As qualified Swim Coaches with over 30 years experience we've had the pleasure of studying many hundreds of swim strokes and have come up with some tried and tested tips that will help you swim as relaxed and as powerfully as possible.
Check out our technique tips below to help you practice and perfect your freestyle stroke.
PRACTICE & PERFECT YOUR SWIMMING JOIN OUR GROUP SESSIONS, 1-2-1'S
TOP TIP 1
BODY POSITION
The best way to swim faster is to improve your efficiency, and the best way to do that is to ensure you’re swimming with the correct body position and rotation. Everything else follows from this.
Head Position:
When swimming freestyle, your head should be facing directly down except when you roll to breathe. However, there’s a balance you need to find in how much your head faces down. If you press it too deeply, then you’re ploughing your head and shoulders through the water, but, if you’re lifting your head you’re creating drag and forcing your body position out of balance. Both positions can strain your neck and cause your hios to sink. Your head should remain in a neutral position as it would when you’re standing and looking straight ahead.
Several muscle groups help you maintain a great body position. Your abdominals and obliques are key for keeping your spine in line. In addition, it’s important for you to “lean forwards” into the water to establish a streamlined body position, which is an action aided by your abdominals and obliques. Your lower back and hips are key for creating tension in the back of your body. This tension holds your legs up at the surface of the water, preventing them from sinking.
Body Rotation:
This is important as it reduces the drag created during the stroke and harnesses your core strength to help create propulsion. The true role of rotation is simple: It creates an extra range of motion for your shoulders. Your shoulder is an amazing joint. It can move through a wide varied range of motion, and it can do so with amazing speed and strength. When it comes to swimming freestyle, however, your shoulder reaches its limitations. Despite being incredibly mobile, your shoulder simply can’t meet the strength and mobility demands of freestyle when it is swum flat, or without body rotation. Your arms just can’t get into the appropriate positions. You need more range of motion through your shoulder.
The role of rotation, therefore, is to allow for extra range of motion in your shoulders, so your shoulders should lead the rotation. They determine when rotation happens and how much rotation occurs, both of which are determined by how much range of motion your arms need to move through. Your shoulders are the primary source of rotation but your hips must move as well, just enough to get the necessary motion.
Because the biggest benefit of rotation comes from smoothly recovering your arms over the surface, this should be your gauge for the appropriate amount of rotation. If you’re unable to recover your arms smoothly over the surface, you need to rotate more. Once you can rotate your arms smoothly over the surface, that amount of rotation is sufficient and more would be counterproductive.
USWIM RECOMMENDED DRILLS (taught at group swims & 121's); Front balance, Log Roll
TOP TIP 2
THE PULL
This is your engine in freestyle. It’s responsible for most of the propulsion you create, and it’s what helps you move forward and create speed. Although all the components of freestyle are important and required, the pull is the most important when it comes to moving forward. It’s where most of the big work is done.
A great pull is simple. The goal is to create a large paddle with your whole arm and then use that paddle to push backward against the water and move yourself forward. There are two major components to the pull.
The first - the hand entry - is more of a set-up phase. After your arm enters the water, it needs to be repositioned so that it faces backward, ready to push against the water.
HAND ENTRY BASICS
Because your hand entry sets up your catch and pull, an effective entry is a key aspect of the arm cycle. A great entry is simple: approximately shoulder-width or slightly outside shoulder-width apart and moving forward and slightly down upon entering the water keeping elbows above wrists.
Overly wide hand entries make it difficult to pull effectively and tend to disrupt alignment by preventing adequate rotation of your shoulder. Overly narrow entries make it more difficult to pull effectively because your arm is in a weak position and disrupts alignment because you’ll pull your arm across your body.
USWIM RECOMMENDED DRILLS (taught at group swims & 121's); Head Up, Catch Up, Box
TOP TIP 3
THE CATCH & POWER PHASE
The power in swimming comes from the core group of muscles, which is the area from the neck to the knees, including all of the upper-back and shoulder muscles, the abdominal muscles, and the trunk and upper-leg muscles.
The best way to access this power is with a great setup at the beginning of the freestyle underwater pull, or what is commonly called the catch. This refers to the point in the stroke when a swimmer's hand connects with the water and starts to pull.
The catch itself is not the main propulsive part of the stroke, but when properly executed, it sets your stroke up to be more effective through the propulsive power phase that follows. The freestyle catch occurs in the first 9 to 12 inches (23-30 cm) of the stroke, where you begin your pull while keeping your elbow high.
Anchor Your hands
Great freestyle swimmers anchor their hands in the water and use their core muscles to rotate their bodies past their hands. To properly achieve this catch position, internally, or medially, rotate your shoulder and open your armpit. Imagine driving your elbow toward the pool wall in front of you.
Keep your hand planed directly back (toward the wall behind you), with your fingertips pointed toward the bottom of the pool, until your arm has reached midstroke. This is a key point for maintaining a powerful application of propulsive force. Once you set the high-elbow position in the underwater pull, maintain it throughout the stroke cycle. By keeping your hand and elbow anchored in the water at the catch spot, you will be able to recruit core muscles to rotate your body past that spot on the longitudinal axis.
Accelerate through stroke
Your hand moves slowest at the catch phase of the stroke, but gradually picks up momentum until it is moving fast under your hips at the end of the stroke. The acceleration of the hand through the underwater pull synchronized with the rotation of the body's core creates the power phase of the freestyle stroke.
With a well-executed hand entry and extension followed by an effective catch and follow-through, your hand will actually come out of the water in front of the point where it entered! The hands of world-class swimmers exit the water about 1 m in front of their entry points. These swimmers have an incredible amount of shoulder and back flexibility, allowing them to position their hands, forearms, and elbows in the catch position much earlier in the stroke. This creates a longer and more propulsive power phase.
USWIM RECOMMENDED DRILLS (taught at group swims & 121's); Single Arm, Fist, Doggy Paddle, Catch-High
Coach Profile - Dave Quartermain
As Founder of Uswim, DQ has a passion for open water swimming that has taken him places such as New York (to swim around Manhattan Island, first Brit) and also attempt the English Channel. As one of the UK's top open water swimmers in the late '90's he set up Uswim to provide quality, supervised open water swim sessions in the Northwest UK. Since then Uswim has welcomed over 100,000 people - and counting - into the open water as well as inspiring the growth of open water swimming in the UK.
