improve my swimming

[Mumtothreeandadog]

I can manage 1/2 a length of front crawl. What is the best way to build up to a whole length?! Maybe even two lengths in one go?! Is a pull buoy worth buying?

Perhaps have a few lessons?

I would focus first on building your strength in individual areas - I would probably go for a float and build up your leg strength, and try swimming with just your arms and let your legs sort of float behind you to build arm strength.
There will definitely be YouTube videos guiding you in the right direction, but good on you for looking at the first steps! I hope you find as much enjoyment and peace in swimming as I do (a lot!)

Place marking. I'd also like to improve my swimming.

If you're struggling specifically with front crawl it's likely you are not breathing correctly. Try and watch a few you-tube videos about technique to check you are doing it correctly (probably due to not breathing out correctly when you're under the water) that's what I found personally.

Absolutely buy a pull bouy they lift your hips up
loads of technique videos on YouTube

best way I improved was imagine your trying to lie flat in top of the water
you must get your head down and in the water ideally breath every 3 strokes but if that’s to hard go for every 2 and work on that
Keep fingers more or less together

I think with crawl, the biggest thing is your breathing and weirdly its not the breathing in its breathing out that you have to master. I found that humming really helped me to breathe out all the time my face was in the water so I really emptied my lungs. And slow it down to give yourself time to think about things - speed can come later. At first I would do 10 strokes thinking about my breathing, 10 really thinking about my core, 10 about my hand coming up along my side. Then do a length of breaststroke and start again

Take a look at Total Immersion - it's a method of helping you become more hydrodynamic and master the breathing. You can get the book / watch videos of drills to help you.

Thank you - any particular you tube recommended?

3 years ago I was you @Mumtothreeandadog now I swim 2-3km three times a week.

Swimming is (in the main) all about technique and physics. For the average person it's actually very little to do with fitness or strength.

These are the best tips I can give you (I have a triathlon coach who has done swim training and underwater video analysis with me; my tips are based on what I learned from him!):

1. slow down. If you lie on the water face down and relax you will float, so it's stands to reason that you don't need to kick and windmill your arms like crazy to stay afloat when swimming. All kicking and flailing does is make you out of breath.

2. stop kicking (too much). It should only be a gentle kick with the purpose of maintaining balance and assisting rotation. "Propulsion" should come from your arms (the poster above who advised working on "leg strength" is wrong!) Imagine you were trying flick a shoe off your foot - that's how you kick when swimming.

I couldn't get away with a pull buoy, it was too much of an extra thing to think about, so my advice is to invest in a pair of buoyancy shorts - game changer!

Using buoyancy shorts will help you relax and almost just allow your legs to float behind you while you focus on what your arms are doing.

3. it's all in the arms. Most inexperienced people swim with straight arms. All this does is push down on the water, pushes your head up and causes your legs to sink.

Keep your upper arm parallel to the surface and allow your hand to sink down (the "catch") and your elbow to bend. When your arm is at a 45 degree angle pull your hand back towards your hip (the "pull). As it gets closer, rotate your hip out of the way and push your hand back towards your feet.

The best way to practise arm position is with a float. Hold the float in your left hand by the left corner and extend it out in front. Swim one length just focussing on your right arm. Your hand should enter the water at the right corner of the float and then extend forwards under it. Then do as above into catch and pull.

When you get to the other end, swap hands and swim back. Do that 8-10 times at the start of each swim.

4. Timing is also important. When you "pull" this is when you get forward propulsion. At this point, you want your opposite hand to be extended in front. At no point should your head be in front of your hands (because the top of your head is flat, so just acts as a brake against the water!).

The tip my coach gave me was that when my left hand is out front, there should be a couple of seconds pause where it is extended and that I should not be allowing my hand to drop into the catch until I can see the fingers of my right hand out of the corner of my eye.

5. breathing should be automatic, not forced. You don't need to do anything to breathe other than simply turn your head to the side (or as my friend says, sniff your armpit!) if you lift your head your feet will sink. Try to keep one eye under the water and look across the surface of the water. A good time to practice this is when you are doing single arm practice with your float!

Lastly...... it takes 10,000 movements before something becomes "muscle memory". This equates to (roughly) 6/700 lengths of a 25m pool.

So don't give up....

JUST KEEP SWIMMING! 🐠

I was the same a few years ago, and have taught myself front crawl, it's now my preferred stroke!

FrangipaniBlue has given some very good detailed advice, and I agree that at the start, essentially it's all about the breathing. Can you swim multiple lengths doing another stroke? If so, then you do have enough stamina, but it's now about creating the muscle memory.

When I first learnt, that breath was all the more panicky, causing me to take too much air in and then try to get rid of it more quickly- this causes the breathlessness because you are starting to breathe anaerobically. Try taking in a smaller breath and then try and breathe all the air out under the water, (but not be at the point you need to gasp) when you breathe in again.

I lifted my head a lot at first, but have got more confident in getting it lower and just to a turn. My easier stroke is just to breathe on my right every 4 strokes but I can alternate and do 3/5 too.

Watch the others in your pool if you can and don't be afraid to try out different things they do.

And I agree about less kicking, it's all arms. I imagine that I am on a horizontal ladder and it's my arms pulling me along. But a little work on rotation and kicking will help too. And yes, slow down, it's easy to think that because FC is a fast stroke, it has to be fast. It's more that it's an efficient stroke because it streamlines the body and creates less resistance in the water, allowing the swimmer to glide more.

Any tips for when l don't turn my head enough.... inhale water and not air.... cough...choke ... and have the Lifeguard meet me at the side asking if l was ok.

Soooo embarrassed...

I had one private lesson with an amazing instructor a few years ago, and I’d highly recommend it to nail a particular bit of technique. I was totally failing on tumble turns (kept getting disoriented and swimming into the wall!), but she sorted me out. The best bit was underwater video which made me see movements I was doing totally unconsciously, but I then knew how to fix. Really recommend that!

I have a nose clip which helps but am still learning.
If I balls up my breathing, I roll over for a little bit of backstroke (because my face is always out of the water and I can splutter and recover) before rolling back to front crawl.
I once had a 1-1 lesson and was told to turn my whole body sideways and my eyes should be looking at the pool side as though they were headlights full on the tiles. I may actually roll over even more, I have never dared film myself.
At the moment I go very gentle, it's all about breathing out enough, and making sure my mouth doesn't have (much) water in it when I roll sideways and get my chin out of the water to breathe in. It's not fast but I can manage a whole lap now.

@iRun2eatCake possibly you’re not rotating enough to get your mouth clear of the water. With breathing, it’s a balancing act between turning the head and rotating the body. You don’t want to over-rotate the body such that you end up lying sideways, or almost on your back, when trying to breathe. But some body rotation as you turn your head will help your mouth clear the waterline, while you also turn your head to the side. However, what you describe happens to us all sometimes! A couple of the pools I swim in regularly are very wavy, and occasionally when turning to breathe I get smacked by a wave and inhale a load of water, cue coughing & choking!

I think it's the waves that get me too.

Thanks for all the advice, I feel embarrassed booking up a video analysis as I thought they were for better swimmers than me !

@iRun2eatCake the trick is that you want to make a little pocket of air between your ear and shoulder to breathe into.

Your head makes a bow wave and as you turn your head your mouth is behind the wave. (I actually turn my mouth to the side too, I probably look ridiculous!)

If there is no air pocket I can guarantee you are dropping your arm straight (no bent elbow) which in turn drops your shoulder. This opens up the gap and water rushes in - so no little air pocket behind the now wave!

Your shoulder should almost be touching your ear while your arm is outstretched and should remain there while you drop your hand. It feels really uncomfortable at first, like unnaturally hunching your shoulders up!

Honestly don't be embarrassed - that's what they are there for!

I imagine the teachers who do swim analysis get waaaaay more satisfaction seeing how big an improvement a newbie swimmer can make compared to more experienced swimmers who may only make little tweaks and gains!

I learned from YouTube too and also the Reddit r/swimming forum is really good. People often post videos of their technique and others comment, many who are instructors and occasionally a professional swimmer, whose name I can’t remember!

I second the suggestion of Total Immersion. I was terrible at front crawl, could barely manage half a length, got the Total Immersion book and VHS video (it was a while ago) and it was amazing. It transformed me into someone who can do length after length of fairly decent and easy feeling front crawl.

I have been trying to do front crawl for a while and while building up to a length would just do the last part of the length in crawl and gradually extended it. I can now do a single length but am out of breath at the end of the length and need to mix it up with different strokes.

However, I finally managed to make it to an adult lesson earlier this week and we just did widths. It has given me lots to practice, but the key things I had misunderstood were:

1. how to use my arms (I had watched you tube videos, but got it wrong!)

1. I was also breathing in and out while I had my head to one side rather than just in and was forgetting to breath out while under water

1. my legs are dropping down but I was told that they will come up if I get my head down more

I definitely recommend swimming lessons.