Learn How to Tread Water, Treading Water Techniques and Videos

Learning how to tread water is an important basic swimming technique the novice must master to become confident and comfortable in the water. This article will give some swimming exercises and tips to master this skill.

Basically, treading water is the act of stroking with your arms and kicking with your legs to keep your body afloat in a vertical position with your head above the water.

As a beginner, it is a good idea to learn this basic swimming technique before trying to learn the popular swimming strokes. Besides giving confidence, knowing how to tread water has a lot of other uses: it allows you to stop in the middle of a swim to orient yourself, to recover your breath if you have swallowed water, to rinse your swim goggles if they fogged up, etc.

There are a lot of different ways to tread water. I'll give you a popular style and then my personal style.

Treading Water Using a Popular Style

One of the popular styles to tread water is sculling water in the horizontal plane with your arms and flutter kicking in a vertical plane with your legs.

Basically to scull water you extend your arms sideways at shoulder level and then simultaneously move them forward then backward in a horizontal plane while always pushing with your palms against the water. The pressure of your palms and forearms against the water creates some lift that keeps your body afloat.

The flutter kick also provides some lift that helps keeping your body afloat. To flutter kick you simply kick alternatively with each leg forward then backward with a long supple leg. Your feet should point toward the bottom of the pool.

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To learn how to tread water with this style, do the following:

  • First practice the swimming exercises given in the sculling water and flutter kick articles.
  • Then grab a water noodle, place it around your back and under your armpits. Make sure the water noodle by itself is enough to support you in the water.
  • Using the water noodle, practice sculling water and flutter kicking simultaneously.
  • Practice these motions up to the point where they provide enough lift to support you in the water even without a swim noodle.
  • Finally when you feel confident enough, remove the swim noodle and attempt the technique without floatation devices. In the beginning only do this under supervision of an experienced swimmer or a lifeguard.

By the way some instructors use the breaststroke kick or eggbeater kick as alternatives to the flutter kick, but I think they are more difficult to master for a beginner.

Treading Water Using My Personal Style

I learned how to tread water as a child and I don't really remember if we were given precise instructions on what we should do with our arms and hands. As a result the technique is less refined but it works well for me. What I basically do is this:

  • My arms are angled at about 90°, with my forearms horizontal and pointing forward, my palms turned downward and my elbows close to the body.
  • Then I make circles with my hands, they move down and outward, then up and inward, then down and outward again and so on. What I basically do is to push down the water in a circular motion.
  • My feet also do a circular kind of motion that is similar to a frog kick. The initial position is with my knees bent and my feet in their natural resting position.
  • Then I move my feet down and outward while they go in plantar flexion, then they move up and inward in dorsiflexion. So what I basically do is to push down the water with the inside of my lower leg and foot.
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To learn how to tread water using my personal style, you can practice the following swimming exercises:

  • Practice these motions up to the point where they provide enough lift to support you in the water even without a swim noodle.
  • At that point make sure to have a friend or a lifeguard supervise you, then try to tread water without a swim noodle. At first do short repeats, then slowly build up your endurance.

Good luck and enjoy swimming!

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