Freestyle Swimming Technique
10 Tips for Your Stroke

It doesn't always take much effort to improve one's freestyle swimming technique. Sometimes a little bit of knowledge is enough for a quick fix. So don't wait and discover the tips below!

Swimming Tips

1. Have your head aligned with the spine, and look at the bottom of the pool, not to the front. If you look to the front in the freestyle swimming technique, you will have the tendency to lift your head, which will make your hips drop. You will then need to kick harder to keep your legs up, which is quickly tiring.
2. Wear good swim goggles if you don't do already. It's nearly impossible to stay relaxed and keep the head down and well-aligned when the eyes are in contact with water.
3. Press your buoy, so that your hips and legs come up. Your lungs are filled with air and are very buoyant. Your hips and legs are very dense, so they have tendency to sink. But if you use your head as a lever connected to your legs via your lungs, and press your head and sternum down in the water, the water will push back on your lungs and the lever effect will make your hips and legs rise up to the water surface. You then don't need to waste energy anymore on kicking to keep your legs up.
4. Try to swim more on your side than flat in the water. At each stroke, change the side on which your are lying. This will make your shoulder clear the water, reducing drag and is one of the things to know if you want to learn how to swim faster.

5. Rotate your head with your body to breathe, don't lift it. Again, if you need to lift your head to breathe, your hips and legs will sink, creating more drag and forcing you to kick more to get your legs back up.
6. To correctly breathe in the swimming freestyle technique, you need to inhale out of the water, then exhale in the water. You barely have time to inhale when you rotate your head to breathe, so you should already have nearly emptied your lungs in the water before.
7. If water enters the nose while breathing, try to wear a nose clip. This can help you at the beginning because then you only need to concentrate on your mouth for proper breathing. You will want to wane yourself off of the nose clip later when you are more experienced.
8. Don't pull with a straight arm. The elbow should flex so that the forearm stays parallel to and about 10 inches from the body. The hand should follow the median line of the body; don't overreach to the other body side and don't stroke to the outside of the body.
9. When recovering the arms, don't extend them above the water all the way down in front of you. This can cause an injury called the swimmer's shoulder. Instead make your hand enter the water early once it has passed your head and extend it under the water surface. This has the added benefit to make you longer underwater, which is another of the secrets to swim faster.
10. For long distance swimming, use a relaxed two-beat kick. This means that you alternate the kicking foot as often as the stroking arm.

Conclusion

So that's it, I hope that you will enjoy these tips for a better freestyle swimming technique. Have fun!