The Real Freestyle Fix Coaches Don’t Teach (Stops The Struggle)

All of us have been taught endless technique and form tips, but nobody ever coaches the real fix that can make your freestyle feel effortless. I've now coached hundreds of swimmers and what I'm about to show you changes everything. And it's something coaches simply don't teach. And it's so simple. It can make your freestyle feel easier, faster, and more powerful. I'm Lucas Siska, former pro triathlete and NCAA swimmer. Welcome to the channel. Let's fix your freestyle now. To make sense of what I'm about to show you, we have to look at some things first. We're going to build a freestyle from the ground up and make sure these little things are not hindering us before we make that one change that can fix everything. So stick around till the end. The first question we need to answer is what is good freestyle technique? Well, why not use the example of the greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps? Let's take a look. What we can see from the greatest swimmer of all time, Michael Phelps, is that he is not making one movement that is wasting energy. All his efforts and movement are propelling him forward. His freestyle has minimal drag and has massive power. And this is what we want to do in our freestyle. It doesn't matter what ability you are. You can swim like this with the correct tweaks. And this is a big one in swimming. You always hear coaches say, don't drop your elbow. Keep a high elbow on the pull through. But they don't actually tell you how to do that practically in the water. Well, I'll show you a simple trick right now. Now, if I do an example with this slide right here, say I'm coming in for my catch. When I come into pool, I need to make sure that I'm not flat on the water like this because when I'm flat, my elbow has no option but to drop. And this is super weak. So many people do this, and they don't know how to get that elbow high. The trick is to come in like this around. And when you go for the catch, you rotate your shoulder inwards. Immediately, that brings the elbow up. And then you can go much more powerfully into the catch and pull. This way, you grab so much more water. Dropped elbow, you'll literally be losing half of the water. Next step, let's move from the elbow to the shoulder. And what's the big deal with the shoulders? Well, the shoulders are huge in swimming, especially freestyle swimming. And the big thing that I often see wrong with swimmers is that they are trying to pull with their shoulders out wide like this. But poor guys, they can't help it. They have stiff and rigid shoulders, and they couldn't bring it in if they wanted to. Guys, with good, fast freestyle, you have to be able to put your shoulder in close proximity to your head. If you can't have your shoulder right here close to your head, you're going to lose so much water. Not to mention, the high elbow we just talked about is so much more difficult to do when you're way out here. People just have stiff and rigid shoulders. So the key is to fix it with swim mobility. All you have to do is after every single swim, do three simple stretches. And before you go to bed at night to drastically improve your swim flexibility. By doing that and loosening up the shoulders, you can become way more efficient in your stroke. By the way, when you increase the mobility in your shoulders and get more swim specific with your flexibility, you'll actually get injured way less. One of the most common injuries in swimming is swimming shoulder, where you just get rotator cuff syndrome. This is because people are swimming with those stiff, rigid shoulders. Do this and you can save yourself a lot of trouble. What is the big misconception that most swimmers have? Well, I've been coaching hundreds of swimmers. And everybody who has problems in their swim, oftentimes it's because of the kick. So their feet are usually way too stiff and rigid and so are their ankles. People often hear that they need to keep their feet pointed and stiff. Well, you do need to have pointed toes, but they do not need to be stiff. You need to have your feet relaxed so you don't get cramps and use waist extra energy. And they need to be floppy. Your ankles can't be bent at 90 degrees. This is a huge mistake that swimmers do all the time. They're trying to kick like this with bent, rigid ankles. And that's literally pulling you backwards. You have to have them floppy so that you can cause propulsion from the hip. And that's what we're going to talk about in just a bit. So we talked about these bad boys. What's the next step? Let's talk about the knees. Most swimmers who are new to swimming, they often are trying to initiate the kick from the knees. This often leads to a bicycle kicking like motion. It drags your legs down. And again, just makes you way too tired. The kick has to be initiated from the hip. I'll show you the difference between a knee kick and a hip kick right now. Let me show you in the water what it means to kick from the hip. See, I'm pointing to the hip because that's where we're going to initiate this kick. Now the knees bend a little bit, but nothing compared to what I'm about to show you when we kick from the knee. Here's the wrong way. Now look at this. It's like bicycling in the water. The movement is initiated from the knees and you're going to go nowhere like this. So to summarize that, you got to keep your ankles floppy, the feet loose, and kicking from the hip. Pretend that you're kicking gum off of your shoe just like this. Kick it off. Kick it off. And see that? That ricochet from the hip causes a whip-like motion all the way down to the feet. Once you learn how to do this, you don't even have to think about it. So we went from the bottom and got to the middle of the body. Well, let's go from the other side and then again meet in the middle. So if we go from the top, that's our hands and fingers. A lot of swimmers make huge mistakes with how they initiate the catch with their finger position. Now there was a study at the University of Toulouse done that said the ideal width between your fingers is three to eight millimeters. Now that's because you actually can make your hand bigger in the water and when you pull, the water will not go through. You don't want to have your hand closed like this, stiff and cupped because you lose water doing that. And it's also the clenchingness of the hand will make you waste extra energy that is just good for nothing. So keep your hand loose upon entry and then when it enters, firm it up and pull massive amounts of water with a bigger hand. The next step is let's talk about the wrist. One of the biggest, most confusing things for people who are new to swimming is that they've heard that in swimming, the key is to remain relaxed. And that is so true. But there's also a point in your stroke where you have to firm up so that you can move water. And the key to firming the wrist is when you first enter your hand into the water. So many times you see people trying to have that relaxed mindset and when they come in for the catch, the wrist is limp and then they just lose water immediately. You can't do this guys. Your wrist needs to be nice and loose on the recovery as you're pulling through. But as soon as those fingertips enter the water, firm up the wrist so that you can have power in your catch. We've mentioned several fixes and I don't want you to feel overwhelmed because if you try to fix all those things at once, you will be overwhelmed. And I say you should not do that. That's why I want to introduce to you right now a cheat code. And this is something that when you get right, it will have a ripple effect on your entire freestyle. And that cheat code is getting maximum buoyancy in the water. How do you do that? You do that by having the mindset of being extremely extended in your freestyle at all times. That means at every point in your stroke, have your body stretched out to the max. When you're pulling, catching, kicking, everything needs to be stretched out. Your torso, your shoulders, your arms, and everything you do needs to be within that extended position. When you do this, your hips rise up, your kick stops dragging, you can pull more water because you're now in the correct position to do so. It's so important, guys. And one thing that I do with my swimmers when they start with me right away is something called the Superman Drill. Check it out. Now, if I want to show you how extended you need to be, I want you to take a look right here. I have a pull-up bar right here. And what you want to do to feel that extension is just simply hang from the pull-up bar, let gravity pull your weight down and see how extended your torso and my arms are. And if I put my head in the neutral position where it would be in the water, my back is totally flat. That's the position you want to be in when you're swimming. That's how you get more effortless. So we're going to do the drill that I believe is the most helpful in getting you to be extended and real floaty in the water. It's called the Superman Drill. So what we're going to do is we're going to kick on the wall, practicing that maximum extension that we did with the pull-up bar. Then I'm going to push away from the wall and I'm going to kick myself back all the while maintaining that extension. And you'll see as I stay extended, my body will stay right at the surface. And that's what we want. And guys, if you want to know your true swim potential in this moment, I want you to take my quiz and we'll give you a score to let you know. Look in the comments below, click the link, and find out. That's the secret, guys. When you have maximum buoyancy, swimming becomes so much easier. Master that and then fix one of those things that I mentioned one at a time. And when you do that, your swimming can just take off. And like I said, when you fix buoyancy, a lot of things just fall into place right away. Guys, now swimming technique is just half of the picture. Yes, it can provide instant speed when fixed, but the other half is actually training your swim fitness as well. They go hand in hand. Now, if you want to see how to train swimming exactly systematically, check out this video. And if you found value in this video, give us a like, subscribe to the channel. I'm Lucas Siska. Take care for now.