Well, swimming faster (freestyle) is all about summed up of a few techniques like your freestyle stroke, body positioning, how do you turns underwater, how do you dive and how do you kick on the swimming pool. You may have seen lots of tutorials to know how to swim faster freestyle stroke!
It is also possible, tons of blog posts already you have readen! But at the end of all, nothing could come to your help! As we are experts in more than years of coaching, we also worked with Olympic-Level Swimmers-so we can assure you to guide you in the right direction on freestyle swimming.
Let’s start-
The Pillars Of Freestyle Technique
There are four pillars, determine the fate of a freestyle swimmer. These four pillars are-Arm Stroke, Breathing, Kicking Style, and Body Positioning. If you can good pair of all these 4 things in a balanced way-it is will push you towards a good result. Everything in your freestyle swimming solely depends on these four components which we will describe below-To start the main thing, let’s say something.
Obviously, we are focusing on these four components equally. If anyhow you feel you are weak in any one of these categories, then you have to be strong in others. If one pillar makes your week, make another pillar so that it could crumble the weak points.
However, let’s go through-
How To Swim Faster Freestyle
The most important fact about freestyle swimming is, it doesn’t have any uniform style you could be an expert on which! Usually, it is pretty challenging to define any uniform style for every swimmer when they are at a freestyle stroke competition. The competition range may vary from a few meters to kilometers, so in this long-distance nobody can swim a fixed style when she or he is in freestyle stroke.
As we are here, obviously will tell you some tips and tricks so that you can swim faster even if you are in the different freestyle strokes, with your different body positioning.
Focus on Your Body Positioning
First, you need to focus on your body positioning. The thumb rule for faster swimming is, you have to make up your hip as much as possible. High hip positioning gives less water resistance. therefore swimmer got additional energy to fast swim. Also, make sure you are swimming downhill and your chest and head are toward the downhill position.
After every 2 cm, try to lift your head up. After every 5 cm, sinks your hip. The low-laying hip offers the swimmers more freestyle strokes ultimately improving swimming speed and efficacy. As I said earlier, try to exert little pressure on your head and chest. Also, try to make a downhill position for both of these body organs. While you are swimming, try to surface up the hip.
Blend both the Abs and Butt Muscles at freestyle swimming. In the first few trials, it may give you an exhausting feel. But believe me, once you pair well with this stroke-it will give you a long-run impact to swim faster.
Focus on Your Breathing Pattern
From my childhood, I am listening that, if I could hold my breath for a long time, it is helpful to swim faster. Does it really true? Yes, it is true. Take a long breath, it will drag your front easily. 50 freestyle swimmers always complete their swimming only with one or two long breaths.
If you can do it, you can swim faster, and it will also slow down your stroke rate but this is not the only fact that could make your swimming faster.
Unlike any sportsman, who can breathe just normally, swimmers have to think differently to take their breath. Yes, a breath can change the stroke time and pattern as well. For swimmers, two types of breathing patterns are introduced-
- Bilateral Breathing Pattern
- Two- or Four- or Six-Stroke Breathing Patterns
So which one is perfect for your freestyle technique? Let’s compare these two-
The bilateral Breathing Pattern is the perfect and incredible breathing pattern for freestyle swimming. This breathing pattern allows an even stroke with equal body positioning (on both sides). The downside of this pattern is that it reduces oxygen absorption by almost 50% on the next breath. So it may lead to a huge oxygen deficiency compared with the second breathing pattern.
Two- or Four- or Six-Stroke Breathing Patterns are more than the Bilateral Breathing Pattern. How? Just think about your training modules. This breathing pattern is perfect to give you Warm Up, Cooled Down, and Aerobic Sets. When you are intending to moderate or hardest competition-there is no alternative to Bilateral Breathing Pattern.
Yea, you can switch on to the Two- or Four- or Six-Stroke Breathing Patterns for once, it will increase the oxygen flow and make you capable of a long swim.
Focus On Your Freestyle Kicks
No top-level swimmers swim with a slow kick! A strong but steady kick throughout the whole distance can faster your swim. So what does a solid and strong kick exactly do? This kick does nothing but includes the propulsion on your freestyle stroke, making your body position killer and aggressive!
Even if you are getting tired to move your both arms at the end of your race, a strong kick will give you an even stroke in between.
So how can you improve your freestyle kicks?
- Go for regular skipping with a rope. It will strengthen both your anklet & Calves.
- On your Warm Up and Dryland Routine, try to earn flexibility on your anklet movement. so that you can move more water than normal. Add Ankle Rocker Stretch, and Ankle Rotation to your daily warm-up routine.
- Train more to give speedy kicking. Personally, I suggest cycling at a faster rate, it will help here a lot. Freestyle kicking is such a thing, you have to earn it by yourself with several practices. Regular pool training sessions take at least 15 to 20 minutes time to practice a strong freestyle kicking.
- Learn to balance while you are kicking up and down. Do not miss to focus on the upside kicking, it is also necessary for the next even stroke.
Focus on Stroke Technique
There are lots of ways you can improve your freestyle swimming. Individuals who take part, in any event, can race with any stroke only without the backswing stroke (it is not recommended usually). There are a few stroke techniques, which you also can count in the freestyle technique.
A few official strokes like-Breaststroke, Butterfly stroke, Front Crawl, and Backstroke-all also could be your freestyle techniques if you are a master of these. Freestyle technique usually is a combination of all possible strokes you could give.
But if you complete your race with your best-known stroke, it could drive you towards a good ending.
Focus on Faster Flip-Turn
When you reach the wall, touch it and start to return back. This time is crucial to make you a winner at your freestyle competition. Just flip turn, accelerate this turning back at high speed as possible. The major obstacle while flip turning is, cutting the necessary(!) breathing that most often swimmers do not take.
Ultimately It makes the swimmers slow down. Just cut your last breath before you are turning back after touching the wall. It will speed up your swimming freestyle strokes.
Focus On Your Underwater Performance
Fast swimming demands more on your training. But if you focus on several techniques, it could make it even faster. Like your underwater performance. Prepare your body line just towards frontal drag, both your arm stroke must need to be faster so that you can touch the wall at first.
Keep your head forward, and take 3 or 5 dolphin kicks when you near about to touch the walls. These dolphin sticks will propel you toward the wall. Starts the dolphin kicks from your chest & Legs (down them ). When your hip is at the surface up, do the same also with your legs. However, take a break after taking each dolphin kick. Before taking the break, hold your streamline tightly.
If you don’t want to lose the speed you get from the push-off and dolphin kicks, do not take the break at your first stroke. During your training period try to enhance your streamline and dolphin kicks underwater. After a few practices, obviously, it will bring good results to make you capable of taking an efficient break after each dolphin strike.
FAQs
What makes you faster at freestyle?
Do not take a breath! Yes, you hear just what I mean. Taking a breath (as higher you take) in fast swimming is discouraged. The reason behind this is, taking a breath reduces the stroke rate and also increases the frontal dragging. So slows you down on the race.
Why is my freestyle so slow?
Maybe you are pushing all lengthy ”Blade”. This too much Blade pulls a lot of energy when you are end of each stroke. So after this, your body slows down under the water, creating more drag and floating.
Conclusion
Last of all, a resistant training is the key to become faster in swimming speed. All Elite Swimmers go through with such type of training frequently in the week. This training makes the swimmers get the highest strength, which make him/her hand to hand to the fastest swim.
That’s all on know how to swim faster freestyle. Good luck!