How to Swim Smoothly
Step by Step

This time we will show you a set of exercises that are going to take you twenty to thirty minutes and will help you to start swimming SMOOTHLY.

The Theory

The Arrow Technique

The key to the technique is that there are not a lot of extra movements, the only movements there are optimized to help you move forward.

I did a total of 50 strokes in 100 meters. It’s almost catch-up swim. (Catch-up is a popular drill coaches use to help swimmers glide and make their body longer.)

The kick is a 2 beat kick. Which means 1 kick per stroke. This helps save energy since the legs have big muscles that use a lot of energy and oxygen.

Advantages and Disadvantages:

Once you start swimming and practicing with this arrow freestyle technique you can build up a lot of endurance and you’ll be able to swim long distances at a constant pace.

That is why this technique is often used by open water swimmers and long-distance pool swimmers in the middle part of their swim. It may seem easy to swim like this but it does take effort, especially if you are not used to it.

Cons: Not the fastest, not easy, and takes time and effort.

5 Key points

Synchronization: The legs need to be synchronized with the arms. You kick down with your right leg at the same time that your right arm is pulling.

Horizontal Body Position: The body needs to be as horizontal as possible. Your legs need to be very straight.

Quick Breathing: Your breathing needs to be quick.

Almost Catch-Up: Your arm should always wait for the opposite arm to almost finish before it starts moving. Especially when you are breathing.
Efficient Pull: Since your arms produce most of the forward movement, they should be very efficient: high elbow (vertical forearm as soon as possible), using rotation to pull with bigger muscles, and having Barbie hands.

5 Common problems

Legs kicking fast instead of 2 beat kick
Splashing water, instead of smooth swimming
Not enough glide
Balancing problems (difficulty maintaining a horizontal position)
Kick and pull not synchronized.

Exercises to help you fix them:

One stroke at a time:

Why only one stroke? Many coaches try to correct technique while swimmers are at full speed swimming many laps. This is probably the worst time to try and correct technique since you are tired, focused on other things, and probably on autopilot. At least in the beginning of changing your technique or trying out a new one, we believe that you need to slow things down and break things into manageable pieces.

Then build your technique while you put together those small pieces. What does it take? This arrow freestyle looks easy but you’ll need to master 5 things.

Exercises to improve your smooth swimming

And you can improve 4 out of those 5 things in just 20 to 30 minutes with the next exercises I will show you.

1- BALANCE: You need your body to be horizontal, you need your legs not to sink. This is a bit easier if you are moving, like riding a bicycle. Practice this: “Push off and stay still. Keep gliding with that horizontal balance by pushing your chest down and having a tight core and legs”.

2- MOBILITY: This is, unfortunately, the one that you won’t be able to fix quickly. To put your forearm aligned to your shoulder, you need to be able to move your shoulder like this. Try to do it while you are reading. If you can’t, you’ll need to do stretches for your shoulders daily for a few weeks.

3- CONTROL: We naturally tend to move our legs fast in order to move faster. But for this technique, you need to control that tendency. You need very straight knees and pointing toes, only bend them when you kick down once every stroke, and never stop the plantar flexion. This is relatively easy to correct. To force yourself to stop kicking like crazy, put on a pullback between your feet, or a kickboard or wrap a stretch band around your ankles. Anything that stops you from kicking. And swim 4 x 25 like this.

4- LISTENING: A good hand entry or one kick per stroke must sound without any splashing. Put attention and find a good sound, and do 4 to 8 x 25 listening carefully to try and swim smoother. Then listen to your sense of touch. We have a lot of nerve endings in our skin, and we use them by feeling how the water moves around us. Around your hands and around your torso. Feel the pressure against the top of your feet when you kick down. Notice that feeling of knife through butter when you have pointing toes. Do 2 x 25 focusing on one part of the body: hands, forearms, torso, feet – for a total of 8 x 25.

5- COORDINATION: The final step is to coordinate the previous 4 steps. Push off as horizontally as possible and feel the water speeding up on your skin and then slowing down as you start to lose speed. Before you stop moving pull water with your forearm trying to have it as perpendicular as possible and glide on the side of your torso. At the same time that you are doing your powerful pull, your leg on the same side of your body should be kicking down quickly.

What’s Next?

If you can coordinate at least one stroke and one kick on arrow freestyle, while the other side of your body doesn’t move, you’ve done the hard part.

The next time you practice you’ll try to go for two arrow strokes. One on each side. You may stop after each cycle. Then you can start connecting them in a row. After that, your next challenge will be to learn when and how to breathe.