Do This to Float EFFORTLESSLY in Swimming (3 Easy Steps)

Perfect body position is the foundation of swimming. You want to stay high, flat and avoid sinking. If you want to glide and float effortlessly, here are my three steps and I guarantee that even if you are a natural sinker, too masculine or think you're too old, you're going to float. I'm Dasha, a former swimmer and a coach with over 15 years of professional swimming experience and in today's video I'll teach you how to float and glide in swimming. Let's go! Here's why you want to learn how to float and glide before learning how to swim. Your body in swimming will determine whether you go with ease through the water or you're going to sink and go down. Your body in swimming is like the scale when one part of your body is going to be up, the other part of your body is going to go down and the ideal body position to swim is to stay high and flat on the top of the water. You can reach that by practicing floating and gliding and to practice floating you need to be holding your breath because as soon as there is air in your lungs, you're going to stay high on the top of the water and you're going to stay buoyant and as soon as there is no air left in your lungs, you're going to go down. That's exactly why in freestyle or any other stroke your lungs are never empty, you're never dependent on that one breath. During this video we're going to practice three steps of floating and throughout the whole video throughout all these steps you need to be holding your breath because that's exactly how you're going to stay high and buoyant on the top of the water and by the way you can learn 30 different ways to improve your freestyle. It's absolutely for free and the link is down below. Let's go! Step number one dead man float. That's the easiest and the fastest way to learn how to float. If you are going to start with this dead man float, you're going to just hold your breath and gravitate on the top of the water. You don't need to do any excessive movements with your arms or with your legs. You're just going to take a deep breath, put your face and your body on the top of the water. You're going to be facing the bottom of the pool. You're going to hold your breath and you're going to just float. Make sure that you relax your body, that you relax your muscles, you're not tense and as soon as you have air remember you're going to stay high and you're going to float. When you don't have oxygen left in your lungs anymore, you're going to raise on the top of the water, inhale and repeat this again and again. I recommend doing this four to six times to be able to really feel how your body is moving in the water, how your body is floating in the water and by the way comment any question that you have related to swimming because our next video will be a Q&A session and don't miss this opportunity to get your question answered. So go and comment down below. Step number two, bowl float and bowl sink. This is a great drill because this is going to help you understand that as soon as there is air in your lungs, that air is going to hold your entire body on the top of the water and the way you're going to do the bowl floating drill is you're going to take a deep breath, you're going to bring your knees towards your chest, you're going to hug them and float on the top of the water. At the start you might go down a little bit or from side to side, that's totally fine. It doesn't mean that you can't float or you don't know how to float, you just need to find that sweet spot in that bowl position, not waddle and just really feel how your body is floating on the top of the water. Ideally you want to repeat this floating drill around four to six times. So you're going to again take a deep breath, hold your breath and float in the bowl position. Then raise back on the top of the water and repeat this six more times. And another great extension of this drill is bowl sinking drill. So almost the same like in the bowl float. So you're going to take a deep breath and hold it. You're going to bring your knees towards your chest, hug your body and float in a bowl position. But here you're going to exhale gradually and slowly. And when you start exhaling you're going to start to go slowly down and sink. You're not going to go down immediately. I want you to understand that you need to exhale around 50% of your air to be able to start sinking and to have that sinking feeling. And this drill is so amazing because it's going to teach you that feeling again that as soon as there is air in your lungs you're going to float. You're not going to just randomly go down. And the same applies when you're swimming. And another great thing that this drill is going to teach you is that you never want to excessively inhale or exhale in freestyle. You always want to keep your breathing as natural to your regular breathing as possible. So again you're never doing these breathing. You always want to keep it nice and easy and natural and never go beyond those 30%. Always make sure that you keep around 20 to 30% of air in your lungs. So imagine in this bowl sinking drill as soon as you're going down and you feel like you don't have air anymore you need to go back on the top of the water, raise back, inhale and repeat this sinking drill over and over again. And now if you need an exact structure to guide you from literally swimming zero from zero to swimming your first 500 meters or more I have a beginner swim course and you can check this down in the description below. Step number three streamline float. The fastest and least resistant position is the streamlined position in swimming. And that's why you should master streamlined position before moving to freestyle, swimming drills or lap swimming. Because if you don't get that if you don't learn that streamlined position early on you might be looking for other mistakes in swimming like breathing, sinking legs, over-rotation when the problem was streamlined position all along. And the way you're going to float in a streamlined position is very simple. I want you to be stretched out from the fingertips to your toes and I want you to have good posture when you're in a streamlined position. You're going to put one hand on the top of the other with the dominant hand being at the bottom and then you're going to lock this lock them together. For example if your right hand is dominant you're going to put that one on top of the other and then lock them together. Then you're going to bring both of your arms behind your head and behind your ears and you're going to be fully stretched out. I also want you to keep your knees straight, your core engaged, your belly in and with again as I said good posture you're going to be fully stretched. You're going to take a deep breath hold it and then float in this streamlined position. As soon as you run out of oxygen and you don't have air anymore you're going to raise back up. You're going to inhale again and again land on top of the water and float in a streamlined position. I want you to repeat this streamlined float at least six times because it's a super important position to be in when you're learning how to swim. Now as soon as you practice and master all these three floats, the deadman float, the ball float and ball sink and the streamlined float, the next step for you is the streamlined glide. The first step towards actual swimming, the freestyle swimming or any stroke. All those previous floats is you keeping your body in one spot and in one position. The streamlined glide is the same like streamlined float, it's just you're going to push yourself off the wall in a streamlined position and you're going to hold your breath and glide. You're going to slice through the water in that streamlined position. This is very important. Streamlined glide is a part of every stroke. It's a part of butterfly, it's a part of freestyle, breaststroke and freestyle. So it's really important for you to master this and to not ignore as you're learning how to swim. Learning how to float and glide is the first step. It's like a skewer on which you put vegetables and meat. If you don't master this body position, if you don't master how to float and you go straight away to lap swimming, straight away to practicing the drills, you're going to need to come back and practice body position because you won't be able to sit high and flat on the top of the water. So don't ignore gliding, don't ignore streamlined body position as you're learning how to swim and check my other video where gliding and floating is a huge part of it. That video is teaching you how to swim from zero to 500 meters or more. Check that video, go swim and see you in the next one!