Category Archives: Tutorials

Floating backstroke technique.

Floating backstroke technique.

 

Today we will focus on backstroke.

If you are not comfortable swimming backstroke it may be because you feel uneasy about water getting in your ears and in your nose.

 




To feel more relaxed try this:

Put your swim cap covering your ears, it won’t exactly prevent the water from coming in, but it will make it more difficult.

Then put your feet or toes on the wall or the lane line and breathe deeply and hold it.

Put your arms by your side and move them gently.

 




To find the correct position of your spine and head try bending in a hollow position and see how it is more difficult to float like this:

Then do the opposite by arching your back and see how your head sinks:

Don’t forget to blow bubbles if this happens or use a nose clip.

Then just relax and float as your body gets used to the neutral position of your head and spine.

 




Give it a try and let me know how it goes in the comment section!

See you next time!

Swim fast!

By Emiliano Mora

Last updated Jan. 4, 2023



Edited by:

Emiliano Mora







5 Freestyle drills to help you swim smooth

5 Freestyle drills to help you swim smooth.

 


It does not matter if you are a beginner or an elite swimmer, you can always benefit from doing drills, that is because your stroke will never be perfect.

 

Having said that, there are some common mistakes that most of us do during our freestyle technique. So we will go over some drills to fix them.

 

 

 




Finger-tip drag.

This drill will help you keep a high elbow when you recover the arm. This will also help you feel the water and give you immediate feedback as to where your hand is entering the water. You should also keep a relaxed wrist and fingers to save up energy.

This high elbow recovery is the most effective way to carry your arm back in front.

 

3 strokes and glide.

Gliding is an important part of the stroke, specially in distances over a 100. Doing 3 strokes and gliding for about 6 kicks will help you improve your gliding position.

Notice the position of your hands and head and adjust if they are causing frontal drag.

 

Glide-rotate-glide.

Some of us don’t rotate enough. This goes hand in hand with the gliding. You need a good rotation in order to glide and to grab more water with each stroke.

So practice gliding and rotating your shoulders, then come back and rotate again before taking your next stroke.

 

 

 

 




 

Underwater recovery.

This will help you feel the frontal drag. It will help your body understand the importance of the pull.

Try to optimize your pull by grabbing all the water you can while reducing the frontal drag of your other arm by positioning your hand to be always pointing to the front.

 

Sculling High elbow.

To pull water backwards from the beginning of your stroke, you must have a high elbow on the first part of the stroke.

So, try sculling three times and not moving your elbow.

Just use your forearm and hands. Then do a normal stroke to change arms.

Swim fast!

By Emiliano Mora

Last updated Jan. 4, 2023

 






Edited by:

Emiliano Mora and Bruno Moreno Gutiérrez







Different freestyle techniques.

Different freestyle techniques.

 

How to swim a freestyle race


Freestyle technique can change according to the distance you are swimming.

We will talk about some general differences of the stroke at different speeds.

 

Sprint.

In a 50 freestyle your arms should spin as fast as they can, but also grabbing as much water as possible.

The legs play a very important part of sprinting freestyle technique, you should be kicking at full speed, you should be splashing water all over, the faster you kick the easier it will be to move your arms, you should not be taking a lot of breaths.




 

Middle – Distance

If you’re swimming the 100 or the 200 freestyle, however, you should get into a smoother technique. You should be in a very fast pace but a more rhythmic one, a fast pace that you can hold on for the whole race.

You should breathe every 2 or 3 strokes, whatever is more comfortable to you, your legs are still kicking strongly but not as much as in the 50 freestyle. The difference between a 100 and a 200, is that the 200 has a little bit of strategy; you need to plan when to use your full speed and when to pace yourself.

The 100 is more of a steady pace around 95% of your strength and then close with what is left at the last 10 meters.




 

Distance.

The 400, 800 and 1500 are swam in a very different stroke technique. Swimmers use the legs very little, the reason behind this, is that the legs use up a lot of oxygen in your blood, if you have them close to the surface by doing small timely kicks you can swim longer distances in a constant speed.

However, this only works if you have a high horizontal position in the water, if your legs sink even a few inches then you probably have to kick a little bit more.

The arms will do most of the work here, so you must get into a rhythm gliding the right amount for your stroke rhythm.




While you are practicing in the pool you should try all these different techniques at different paces, you will start to see how you adapt to each one by repetition.

By Raul, Mauricio Uranga & Emiliano Mora Last updated Nov. 24, 2022

Swim fast!



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Cristiano Ronaldo Vs Swimming

  Cristiano Ronaldo Vs Swimming    

by Bruno Moreno


If you are a high-performance athlete, swimming is a must in your preparation and performance, because it helps athletes like you to recover faster, gain muscle and maintain a good aerobic basis. 

__________________________________________________________________

The initial reasons of why we recommended swimming training to athletes that did not know how to swim: 

  1. Fastest recovery: makes a better blood flow, allowing the fast recovery of damaged muscles. 

  2. Endurance on your competitions 

  3. Focus on your goals 

  4. Facilitates Rehabilitation 

Swimming is a good way to improve endurance and it is recommended for those who already have the experience in the sport. Otherwise, the best recovery method for any athlete in the world is sleeping. 

Altitude training: 

The lack of oxygen makes athletes to develop more red cells and the adaptation to less oxygen increases your stamina. 

Is Swimming for everyone? 

Swimming is not really recommended to endurance athletes like runners or cyclists, they will just get tired and the impact of swimming will only affect their current sport. 

Cristiano Ronaldo uses swimming to increase his core strength by implementing kicking and short swimming periods in his training. This makes him a more explosive athlete.

His training is innovative and allows him to grow muscle faster!

 

Last update: May, 2022




 



Written by:

Bruno M

Professional Sports Analyst and Journalist








How tall are swimmers?

How tall are swimmers? 

 


Short Vs Tall Swimmers 

 

Swimming is a sport determined by just a few hundreds of a second. Swimmers can become Olympic Champions for a lifetime by just a 0.01 difference. It is very close!

 

This being said, professional swimmers have looked to take advantage of all variables they can control, one of them being a natural gift: height.

 

 

 

Some of the tallest swimmers that have participated at the Olympics are: 

 

Matt Grevers – USA 

Height: 203 cm

 

Gustavo Borges – BRA

Height: 203 cm 

 

Yannick Agnel – FRA 

Height: 202 cm

 

(SwimSwam, 2021) 

 

 

Something that Matt Grevers and Agnel have in common is that they both won Olympic Gold at the 2012 London Olympic Games. In their respective races they both dominated the entire field. Matt broke the Olympic Record in the 100 backstroke, while Agnel posted the fastest time in the textile suit era. Until this day, no swimmer has been closer to Agnel’s winning time of the 200 freestyle in 2012.  

 





Does Swimming make you taller? 

The answer is: NO. SWIMMING DOES NOT MAKE SWIMMERS TALLER.  It helps with the coordination of the body, however, the height is related more to genetics. 

The height gives swimmers a big competitive advantage and therefore they are able to swim times that might look impossible for other people. 

 

Men’s 100 free final at Tokyo 2021: 

12.5% of swimmers in the final were shorter than 190 cm. Sprinters are characterized to be taller and the Olympics were not the exemption (Olympics, 2021). 

 




Watch the video to see more details!

Last updated May, 2022






Written by:

Bruno M

Professional Sports Analyst and Journalist







Freestyle kick and body streamline position.

Freestyle kick and body streamline position.


The kick during freestyle should be something natural that you do without thinking about it.

To improve your freestyle kick to the point where you no longer have to think about it, you need to perfect it by doing drills every day, and the best way is to separate the kick and the stroke, to do that, you will need a kickboard.

If you don’t have a kickboard, you can do flutter kick on your back.

The first you need to focus, and this is something you have probably heard before is the ankle flexibility.




Here it is shown the difference between kicking on dorsiflexion and planta flexion.

As you can see, he doesn’t go forward at all when his ankles are flexed like this:

As soon as he changes them, he starts moving forward:

This means that the ankles can act as a parachute or as fins, depending on your flexibility.

Here is a good ankle stretch to prepare your ankles for a better kick:

One problem with the kick board is that it puts your head out of line, and therefore the legs can sink a little. This is not a natural position of your head when you swim




So, try kicking with kickboard like this:

You can put up your head to breathe like in breaststroke or butterfly, you will be doing your neck and your freestyle position a favor.

You can also simply kick on your back with a streamline.

Finally, you will notice that the kick is not wide, the wider the kick the more effort you will need to move forward, so, focus on doing small kicks, trying to bend your knees very little.

The hips will move a little because this is where the legs will initiate the movement.

Swim fast!

By Mauricio Uranga & Emiliano Mora

Last updated May. 04, 2022






Edited by:

Emiliano Mora







Smooth freestyle.

Smooth Freestyle.


 

Knowing how to swim smooth freestyle is essential for lap swimmers, triathletes, open water swimmers, water polo players, CrossFit athletes and basically anyone wanting to swim as a workout.




Position of the body.

The first thing to note is the position of the body.

The more horizontal your body is the easier it will be to swim without a lot of resistance.

The main issue people have is that their legs sink. To compensate they start kicking faster, then they get tired and their legs sink.

The reason the legs sink, and the upper body floats is the lungs.

The lungs of a beginner are always full.

This causes the upper body to float more and the legs to sink. It is better to have just enough air in the lungs to do a few strokes and exhale underwater before taking a small breath. This will sink your head and upper body a little making it easier to lift your hips. To master this technique, it is essential to know how to breathe properly.




Reduce drag.

The next thing to master is to reduce excess drag.

Advanced swimmers use very little energy to go forward while swimming smooth freestyle. This is because they have reduced the drag of their bodies as much as possible.

One big part of it is the legs.

Try to avoid bending your knees too much.

For smooth freestyle doing a few narrow kicks, maybe one or two per stroke, should be enough to keep your legs afloat.

Finally point your ankles in plantar flexion, this will reduce your drag a substantial amount, and will help you swim smoothly. This exercise will help you swim a smoother freestyle.

By having your arm above the water for a longer stretch of time, you will struggle to find a way to stay afloat and use the muscles necessary to counter act that. You will also create a correct pathway with your hand in the recovery stage.

If you want to take your smooth freestyle to the next level work on your core. It will give you stabilization for a better horizontal position. Work also on your flexibility, this will give you a better range of motion and reduce drag.

Swim smooth!

Emiliano Mora

Swimmer




 



Edited by:

Emiliano Mora and Bruno Moreno Gutiérrez 







Freestyle Rotation Drills.

FREESTYLE ROTATION DRILLS.


Drills that will help you rotate properly.

1. No arms

Is very similar to freestyle but without using your arms.

Since you don’t have to worry about your arms you can focus on the rotation better.

Try this exercise by kicking strongly.

You will find that without the arms it is more difficult to stay afloat.

If you find it to distracting to stay on the surface and you want to just focus on the rotation, try using fins

To do this exercise correctly you need to keep your head still, moving it only to breathe

You will notice that the most challenging part is to keep kicking normally since your legs will also be rotating with your whole body.

This is the part that you actually need to master with this drill.

Once you get a hold of kicking while rotating you can move on the next exercise.

 




2. One arm

It is basically the same exercise but this time you add the motion of one arm.

With this exercise you will practice breathing to one side and using the opposite arm and you will also practice using your other arm and breathing to the other side.

Yes! You know that one side that you don’t usually use?

You will practice it like this.

It is good to breathe to both sides because the rotation will be more symmetrical.




3. Freestyle pause.

Finally, the third exercise is freestyle with a pause.

This exercise will make it obvious how much you are rotating.

If you don’t rotate enough you will slow down fast

If you do rotate you will glide through the water better.

Remember to keep your head still looking at a 45-degree angle, moving your head quickly just to take a breath.

It is recommended doing these drills some time during warm up or right after warming up so you can swim better in the main set.

When you swim at full speed try to remember the feeling of these rotation exercises and apply it to your normal swim.

 

Swim fast!

If you want to learn more about our tutorials, you can go here

Last updated Feb. 20, 2022






Edited by:

Emiliano Mora and Bruno Moreno Gutiérrez 







Front Crawl Breathing Common Mistake

Front Crawl Breathing Common Mistake

 


Today’s tip is called chest breathing

Many people, usually beginners tend to turn their heads too far and it causes all sorts of problems like body rotation and head position, that causes a very poor technique of proper upper-body movements.

Advanced swimmers don’t use their neck muscles to take a breath and that is the secret. They just rotate their imaginary “shoulder line” Instead as it is shown below:




If you do use your neck to breath, this tip is going to help you.

Picture a mouth on your chest that needs to take a breath.

Remember that Exaggeration will help you feel the difference between the wrong and the right way of doing any type of technique exercises.




So, exaggerate the rotation and without moving your neck rotate until your chest is out of the water and take a breath there.

You can pause your arms while you do this.

Then go back to normal freestyle and try rotating your chest to breathe instead of your neck.

Swim fast!

If you want to learn more about our tutorials, you can go here

Last updated Feb. 19, 2022






Edited by:

Emiliano Mora and Bruno Moreno Gutiérrez 







2 Tips on Breathing for Beginners

2 TIPS ON BREATHING FOR BEGINNERS


To help you swim freestyle faster

If you are just getting started on swimming, you should look out these two important tips in order to improve your speed on freestyle.

Tip #1: Start by doing breathing drills

Start your swimming session by doing breathing movements

An effective drill is holding to the wall on hand and doing 10 breaths on each side twice and trying to keep your head touching the water (Focus on turn your head instead of lifting it up).




This drill helps you to does not get water up your nose and stay less time on the surface while taking a breath.

Tip #2: Breathe every 4 strokes.

Most of us have a favorite side to breathe.

While more advanced swimmers can benefit from breathing to both sides

if you are just starting out it is better to focus on one side.

DON´T START DOING BAD HABITS!

If you breathe every two strokes, you can start forming bad habits that will be difficult to correct later. So, in order to control your stroke technique and breathing you should breathe every 4 strokes, preferably on one side (just if you are a beginner).

The more you practice the more positive changes you will see on your freestyle while taking a breath. 




-Improve your technique.

-Your breath will not be as agitated as before.

-Swim the whole length of the pool without needing to stop

If you want to learn more about our tutorials, you can go here

Last updated Feb. 16, 2022






Edited by:

Emiliano Mora and Bruno Moreno Gutiérrez