Swimming Tips For Beginners

Swimming is a necessary life skill, a form of exercise, and the most popular sport in the summer olympics. Here, we discuss how to take your swimming to the next level and have you nejoying your time in the pool right away.

Sep 11, 2017

Swimming is a form of exercise - and sport - filled with various complex and physically taxing movements. For beginners, these can become exhausting due to inefficiency in the water and a lack of proper instruction. Following these simple tips could help quickly improve your swimming capabilities and have you enjoying your workout right away. Each aspect detailed below is important on it's own, but understanding how they all work in unison is what will take your aquatic game to the next level.

Understanding Floating

Floating, in this instance, is exactly what you think it is. Being well-informed on why, how, and what floating entails is key in proper body position in the water. The first thing to note is how your body reacts in the water. EX: Lift your head up, feet sink. EX: Put you head down, feet float.

Understating Streamline

While streamline does mean sticking your arms above your head and turning yourself into a human torpedo…it also means a lot more than it is given credit for. Streamline, put basically, means being in a hydrodynamic or aerodynamic position. What this mean for introductory swimming is that a focus needs to be placed on how our movements cause a reaction in the water. EX: Pushing off of the wall with your arms fully extended away from your body causes you to make little to no progress in the water. EX: Pushing off of the wall with your arms fully extended above your head and hands clamped in streamline would cause a drastically different reaction.

Understanding Propulsion

Once floating and streamline have been mastered it is time to think about propulsion and how it can help you more through the water more efficiently. Pushing water behind you causes you to move forward, pushing water down causes you to go up, and the harder it is on your muscles to do so the more water you are moving. A common rule of thumb is that…turning your hand parallel to the wall will allow you to gain maximum propulsion. EX: Catch water out front, hold onto it as you pull, and finish your pull by flicking the water behind you. EX: Flex your foot, kick up/down, while maintaining tension with the water to gain propulsion through the water.

Understanding How To Combine F, S, and P

Floating is great, streamlining is important, and propulsion is the engine to your boat…but without all three working in harmony you won't see much improvement. To ensure proper progression through these three categories first focus on floating. Once you have mastered floating and understand how your body interacts with the water, then and only then should you move onto streamline. As you begin to feel yourself moving more efficiently through the water you then can begin to think about propulsion as an accelerator for you swimming.

Good luck and enjoy FSPing your way to swimming efficiency!
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