Four Exercises To Perfect Your Swimming Skills - A Swimming Guide For Beginners

Alrighty Rocketeers, in this beginner swim guide, you'll learn how to tread water, stand up from a horizontal position, float, and breathe properly. First, I'll teach you how to tread water. Whether you're in the ocean, a lake, or a pool, I want to remind you to always have a lifeguard, coach, or instructor present. Someone trained in CPR who can assist you. I recommend this whenever you're practicing anything in the But I strongly suggest it for treading water because it isn't efficient. It's exhausting and can be dangerous for beginners. Remember the buddy system, okay? Treading water has two parts. Your arms and your legs. Use your arms to scull or push water down. Think of it like frosting a cake or directing a choir. Press the water with your palms. And sweep them back to the center. Press to the side. Sweep back to the middle. Over and over. If you keep at it, you might even create a whirlpool above your forearm like this. Now, the most common mistake beginners make with their arms here is spreading them way too wide. Keep them closer to your body. Keep your elbows bent. Don't keep them straight out like this. Use small movements with your hands, okay? Don't overreach. Smaller hand movements are easier to maintain. The next part of treading water is your legs. Now, your legs do an eggbeater kick. An eggbeater is like a breaststroke kick, but one leg at a time. You're pushing water downwards using your inner shins, calves, and ankles, okay? Watch my legs underwater to see how I trap the with the inside of my legs and press it toward the pool floor. I'm also hinging at my hips and knees. I press my knee down first, then my ankle, whipping through the water. At this point, it's vital to keep your knees toward your chest or have your thighs near your belly. If your legs are too far from your body here, you might start to sink because your body is vertical. And being vertical puts your weight straight down. If you curl up a bit, your weight stays centered in your core rather than spreading out, which causes sinking. So keep your knees close to your chest or your belly. Keep your hands close in too. My last tip for treading water is to lean forward slightly. Push your hips back a bit and lean forward. It makes it much easier. If you try to stay perfectly upright, I already have to kick harder just by changing my position. This is harder for me. I won't last long. But if I angle my face forward and my hips back, it's much easier for me to tread water longer because I have more surface area spread across the water. So remember, while treading water, the three keys are small hand movements, pushing the water downward, keeping your legs tucked as you kick with your inner shins, and leaning slightly forward. And you'll be treading water easily. All right, let's move on to the second drill, which is how to stand up after swimming horizontally, whether on your back or belly. When you're on your back, the best move is to sit up in the water like you're sitting up in bed. Drop your hips beneath your belly, tuck your knees to your chest, and lift your head. Let me show you. Watch this. Lift your head in the water, sink your hips, and tuck your knees to your chest. Once you're here, you'll find you can just place your feet on the bottom. Let me show you again. While floating on your back, lift your head, bring your hips under your belly, and tuck your knees to your chest. You can also push the water downward with your hands. That helps. Pushing the water downward with your hands also helps you get up without splashing water in your face. So, I push the water down, lift my head, sink my hips under my belly, and tuck my knees to my chest. Then you just plant your feet on the ground. On your belly, first tuck your knees into your chest, then lift your head. So the order is slightly different. Tuck your knees to your chest first, then lift your head and press down on the water. I recommend starting with your hands out in front, not behind. So, floating on my belly with hands in front, I'll draw my knees to my chest first, then lift my head. From there, I'll stand up and plant my feet flat. Let me show you again. Draw your knees to your chest, lift your head, and place your feet flat on the ground. Next, let's look at floating for survival and relaxation. We'll learn how to float on your back and stomach. Beginners usually struggle to float because they feel their legs sinking and they think that isn't floating. It's fine if your legs sink a little. Your leg muscles are heavy. They'll sink naturally in the water. I'll teach you how to keep them up today. First, when you're floating on your back, make sure your lungs are full of air. Without a full breath of air, you'll have a harder time staying up. Your lungs act like air balloons, keeping you at the water's surface. So take a really deep breath. Fill your lungs completely and release. When on your back, don't exhale fully. Just release. About halfway, then refill. Let it out halfway, refill. The tank. Watch me. I'm on my back, taking a deep breath, watch my body rise. Now I'll exhale completely and watch me sink. I need to keep air in my lungs to stay afloat. So this time I'll only exhale halfway. Watch, deep breath, body rises. I'll let it out halfway, then hold. Notice I don't go underwater, but you won't want to hold it halfway. You'll want to breathe it back in. Body comes up. Let it out halfway, breathe back in. Now, you don't need to be as aggressive with your breathing as I am for demonstration, so you can see and hear it. When on my back, I want to be relaxed. It'll look like this once you've mastered it. As you can see, my face stays dry. My nose and mouth stay dry. The water might cover my ears, but that's okay. If you get a tickle in your ears and it's uncomfortable, you might try putting your face straight down in the water first, because when you come up with your face down, the water usually spills out of your ears and feels better. Well, once you're used to that feeling, resume your practice. Alright, at this point, you may have seen my hands and feet moving a little bit underwater, maybe fluttering. That's because now we'll learn how to keep your legs up. Earlier I mentioned it's hard to keep your legs up without moving in the water. That's because objects in motion tend to stay in motion. So if you're moving, that momentum will lift you to the surface and keep you there if you keep going. If you stop, your body will sink below the surface again. So keep your momentum. Watch me on my back. If I don't kick at all, my legs sink. But if I kick lightly, they stay up. I'm barely trying and can do this indefinitely. You just flutter your feet lightly to push water down, keeping your hips and feet up. Watch again, I'll move a bit faster. I'll pick up the pace because that keeps my legs even higher. Once you master that, you can really get moving, make some real progress, and that's a great place to start training. If you ever want to swim laps, that's the best place to start. Kicking on your back while breathing, getting comfortable in the water without feeling overwhelmed, okay? Now, my hands are doing something similar. They're also fluttering in the water. I'm waving goodbye to my feet to push water down and back, keeping my body afloat. I get comments on my channel from people saying, I'm too muscular. Or my friend is, or my husband is. It's okay. You can be muscular and still float. You just need to keep moving more. You'll need more momentum than others. But it's possible. So my hands will redirect the water down toward my feet. You don't need to splash. Actually, the higher your hands are, the more you'll sink, okay? You don't want them too high. Keep them just below the surface. If they splash a little, that's fine, but you're waving at your feet, pushing water back and down to stay afloat. Many people float with their arms out to the side like this. That does work. Especially if you spread your legs too, to increase your surface area. But you'll still start to sink eventually. So I don't mind that. I prefer keeping your arms closer in, where they're more effective. As you paddle, so, your hands and feet gently redirect water back and down, keeping you at the surface. The momentum you get from paddling and kicking also helps keep you at the surface. So if you struggle with sinking legs, or feel like you just can't float, and nothing else has worked, just remember to keep your lungs full. Keep paddling gently with your hands, and kicking lightly with your feet. The final part of floating is your head position. Your head is key in the water. It acts like a car steering wheel. Your body follows wherever your head turns. Turn left, and you'll go left. Turn right, and you'll go right. Push it down, and you'll sink. Lift it up, and your body rises until gravity pulls you. Back under. So, keep your chin slightly elevated on your back. Tip your forehead toward the water, if some trickles. Over your forehead, that's fine. That's actually the thing. Watch closely. I'll drop my chin. And you'll see me sink, okay? Now, I'll keep my chin up. And you'll see me float, okay? With your head up like this. It's like a front quadrant position, which balances your body further back. Since your legs are heavy, your head needs to counterbalance them. So I tilt my head back. Like I said, a little water on your forehead is fine. Once you improve, try streamlined kicking, which is tricky, as it may feel less balanced. But in theory, arms behind you actually create more balance. With your chin that high, you might feel upside down. That's okay. That's the feeling you want, because being on your back is the opposite of being on your belly. On your belly, you want to feel like you're swimming downhill. On your back, you also want to feel like you're swimming downhill. Just upside down, okay? You might feel a bit disoriented, which takes getting used to, but that's fine. Just keep pressing your chin up. Keep air in your lungs. Don't lift your head out of the water. Because the moment you lift your head out, because your head is as heavy as a bowling ball, it will pull the rest of your body down. Watch me. It's not easy. I was almost able to hold it. But it's definitely not easy. And unless you are a swimmer who has competed for 17 years, it won't be easy for you either. The last drill is how to breathe. Mostly for freestyle, but also breaststroke. Many struggle with breathing to the side, while swimming, or breathing in front, or in any form at all. They struggle to catch their breath in the water. Today I'll teach you how to take a breath during each stroke while swimming or floating on your belly. The most common mistake beginners make is needing multiple breaths without realizing it. It means they haven't learned to pace their air to get one sharp breath every time they lift their head up. That is what we'll learn first. We won't do side breathing yet, just taking one breath at a time. We'll start with a kickboard, needing two breaths. Then put your face back in the water. And keep kicking. Take two more breaths. Face down and keep kicking. Once you've mastered two breaths, try moving to one breath. So, keep kicking until you need air. Lift your head, breathe, face down. If you find yourself stopping your kick while doing this, that's fine. It's quite common. Try to keep kicking through your breaths. That'll be key once we add the arms. Since you're doing two things at once, breathing and kicking, adding arms makes it three things. Now let's learn the pineapple. The pineapple helps you breathe on your back. We'll take a step back now to let you take more than one breath at a time again. So when you roll onto your back to breathe, it's fine to take two, three, or four breaths. Take as many as you need to feel comfortable. And then roll back onto your belly. Now, when you roll onto your back to pineapple, take one breath and one breath only. Once you've got that breath, roll back to your belly and keep swimming. When you roll onto your back, keep one arm extended behind you. With that arm behind you, you'll catch your breath quicker and swim more easily. It also keeps your body balanced. Front quadrant swimming is always our goal for balance. It helps counteract any sinking legs you might have. Now, instead of rolling fully onto your back, just roll onto your side. Keep one arm extended out front and roll. Try taking two breaths here. Once you've Exhale underwater, inhale to the side, cutting your breathing time in half. So when your arm swings overhead, no water splashes your face. When breathing to the side in freestyle, try not to lift your head up or show your ear or your legs will sink. Keep your head on your arm, ear on your shoulder, one goggle in the water, one goggle out, maybe both eyes, but keeping your head low. Is the key. You don't need to lift your head out. I've found that when people lift their heads up, they often choke. Since your mouth is on your chin, not your forehead. If you lift your forehead, your chin drops. Keep your forehead tilted down so your chin pops up. The last step for freestyle breathing is making sure you breathe slightly behind you. Most people breathe in front of them or partially to the side. I prefer you breathe to the side and slightly behind you. Now, if you aren't ready for this yet or find it a bit too challenging, then start with a breaststroke breath. Most find it easier since it's in front, which feels more natural for us. People like to see where they're heading. They prefer breathing forward, not behind. That's perfectly fine. If you prefer that, start there. It's also simpler since you can take two breaths if needed without feeling panic. Once you're good at that, exhale underwater, take one breath above the surface, and you'll feel very smooth. The only downside to the breaststroke breath is that you're lifting your head out of the water. That will cause your legs to sink. So unless you have a strong breaststroke kick or are a competent swimmer, you might find it challenging too. But I still recommend you give it a try. Once you have your air, put your head back down underwater and between your arms to let your body rise to the surface. Thanks for watching. If you liked it, splash that like button. 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