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

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

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

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!

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Last updated Feb. 20, 2022

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

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