourself forward. Sweeping out and then back in. If it helps you can imagine splitting a big pile of sand and then bringing the sand back together to one pile in the middle. Try to minimize any propulsion from the legs and over time you'll start to feel you're applying more pressure and getting more purchase of the water. Another thing you can do is to use Hand Paddles. If you're starting out swimming, I would actually advise skipping these until you've been swimming for some time and you've built enough shoulder strength. Just start out with some small paddles, short reps so that you're not putting too much strain on the shoulders. Now these will really help to over emphasize The Catch and The Pull Phases of the stroke and also slow things down for you to work it all out on the go. Now as you begin to master the Free Style Stroke you may want to look at rotating during the stroke too. Now this can be fairly complicated to get the hang of, so make sure that you're comfortable swimming before embarking on any rotation. By rotation you're able to utilize the larger back muscles and to stabilize the stroke and by rotating the whole body around taking one shoulder out of the water, also means we reduce our surface area in the water, therefore making ourselves faster. To rotate both your shoulders and hips should move in sync, rather than one leading the other. Now this movement can also help making the breathing action more natural. Rather than feeling like you're craning your head around for a breath. And on that note a good tip for the breathing is to start your breath as your hand exits at the back of the stroke. And as the arm comes over during The Recovery Phase, imagine that that arm then forces the head back into the water as it passed the head to end that breath. Well that's it on the Free Style Stroke and if you'd like to get more swimming videos from GTN you can click on the GTN icon on screen right now and actually subscribe to the channel. There is a heck of a lot to cover there, so if you do have any questions please do drop them in the comment section below. And don't forget to hit the thumbs up button if you have enjoyed today's video. And if you would like to see some more swimming videos then we do have a swimming playlist that's onscreen right now.

Channel: Global Triathlon Network

Views: 566,417

Rating: 4.9371705 out of 5

Keywords: front crawl, how to swim, how to swim front crawl, how to swim freestyle, swimming, swimming technique, front crawl technique, freestyle technique, fitness, swim workout, swimming freestyle, swimming front crawl, learn how to swim, learn to swim, GTN, Global Triathlon Network, triathlon, Triathlon (Sport), tri, ironman, Sports, swimbikerun, triathlon training, triathlon skills, iron man, tri bike, triathlete, traithlon, mark threlfall, Ꮮ, 3708, Ꮵ, Ꮽ, Ᏸ, Մ, Շ, Չ, Ջ, Ꮲ, Ս, ཙ, ཎ

Id: AQy_c30lNjI

Length: 6min 25sec (385 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 31 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/BGleezy]

Dude I cannot for the life of me swim past 50m in one go. I’ll swim like 10 sets of 50m I’ve gotten better at speed, but not endurance. When I slow down so I can go further I just end up swallowing water because I’m too slow to create the air pocket.

[u/GuardMC]

There are any number of drills that can help you with this or you can learn it in one lesson with a coach or a Developer. I learned by trial and error. The key is to take it slow, exhale into the water, and develop a cue that tells you when to rotate your face sideways to breath. Generally, when the left hand enters the water, reach for the far end of the pool with your left hand while rotating your head to the right. This will rotate your left side down and your right side up about 45°. Exhale the last of your air as you turn, breath in as your face breaks the surface, being careful to look to the side, not forward. Just takes practice.

Find some drills. It won't take long.

[u/cle4nup]

All their videos are A1.