How do you swim freestyle?

Answer 1

So you want to ditch doggy paddle? The fastest and most impressive swimming stroke is the freestyle (also called the front crawl).

Freestyle is the stroke in swimming where the swimmer is belly down flutter kicking from behind and keeping their face below water level only turning it sideways to breathe, while consecutively alternating arms in a forward motion.

Body and head: Your body should be straight and streamlined, with no arms and legs sticking out, and your hips in line with your shoulders. It helps to keep your face in the water, looking down at the bottom of the pool. Only move your head when you need to take a breath. As you swim try to keep all of your body close to the surface of the water.

Legs: Use these to keep you up and maintain your balance as well as to propel you along. Try to make long, fast kicks, ensuring that the whole length of each leg is moving up and down. Bend your knees slightly and splash only a little with your feet. Try counting to six quickly and kicking your legs alternatively in time with this.

Arms: They are your main source of power. Stretch one arm in front of your head as far as you can, close to the surface of the water, letting your shoulders and hips follow. Then slice your hand down through the water, thumb first, splashing as little as possible. Keep your fingers together, forming a shallow scoop to help push through the water. As you bring your arm down, bend your elbow and push your hand towards your feet, your fingers following a path down the middle of your chest and stomach. When you bring the arm back up to repeat this stroke, try to lift your elbow out of the water first.

Keeping your hand near the water surface and close to your body, move it forward to the start position in front of your head.

The second arm should follow the first so that it is about to go down in front of you as the first is coming up. With some practice you'll slip into the rhythm of the alternating strokes, your hips and shoulders rolling slightly to the left or the right as you stretch forward.

Breathing: Your face is in the water, so you must remember to turn your head when you want to take a breath. Turn it as smoothly as you can, leaving the side of your head resting in the water. An effective method is to turn your head to the left to breathe when your right arm is outstretched and to bring your head round to the right to breathe again as you stretch out your left arm.

You should now be able to kick, pull and breathe. Keep your legs kicking all of the time and your arms following each other. Get into the habit of breathing regularly, every two, three or four arm strokes. And try to avoid splashing to much - it's not professional.

*I can see that the writer above has written much about the front crawl stroke. However, freestyle and front crawl are not the same thing. Front Crawl is described above, but in a freestyle race, the racer may swim in any style of his/her choice, hence free-style. The only thing that the swimmer must not do is touch the lane ropes, another competitor or the floor.