Straggler's Complete Guide to Swimming

Hey UE and welcome to my 6th guide. This one is going to be about swimming, a topic I know very much about.

Section 1- Introduction

Section 2- Practice Techniques

Section 3- Starts, Turns, & Finishes

Section 4- Conclusion & Tips

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Section 1- Introduction.

I've been swimming competitively for 10 years now, and it's been a great experience. There's the health benefits of swimming, such as staying in great shape and having good endurance for other sports. There's also the exhilaration of being in a race and winning. It's really different than any other sport.

First off, there are 4 different strokes:
- Freestyle: This is also called the front crawl in some places, but you've definitely seen it before:

Basically, it is done by pulling the arms over and under the head and kicking rapidly. It is the fastest stroke.
-Backstroke: The reverse of freestyle. Harder to do, and slower.

-Breaststroke: Done by pulling the arms toward yourself, and shooting them out. The kick is done by expanding the legs, then shooting them out. Fun stroke to race.


Butterfly: Done by pulling both arms over your head at the same time, while using a "dolphin kick", keeping the legs together. The hardest stroke.


So now you know the 4 strokes. Time to talk about getting better.

Section 2- Practice Techniques

Now, practicing is what is going to make you better. If you're on a swim team, this will be very familiar to you, but if you're not, this may be of some help.

- Warm-up: Swim 200 meters *slowly* of freestyle. That's 8 lengths, not that hard if you go slow. it's just meant to get your muscles loose.
-Kick: This is essential in getting your swim speed up. Use a kickboard to do this, I'd suggest doing 4 50's of kick, two of them being freestyle and two of them being breaststroke.
-Workout- I'm going to give a variety of workouts that you can do, depending on your level of swimming.

1. 200 pyramid, freestyle- Swim a 25, then a 50, then a 100, then a 150, then 200, then back down. Somewhat hard for beginning swimmers, just swim nice and steady and moderate and you'll do fine. For freestyle, make sure to fully extend your arms on every stroke. For distances, breathe every other stroke, once every stroke. Breathing is okay for distance. Keep your kick strong.

2. 3 100 IM- IM stands for individual medley, or butterfly, backstroke, breastsroke, freestyle. Do 3 sets of these, giving yourself 20 seconds of rest between each. This will perfect your four strokes and build endurance.

3. 6 50's, build. Build means increase speed throughout the 50. So, start off nice and steady, then speed up towards the middle, then go FAST for the last 25%. Give yourself 10 seconds of rest between each of these. You can do it for any stroke, but I suggest freestyle for ease...it's more of an endurance building exercise. It will help you a lot though.

4. 4 75's slow, 25 fast. For this set, swim 75 meters (3 lengths) steady and slow freestyle, then sprint the last 25 meters (1 length), meaning go as fast as you can. Give yourself only 5 seconds of rest, because the other 75 meters will help you cool down. This set is somewhat hard, but it'll help you in swimming, I guarantee. I do sets like this all the time, they really help.


Section 3- Starts, Turns, & Finishes

Starts, turns and finishes are essential in being a fast and strong swimmer. I'll start off by explaining how to do a good start, turn, and finish for each stroke.

Freestyle

Start- Start up on the block or edge of the pool, because for this stroke you start with a dive.

This picture shows how to do it well, keep your fingers curled over the edge, and your feet shoulder length apart and parallel to each other.

Next, push off as hard as you can, using both feet and both arms. Really throw yourself off the block for a good start. To dive, tuck your chin into your chest, and put your arms over your head with your hands pointed together. it takes some practice but a good dive looks like this:
http://www.kera.org/blogs/culture/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/swim-dive.jpg

After you dive in, keep your chin tucked and your hands over your head. Kick with both legs together as hard as you can for momentum. If you've ever watched swimming in the Olympics, you'll see that the starting kick gives lots of power. Do this dolphin kick until you run short on momentum, then break into your stroke.

Turn: For freestyle, the turn is called a flip turn. This is done by basically doing a flip underwater next to the wall, then pushing off and flipping over. Once you get good at it, a flip turn will give you an obvious advantage when swimming freestyle.
Props to this video, it gives a great example of how to do it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtP8xgzm6do

After your turn, remember to do the dolphin kick again until you lose momentum, then start your stroke.

Finish: To finish freestyle, finish kicking strong and pulling hard with your arms. Try not to breathe on your finish during a race, because that is when it will most slow you down.

Backstroke

Start: For a good backstroke start, grasp the wall or handle on the block with both hands, and put both legs shoulder width apart. Curl into a ball, then push off on your back in an arc as hard as you can. Once your back hits the water, do the dolphin kicks until you lose momentum, then break into backstroke. A good start looks like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0c8gIJHjGE

Finish: I'm going to go straight to finish for this stroke because you'll need to learn your "stroke count" for backstroke if you don't already. Stroke count basically means, if your pool has flags hanging over each end of the pool, which most do, how many strokes it will take to get yourself from the flags to the wall. Practice this a couple times, and find out what it is. Mine is 4, yours could be anywhere from 3-6. Find it out, recognize it.

Turn: For the turn, simply remove 1 stroke from your stroke count, then turn over and do a freestyle flip turn. However, on this flip turn, don't turn over, just push off on your back and stay on your back. Do the dolphin kicks on your back again for momentum. A good backstroke turn looks like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr7JJwUH5fM

Breaststroke

Start: For the breaststroke start, we go off the block like freestyle. However, when we dive in, we can do something called a pullout, since you can't do dolphin kicks for breaststroke. A pullout is done by hitting the water off your dive, then pulling your arms down to your sides. It gives you lots of extra momentum. Then, come up and start your stroke. This is what a good pullout looks like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmYtxQ16Bls

Turn: Touch the wall with both hands, or pull yourself into the ridge of the wall, but you can't do a flip turn. After you touch the wall, just turn around and do another pullout. Do this as quickly and as strongly as possible.

Finish: Finish your stroke strong, if you're in a race you may be tempted to turn your head and look at the other swimmers but do not. This will slow down your finish and make you possibly lose to them. Just focus on the wall and make your last strokes your best.

Butterfly

Start: Same as freestyle, except break into butterfly stroke.

Turn: Touch with two hands, you can't do a flip turn. Just turn around and do another streamlined start with strong dolphin kicks.

Finish: As you can see from this video (lol), a strong butterfly finish is VERY important! Finish hard and make your last strokes your best!
Don't pull a Milorad Cavic, and finish strong :laugh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3paiELa7mA


Section 4- Conclusion & Tips

That concludes my swimming guide. I put a lot of knowledge and effort into this guide, as well as outside sources for information. I recognize that not everyone is a swimmer, but I hope you at least will use this information at some point. Swimming is a great sport if you do it, and I hope this guide helped you if you already do.
Just remember:

-Strong start, push off with all 4 limbs full strength
-Strong butterfly kicks for free, back, and fly
-Quick turn on breaststroke and fly even though there's no pullout
-Finish hard and don't give up if you're losing
-Practice to become the best you can be

Thanks for reading my guide. Tell me what you think

 

Rofl... Nice Guide.

 

Why Rofl? But thanks anyway

 

Thanks now I know how to swim.
This will come in handy.

 

Nice guide, it's extremely detailed and has tons of helpful pictures to illustrate what you were saying. Well done. The only minor issue is the colors. I probably wouldn't have used the turquoise and light green. Great job though!