PERFECT Freestyle Technique It's Easy

Have you been putting in the work, practicing the drills, and working on your swimming technique, but still can't crack on what's really stopping you from swimming faster and longer distances? Is it your breathing, your kick, or your technique? And what is it actually a perfect swimming technique? Your coach probably told you if you have a good technique, you'll swim so fast you won't believe it. But how do you actually put all the parts together to have the technique that will get you there? I'm Dasha, a former swimmer and a coach with over a decade of swimming experience. And today, I'm not only going to help you build a solid technique, but also will break down exactly what to focus on to achieve the smoothest swim of your life. Let's get you swimming. With every sport out there, we tend to think how to get fit, how to be fast, or how to do it for a long period of time. The thing is to do all of these things in swimming, you have to be able to set up a good technique first. The first and the most important thing to actually perfect your technique is to connect with the water. Understand that it's not the same as moving through the air. It's a totally different environment. We don't naturally spend lots of time in the water, which means moving through it is going to take some time and effort to learn. So don't slap the water, don't move your arms and legs pointlessly, and definitely don't fight the water. As cheesy as it sounds, when you're swimming, the water is your best friend. Understand how to work together, how to sync your moves with the water, and that's going to be a huge unlock for your swimming. Another part of a perfect swimming technique is swimming high. The ideal position in the water is staying as high on the surface as possible with almost no water on your back. Remember that your body will move through the water with a twice fast speed if you're staying high on the surface of the water. It's easier to set up your head position first, keep it straight and connected with your spine in a straight line. Make sure you don't raise your head out of the water because this is going to cause you your high body position to immediately drop down. So again, remember head low and straight, body high, and you'll glide through the water like butter. Your pull is the reason you move as much or as little in swimming. If you don't set up your catch for success and the catch is the start of your stroke, your pull won't be as strong. Focus on a long catch with your fingertips going forward and then slightly pointing down. Don't enter the water with your elbow first because this is going to cause you a dropped elbow in the water and from there you won't be able to pull that much water, although you will be working really hard. Keep in mind that your elbow has to always stay above your hand in the water, in and out of the water, both in and out. The essential part of your pull is the back of your stroke, your back pull. If you look at the swimmers you'll see that all the power and the movement come from the back of their stroke and for that reason don't try to cut your stroke short because you'll be skipping the juiciest part of your stroke, the one that actually pushes you forward. So remember to always finish your stroke by your hip with your arms straight. Here's a perfect saying, by the way, created by me. Cut your stroke and they will cut you off. This one is actually controversial and some coaches might not agree with me. Bilateral breathing, in other words, breathing on both sides isn't a must. To learn and to be confident with breathing on your right and on your left is great and it's a valuable skill, but unless you're truly fast you're breathing on both sides, I recommend sticking to one side only. With that being said, bilateral breathing still has to be practiced in around 10% of your session just to have more comfort and confidence in case you really don't have an option to breathe on your dominant side. But if swimming with bilateral breathing is slower than breathing on one side, then why to stick to something that doesn't bring you the best optimal result you could possibly have. However, if you swim faster and have better stamina with bilateral breathing, do that. At the end of the day it's what you feel the most optimal for your overall performance. You think about all the parts of your stroke at once but still can't seem to connect all of them together. Because swimming is such a technical sport you might find it really difficult to think about all the parts of your stroke at once and this can actually result into not actually improving anything. So the best and the fastest way to improve your technique as a whole is to practice one single thing at a time. Let's say you're going to start with breathing and for that I'll leave the link down below. And until you really can breathe without panicking, comfortably inhale and exhale. Hold your breath. Put your face and your head under the water. Don't move to the next step because you'll spend months or even years trying to perfect your stroke or your rotation or your kick when the actual problem is your breathing. My point is master one thing and then the other. Then try to sync the two of them together and once that feels good move to the third thing. And believe it or not you'll be swimming with great technique before you know it. And if you want to learn more about swimming YouTube will recommend the video right here. Go check that and then go swim. See you guys!