The Learning Steps of How to Swim Freestyle

The learning steps of how to swim freestyle are gradual:

1. Freestyle kick drills

The fundamental motion of freestyle kick drills involves: lay your body flat, keep your tiptoes straight, kick in with straight legs, use your thigh driving your leg and kick up and down by your legs alternatively.

Exercising methods:

Phase One: do exercises on the ground

Phase Two: do exercises on the water

Phase Three: practice kicking in on the floating plate

After you enter into the phase three of practicing kicking on the floating plate, please ensure practicing 200 meters each day by timing. 

2. Freestyle arm exercises 

The freestyle arm action can be divided into several phases including catching water, pushing water, eldow up pull, recovering the arm and entry.

Exercising methods:

Phase One: practice arm pulling on the ground

Phase Two: practice one-armed pulling in the water

Phase Three: practice arm-crossed pulling in the water

After you enter the phase of arm pulling, please ensure practicing 200 meters each day by timing. 

3. Freestyle breathing and timing

Firstly, you should get a command of rhythm sensation of freestyle alternating breathing.

The so-called rhythm generally refers to “alternating breathing once after arm pulling three times” or “alternating breathing once and doing arm pulling once”. To be specific, it depends on one’s vital capacity. However, one has to master rhythm, namely the frequency between alternating breathing and arm pulling needs to be constant. To be simple, it is to control your breathing out.

Generally speaking, as for short-haul freestyle, most athletes enable to swim 50 meters without alternating breathing or alternating breathing once or twice. In this way, the time spent while alternating breathing can be greatly saved. However, long-haul freestyle entails alternating breathing so as to adjust the rhythm and speed of freestyle. Thus, it is of great importance to grasp the rhythm of alternating breathing. On the one hand, the physical energy consumption can be reduced by controlling your breath. On the other hand, you can adjust your speed.

While practicing complete actions of how to swim freestyle, you need to maintain 400 meters as one phase.

After finishing practicing 400 meters, you should timely summarize and find out such problems as troublesome gestures or unsmooth alternating breathing in the training. In this phase, you can increase your practicing distance to 800-1000 meters based on your own physical strength.

4. Adjustment phase

Each time when you finish the practices, you can adjust and relax yourself. Never stop when you feel too tired. If you feel tired, then you have exercised too much.