Learn How To Swim
Freestyle Stroke Swimming Drills

You will learn how to swim the freestyle stroke in a step-by-step fashion with the following swimming drills. They go from very basic to advanced and build one on top of the other.

The drills introduce concepts such as balance, swimming tall, swimming on the sides, etc. which are important for an effective freestyle stroke.

If you learn and practice the drills in the suggested order, you should be able to learn the freestyle technique without struggle and have a good time. Enjoy!

Swimming Drills Sequence

Learn How To Do The Flutter Kick: Learning the flutter kick is a prerequisite to learn how to swim the freestyle stroke. This article contains some progressive swimming exercises to learn this important technique in a simple way.

Head-Lead Supine Balance: This freestyle swimming drill introduces you to balance and teaches you balance in a supine position (on the back). Teaching balance on the back first minimizes breathing issues. You are balanced when your body is perfectly horizontal in the water, and this reduces drag and saves energy.

Head-Lead Prone Balance: This freestyle swimming drill is designed to teach you balance in the water in a prone position (lying flat on the chest). This is the best drill to learn how to keep the hips and legs up while swimming the freestyle stroke.

Head-Lead Side Balance: In the front crawl stroke, spending more time swimming on the side reduces drag and makes you faster. This is because when you swim on the side, a part of the stroking arm's shoulder clears the water. However, swimming on the side is counter-intuitive, so this swimming drill is designed to introduce you to that position.

Head-Lead Nose Up / Nose Down: This swimming drill will teach you how to press your upper body down in the water to keep the hips and legs up while rolling between different positions, nose up and nose down in this case. This is an important skill to master so that you can stay balanced when you need to breathe while swimming freestyle.

Head-Lead Looking Down: In this drill, you will roll from one side to the other while still maintaining balance. This is important as you should roll from one side to the other to decrease drag as you alternate stroking arms. This drill also teaches you to roll your body as a unit, which means you don't anticipate the body rotation with your head.

Hand-Lead Side Balance: In the Head-Lead Side Balance drill, you learned that swimming front crawl more on the sides reduces drag because part of the high shoulder clears the water. Another way to reduce drag is to make your body longer in the water by extending the arms under water for as long as possible. That's what this drill teaches you.

Hand-Lead Nose Up / Nose Down: This is the last balance drill for the front crawl stroke. It teaches you how to keep balance while rolling between a nose up and nose down position and while maintaining a long body with the low arm extended to the front. The nose down position on the side is the position you should be in while recovering the stroking arm to the front.

Under Switch: You will finally transition into swimming the front crawl stroke with the next few drills, which teach you hand stroke motions and coordination. These drills are called switch drills because you alternate the swimming side and arm motions with each drill cycle. The first of these drills is the Under Switch where the recovery occurs underwater. The purpose of the drill is to imprint the correct timing at which one arm starts to pull while the opposite arm recovers to the front.

Zipper Switch: Zipper Switch is a swimming drill for the front crawl stroke that teaches a compact and efficient recovery. Whereas in Under Switch the arm recovery was completely under water, in Zipper Switch you recover the arm above the water but let the hand and part of the forearm dangle in the water. The water pressure against the hand and forearm gives you feedback about their correct placement during the recovery.

Over Switch: Over Switch is the last of the front crawl drills and teaches an early hand entry during recovery. This is to avoid a common tendency to overreach during the recovery. The drill also serves as a transition to swimming the complete front crawl stroke.

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