My name is Julian Nagi, I’m the British Gas Head Swim Coach. I’m here today to give you some great tips on how to improve your freestyle training.
For an amateur swimmer it’s hugely important to get your breathing right, essentially what we like to encourage swimmers to do is to breathe out when their head is under the water then when they turn their head to the side they take their breath in. Breathing is a continuous action and you should never hold your breath in the water.
Stroke, stroke, breath on the arm, stroke, stroke, breath on the arm and when you do that you’ll be breathing to both sides.
Really good head position for any swimmer when they’re swimming front crawl is to actually look down and slightly forwards. What we try to avoid with swimming is to lift the head up too high because the body is like a seesaw, so if the head goes high the legs will sink down which creates more drag so it’s actually harder for them to swim through the water.
It’s really important that when a swimmer extends in the water they don’t actually hold it too long. What you’re actually trying to do when the hand comes into the water is lengthening the stroke so they extend forwards and then coming into a nice early catch and pull through to get great forward propulsion and momentum.
If a swimmer kicks correctly with nice straight legs, nice relaxed ankles and pointed toes and they also keep their legs together that will help keep their body position nice and horizontal.
which will decrease their water resistance and drag moving forwards. Remember the kick comes from the hips, not from the knees, so we maintain a nice gentle up down action.
Body role is a hugely important part of front crawl swimming technique. The idea is the body actually moves from side to side and in doing so you create less resistance and your body is able to slip through the water much, much easier, creating much less drag and frontal resistance.