Squidkid Answers Your Questions: What’s Wrong With My Freestyle Form?

I got a great question from Squidkid reader Rahul, who at 31 years age  is not only learning how to swim for the first time, but working on freestyle or side breathing.

I am practicing regulary about four times a week … when I try to turn and take a breath I form an arch at my back that causes my entire lower body portion to fall … as a result I am unable to keep kicking … I have to stop immediately. Does this arch formation imply something is wrong with my swimming technique?

First, thanks Rahul for sharing and putting yourself out there, both here and in the pool. Here is what I suggest for Rahul:

• Do body comfort checks. New swimmers, understandably, tend to be more tense in the water. The problem with being tense is your muscles lock up; and if your muscles lock up your body becomes a rock. I would practice floating on your back or doing gentle Elementary backstroke laps on your back, breathing in and breathing out, making sure every single muscle in your body is loose before you attempt freestyle. Only in this state can you achieve a body that floats when you swim.
• Don’t lift the head. By Rahul telling me his body forms an arch on the back when he tries to breathe says to me he is still straining his head and neck to reach air. When the head is up, the legs automatically sink down. The head nor neck doesn’t lift in the freestyle —  the entire body rolls so the mouth is out. Think of the water as a warm blanket that you just don’t want to lift your head/ear from when you roll over for a breath. Look to the side or almost behind when your mouth reaches air. Roll, roll, roll.
• Muscular people have to work harder to float. I’m thinking Rahul might have bigger quads or legs and not a lot of body fat. So his build could be another reason why his legs are sinking. Grab the kickboard and practice flutter kicking with loose legs — you have to learn how to work with what you’ve got below before you can successful match the arms with the legs.
• Most swim questions get answered after pushing through the problem. I have no doubt Rahul is doing his best, but you have to physically push through the problem. Exert more energy. Be willing to get out of breath. Don’t stop until you reach the end of the lane. Swimming takes exerting major patience and practice, not knowing it takes major patience and practice. The answer isn’t solved in the head through thinking — it’s discovered in the body through doing. 
  

Freestyle Notes: The Power of Less When You Swim

Still, everyday when I go to check Squidkid stats, the most popular search is how to swim laps. Also, my most-clicked entry remains to be How To Swim Freestyle Laps Correctly & Well. I get about 50 views a day just on this link.

So onto more Freestyle Notes. Today’s topic? Using the power of less when you swim.

Less Means You Get To Eliminate

This mantra isn’t mine. I’m reading Leo Babauta’s new book, The Power of Less. Leo reveals the concept of creating simplicity in your life, from everything to time management to tending emails, boils down to two steps: Identify the essential and eliminate the rest.

In case you don’t know about Leo, he runs a very popular website called ZenHabits. His site is one of my everyday favorites. Leo has simplicity — or the ability to rid modern distractions like consumer debt or Twittering — down to a science.

Eliminate the Head, Add the Body

As a swim instructor, the biggest obsticle I encounter with adult students is their need to overanalize aspects about their stroke or swimming that just do not apply to their current ability or situation.

If they can’t swim a lap, it’s because their arms are wrong. If they aren’t swimming as fast as they think they should, it’s due to very minut, specific details that if their head could just understand, theire body would follow.

Baloney. You cannot swim a lap or swim fast because your body isn’t conditioned for swimming yet. It’s ain’t about your head.

How To Swim Better With Less

Let’s apply Leo’s two steps, identify the essential and eliminate the rest, to swim better:

• Get in the pool and get your heart rate up. This means move from one end to the other, doing the best you can with what your interpretation of freestyle is. No talking.
• Breathing is the gateway to learning freestyle. Not fantasic arms. Not killer kicks. Breath in, blow out. Find rhythm. Just like you do on land.
• Shut your head off and continue to let your body perform. No judgment. No anaylizing how you look. Breath in. Breath out. Heart rate stays up.
• The only two technical terms you get is ‘horizontal’ and ‘rotate.’ The good news isyou can’t have one without the other: When you breath on the side, rotate the body (not the head) which will keep you horizontal and thus gliding in the water.

Additional Freestyle Note entries here on Squidkid:

• The Importance of Rotating When Breathing

Fool-Proof Way to Start Doing Side-Breathing Freestyle Laps Today

Yesterday we worked out some first-timer kinks involving freestyle. This is an important entry if you want to catch up on all we’ve talked about here on Squidkid on being a new-to-me freestyle, learning-to-breath-on-the-side kind of swimmer.

And yesterday I promised you a Fool-Proof Way to Start Doing Side-Breathing Freestyle Laps Today. Let me give you a quick background to the exercise.

I’m working with a new adult, Louis, a great guy who runs and lifts weights and is in pretty excellent physical shape. He’s trying to master breathing on the side, and like all new freestyle lap swimmers, he’s winded at the end of each lap and completely mystified for the reason.

After watching Louis struggle through freestyle — he did great on the inhaling, but didn’t exhale fully each time and was experiencing a carbon monoxide build up toward the last leg of each lap, not to mention his body was really tense in the water — I asked him to switch his stroke up to breast stroke.

Immediately Louis fell into a comfortable breathing pattern. Up and down his head bobbed, inhaling correctly and breathing out correctly; his breathing correctness being defined entirely on how natural his air intake and outtake was, following a rhythm that closely mirrored how he breathes on land. Here’s what I had Louis do next:

FOOL-PROOF FREESTYLE EXERCISE:

1. Perform a lap of breast stroke. Arms reach straight forward and pull to the sides at the same time; legs do the frog kick. Breath in and out regularly, meaning head up/breath, head down/exhale.
2. Do another lap of breast stroke, only this time when you feel your breathing is rhythmic and comfortable, break into the freestyle stroke.
3. Begin another lap of breast stroke, attempting to break into the freestyle earlier.

This exercise clicked for Louis, and he was able to understand the importance of comfortable, rhythmic breathing. The secret is using breast stroke as a crutch and breathing learning tool until the body can handle freestyle movements.

Freestyle First-Timers: Working Out Some Kinks

Due to recent comments and Squidkid clicks, I want to talk to beginners more about the subject of learning how to swim freestyle correctly, or at least better than you do right now. If you’d like to catch up on what we’ve been talking about regarding freestyle development, click here for an entry that offers all the links.

A freestyle first-timer is someone who has fundamental swim skills — meaning they can swim verse sinking and are over a water fear if there was one — but wants to learn how to do side-breathing laps correctly as a fitness benefit. (So make sure you’re water safe before you take this on).

I’ve had a few adult students that fall into the freestyle first-timer category as of late, and it’s always the same story: They attribute their exhaustion or “out-of-breath-ness” when swimming from one end of the pool to the other because of the way they might be kicking or pulling water. Or some other stroke technique they aren’t doing right.

These are fully athletic types, too. They are runners and weight-lifters. They are in shape … but not in shape for swimming. It is very hard for an athletic person to not figure out why they cannot transfer their physical ability to swimming right away. Does this sound like you? Let’s work out a few first-timer freestyle kinks to get you settled:

• You might be in great shape, but note your body won’t adjust to swimming right away. Swimming calls upon the body to move muscles in a new and unique way; to use oxygen in a new and unique way; and most importantly — the breathe in and out a new and unique way.
• Focus calmly on the breathing and the breathing only. If you don’t get a sufficient breath every time, you’ll have no oxygen; have no oxygen and you have no gas. You need to exhale fully as well to not build carbon monoxide. If you take a breath in the size of a grapefruit, you let the same size out.
• Measure freestyle swimming success in the SMALLEST milestones available. Here is your very first milestone: swim from one end to the other using rhythmic breathing. If you can do that without stopping ONCE, your next goal is to do it twice. And then four times. And then a bit faster netting the same results: You’re COMFORTABLE and not winded at the end.
• You MUST have loads of patience and humility to do this, not to mention access to a pool. And the time to swim 2-3 times a week in 30-minute sessions. All those swimmers you admire in the pool? I can promise you they swim 5-6 times a week, up to two hours a day, and have been doing so for years. But they did start somewhere …
• Your only stroke technique worry at this stage is establishing a rhythmic breathing pattern. This means breathe on your second stroke every time to the right (if you’re a righty) and to the left (if you’re a lefty). One, two, breathe … one, two, breathe.
• Respect your speed, no matter how slow. You’ll have plenty of time to get faster if you stick to this sport, but you won’t stick to it if you don’t take it easy and get the air you need and expel it in the manner your body needs to.
• If your mind wanders and tries to come up with different answers, RE-READ all above. Adults are used to attributing complex solutions to complex issues. Swimming is NOT complex. It just takes application and persistence to do it, and that’s what throws everyone off.

If you can accomplish all of the above, which means if you can do eight laps (200 yards) with no stopping and it feel really good, you are ready for stroke technique stuff, like kicking better or pulling better.

I’ve been there too. I wasn’t born a great swimmer. Some of you know I didn’t start swimming freestyle laps correctly until age 23, after college, and almost got dropped from my lifeguarding class by the teacher because I was doing so poorly. And I was someone who just walked onto the college lacrosse team!

Read tomorrow’s entry. It will be a Fool-Proof Way to Start Doing Side-Breathing Freestyle Laps Today. I just experimented this concept on an adult swimmer — it clicked immediately for him!

Olympic Swimming: Look, Listen & Learn How

What kind of a swim instructor would I be if I didn’t mention Olympic Swimming? Kid, parent, or budding athlete, one of the best ways to learn how to improve your freestyle stroke is to watch others do it. Here is wrap-up of the best sites to visit for Olympic swimming:

• For the play-by-play, Mat’s Swimming Blog at About.com Swimming. He’s also got the schedule and gold medal count going on.
• Coach Pete’s blog for enthusiastic commentary. Pete started his blog about the same time I did but has had twice the amount of hits or visitors (not to worry — Pete’s target is adult coaches and swimmers while I’m manning the kid-and-parent front).
• Michael Phelps & Co. swim the pants off the French. By far the most exciting swim race yet, and you can watch the video of the Men’s 4×100 meter freestyle relay on this NBC link. (NBC also has comprehensive coverage on everything Olympic swim-related, such as water polo and even the pool info). Watching this is emotional, tear-enducing, goosebump kind of stuff.

If you want to stick around here and learn more on how to improve your freestyle stroke, I recommend my entry about how to swim freestyle laps correctly and this other entry about a simple beginner’s freestyle exercise involving correct breathing that was also mentioned on Get Fit Slowly here.

Otherwise, have fun watching the swimming!

How to Swim Freestyle Laps Correctly & Well

I’ve had a lot of hits lately on the former SquidKid entry about Lap Swimming Fundamentals, so I thought I’d revisit the topic. I’ve also had parents as of late shyly whisper as they watch their kids take a lesson that they wish they could learn to swim better, or correctly. Here’s to you learning how to swim 25-yard pool laps correctly using the freestyle stroke:

• You’ve seen all you need to know — now get in and mimic it. Swimming is a lot of doing, not thinking (which only leads to over-thinking and isn’t helpful). You learn how to swim laps correctly by being physical, not mental.
• Start and stick with the pattern ONE ARM, TWO ARM, NOW BREATHE. That means with face down, you move one arm (lefty) straight down and around and stretch it out in front; now move the other (right) and as soon as righty reaches behind you (with that lefty stretched in front), rotate your entire body to the side and breathe with left ear in the water. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Blow out and breath in at appropriate times.
• Go slow with the upper body and use straight-leg kicks to stay horizontal. Swimming is repetition. Keep counting out so you can train the body. Go to fast and you’ll swallow water or feel compelled to stop. Do everything within your power to NOT STOP until you get to the other end.
• Success in freestyle swimming in built one lap at a time. That means making it from one side of the pool to the other is your first goal. On your second session, making from one side to the other without being extremely winded or out of breath is your next goal. And then you try to do 4 laps comfortably, then 8, then 12 …
• Comfortable swimming comes from practicing and practicing only. And it also comes from tons of patience and stick-to-it-ness. You have to first go slow to eventually find that good pace you’re envying in the swimmers you watch.

Don’t worry about looking silly or like you don’t know what you are doing. If you’re trying to do this in a lap pool, I guarantee the other swimmers are too busy doing their own workout to care what you might or might not know about the freestyle. And have you seen some “experienced” freestyle swimmer’s styles??? This is the hardest part about teaching adults to swim: They care too much about what other people might think of them and they use these excuses to keep them out of the pool. Remember swimming is physical, and therefore physically rewarding — so reward yourself with the spirit of trying!