There are basically two ways to swim fast freestyle. By fast freestyle, we refer to a distance of 25 or 50 meters or yards. There is the straight arm and the classic arm.
Straight Arm
The straight arm fast freestyle has become popular among sprinters. This technique consists basically of spinning your arms as fast as you can with a straight arm recovery.
The main advantage of this technique is that as soon as the arm touches the water, it is also pulling.
Underwater, the straight arm catches deeper water, pushing the swimmer upwards and forwards.
This requires a lot of effort and shoulder strength to maintain. That is why you will only see this technique used effectively by the sprinters in the 50 free.
Elbow Bent
There is a second way to sprint freestyle, which is recovering with a small elbow bend, but you still want to catch the water deeply with a very slightly bent arm underwater.
In both techniques, there is little need to rotate the shoulders as the arms move so fast that rotating a lot would be a waste of time.
To do a fast freestyle, it is essential that you kick as fast as you can. There should be water splashing behind you as if you had a motor.
In a 50 freestyle, there is very little margin of error; that is why you need an explosive start and flip turn.
The Final Touch
Finally, very often you can win or lose by a tenth of a second, so a good final touch can make you win the race.
The final stroke is a little longer than the rest. You stretch your body as fast and far as you can, rotating more to your side. You should touch with your fingers, not with the palm of your hand.
Just strong enough to activate the touch pad, but not strong enough that you injure your fingers. This takes practice to master, so start slow and build up speed to touch the wall properly.
Try both swimming styles and let us know what you think!
Thank you!