The Secret To Proper Freestyle Swimming Without Getting Exhausted

The first and most important thing we have to understand about freestyle is our body positioning. Body position. And as Faris has beautifully demonstrated and already drawn on our board here, a beautiful person swimming, as you can see the body positioning of this person, Faris, would you say is good or bad? The one I have drawn is actually really good. I'm drawing the improper body position and you can see the difference already. It starts with the head position. So Coach Leo said the most important thing is the body position, but that starts with where your head is and look at where the eyes are. So what's the difference, Coach Leo, between the two heads and where they're looking? Just before we move on to body position, I think there are two very important things that everyone must understand in a swimming world is that there are only two ways in which you can swim faster. And one of those is to decrease drag, which is what body position ties into. So as you can see, as Faris has drawn here, if you are sinking in the water, your legs are low, your hips are low, your chest is low, and you're dragging yourself through the water immediately, you are creating lots and lots and lots of unnecessary drag. So that's the number one thing we have to fix. The closer we can get to the water surface, the less resistance we are going to create and the easier it's going to be for us to swim. And as Faris has already started, please Faris, tell us what is that? Water is 800 times more dense than air. So this isn't a small thing. When your legs are sinking and you're creating all this excess drag, you're literally making yourself slower because it's not just air that's slowing you down. It's the And like Coach Leo was just saying, it starts with the head position, but there are only two ways to get faster. So the primary focus of this illustration is to show you what happens when you're creating a lot of drag. The second way to swim faster is by increasing propulsion. We're going to come to that later. But first, let's focus on the head position. So Coach Leo, what's the difference between these two head positions? So of course, we don't want our head to either be too low, but at the same time, we don't want our head to be high. The best way I like to think about it is to think of your body and yourself standing outside of the water. So for example, if I was to ask you to stand and look directly out in front of you, that's the same body position you want to transfer in the water. So for example, you would never stand there and look up like this at the same time. You'd never stand there and look down at the bottom. You'd look directly out in front of you, which is your neutral, most comfortable, efficient body position, which is the exact same thing you want in the water. So for example, the head here, which Faris has drawn, is obviously too low. So we want our head to be right in line with the water surface, but we want our eyes to also be looking directly down at the bottom of the pool to make sure our head is in the right position and our eyes are looking down. Yeah, so if you see here, the head that is in the lower position, eyes are on the bottom. The head that is lifted up, eyes are looking forward. Remember, the wall is not going anywhere. So instead, you want to be looking down, if not a little bit forward, but you definitely don't want to be looking forward like that. And if you lift your head up, your legs are going to sink. What do you think happens if you get your eyes looking down? Your legs are going to go up and you're going to be swimming a lot more quickly. Now, the other thing you want to keep in mind is not just your body position, but what's happening with your hands. Let's talk about technique. When your fingertips enter the water, I already gave it away, but what fingers should enter the water first when you're swimming? Your middle finger and your ring finger should be the two fingers you should be aiming for to enter the water. If you look at your hand, all your fingers are a different length. The middle finger is the longest and that's most in line with the rest of your arm. So if you enter the water with your middle finger, if not ring finger, because a lot of people enter the water with their thumb, which is a mistake, because that's not how you're going to pull the water anyway. So you want to enter the water with your middle finger, extend, glide, and then what happens, coach? Once that's in the water, then we can start to set up our catch, get into our early vertical forearm position. So our goal is to try and get our forearm and our hand to phase behind us as quickly as possible, because that's when we can start creating propulsion and we can start moving forward. And the longer it takes us to get into that position, then we're just sending a lot of unnecessary water down, which is then going to make us go up, which is something we want to avoid. Our goal is to go forward and forward only. It's also very important to understand that everything in swimming is almost like a domino effect. So something as simple as just entering the water in an incorrect position can cause a lot of things to go south. I want to talk about this early vertical forearm and some drills that can improve the catch so we can improve propulsion. But before we talk about catch drills, let's talk about the legs real quick. What is the ideal kick in freestyle? When we kick on freestyle, there's two very important things that need to be noted. First of all, we do not want a kick that's either too big or too small. It's all about balance when we kick. And we also don't want a kick that is very stiff and rigid. Swimming is all about fluidity and being friends and being in one with the water. So if you are stiffening up your ankles, stiffening up your legs, stiffening up your hips, trying to kick huge, trying to get too small, your kick is simply not going to work. What would you say is the best size and the best something to aim for in a kick on freestyle? You want to keep your feet within one foot, so half a meter or less. So if you're kicking more than a full meter, which a lot of people are actually, it's creating too much drag. If you're kicking too small and your legs are barely moving, you're not creating any propulsion. So in the imperial system, about one foot of amplitude, 12 inches between your heel and your toe, about half a meter or less, and that's going to be the ideal kick size. Nice. And what do you think about the fluidity and the flexibility of your ankles when you kick? Your toes need to be pointed. A big mistake a lot of swimmers make when it comes to the flutter kick for both freestyle and backstroke is bending their knees too much. The kick originates from your hips, so that way your legs are almost completely straight. If you bend your knees, yes, your amplitude is going to be a lot bigger and you might feel like you're kicking more water, but in reality, you're just creating more resistance that you're not going to be able to make up in the added propulsion that you created. And I think another very good way to think of your kick coming from your hips is almost like you have a loose bolt that's holding your leg onto your hips. So your leg is just hanging from that bolt and your leg is staying nice and relaxed. You don't want it screwed too tight because that's the point at which your legs are going to start to tighten up and it's not going to help you swim faster. So just loose bolt inside of your hip, keeping your legs nice and loose is going to really, really help you create lots of propulsion and help you have a nice fast kick. Perfect. Let's talk about the freestyle catch. What are some drills that swimmers can do immediately to get better at the catch and pull more water? So I actually have a variation and a little progression of my favorite early vertical forearm drills. And I like to call the first one short dog, the second one long dog, and then you can transfer that into either number 11 catch-up or full stroke freestyle, but essentially starting out in your number 11 position where you are just getting the initial catch phase and the initial getting into the right position to set up your catch. And then you come in right back into your number 11 position. So you basically start off arms out in front. Your goal is to get your fingertips down towards the bottom of the surface, get your forearm and your hand to face back behind you. And once you've done that, come straight back into your number 11 and repeat the same thing with the other arms. You are just teaching your body and teaching your brain to get in the right position every single time. And then of course you can start to translate that into your full stroke later on. But I think the most important and the hardest part that swimmers struggle with is just that initial catch and getting that elbow up. I think one of the most common mistakes is swimmers allowing their elbow to drop. So just really building those habits and getting that elbow up every single time is very, very important. Fist drill, as easy as it sounds, you make your hand into a fist. It decreases the amount of surface area that you have. So it forces you to pull with your forearm. Just a quick recap, EVF stands for early vertical forearm. The reason why this is so important is because a lot of swimmers only focus on pulling with their hand. When you put your hand in a fist or maybe you grab like a golf ball or a tennis ball, it really isolates that feeling on your forearm and that makes you a more efficient swimmer. So it's really important that you incorporate these drills, whether it's short dog, long dog, fist drill, almost on a daily basis. And that's going to really help you improve your swimming. Now, when it comes to actual race strategy, let's say you're trying to go fast. Maybe you don't even need to go to a race. What are some things that swimmers should be doing? Let's go 50 meter freestyle, 200 meter freestyle and 1500 meter freestyle. So if you're going all out sprint or maybe a mid distance, what are some things that swimmers really need to think about when it comes to swimming freestyle fast in each of those distances? Well, my number one rule for any drills or skills or anything you're trying to learn is first of all, you have to learn how to do something slowly before you attempt to do it quickly at intensity and volume. I think this is a huge mistake that swimmers make. They try to rush into swimming, racing too quickly before they've actually perfected a skill at a slow, easy pace. So one of my favorite ways to kind of progress that is do descending swimming. So for example, you start off, we did a little bit of that today at the camp. We're just starting off 450s, first one, super easy, just recapping the skills and the drills that we've just done and then slowly progressing down to race speed. So you cannot just go from doing something super slowly to go into the other extreme of doing something really, really fast at race speed. So it should always be a kind of a pyramid of slowly building those skills and slowly building that race strategy to then doing it in a race or at training for example. In terms of the 50 freestyle, you really need to focus on breath control because this is a race, even if you can't do the 50 no breath, you need to limit the amount that you're breathing so you can increase your tempo. You lose a lot of speed when you take a breath. Yes, you need oxygen, but you also need to keep a high level of intensity with your arms as well as your kick. When you move into the 200, it becomes a lot more about rhythm and pacing. So that way, if you're trying to go fast for a 200 or a 400, you want to make sure you're training at that specific race speed and stroke type. So it means you're breathing every two strokes, maybe every three, maybe every four, but probably every two with a pretty high level of intensity and a strong kick. When you move into a longer distance, say a 1500 or anything over a thousand meters, now it's a lot less about the kick, a lot more about a consistent rhythm. You want to feel comfortable, good distance per stroke, but the intensity is still there. So whether you're assuming a 50, 200 or a 1500, like coach Leo said, it's extremely important that you focus on assuming the mechanics correctly when you're swimming slow, so that way you can swim faster. Now, if you enjoyed this breakdown of how to swim perfect freestyle, you're going to love our analysis and breakdown of all the other strokes. We'll see you over there and happy swimming.