Swimming Techniques
March 6, 2009
Swimming is always said to be the best form of exercise. This is a type of exercise that helps you burn a lot of calories thereby increasing your cardiovascular fitness levels. What’s more, it also helps you in improving your muscular endurance as well as your strength. You can even see old people who swim to keep their body fit and fine.
Basic swimming styles
When it comes to the basic swimming techniques, there are four basic swimming strokes – breaststroke, butterfly, the backstroke, and the crawl (freestyle). Now let us understand about each stroke in details.
Breaststroke
Breaststroke is one of the basic styles of swimming where it involves the pattern of the body bobbing upwards and downwards as you move forward in the water. This is considered to be the most difficult swimming technique. This is the main reason why it needs a lot of practice to learn it in the right way. In this technique, the pulling of arm and kicking of the leg are done alternatively. It is important to push the water and then move forward while you keep snapping the legs together.
Butterfly
Another difficult stroke in swimming is the butterfly. This technique should not be tried by the beginners or the novice swimmers. In this swimming technique, one has to move their legs together in a dolphin style or kick. Then you need to push the water downward as well as backward with the help of your arms moving together. You need to breathe at the end of every arm stroke.
Backstroke
Compared to breaststroke and butterfly, the backstroke is much easier. In this technique, the arms should be moved alternatively and in a windmill pattern. Remember your hands to be cupped and your thumb should come first when it comes out of the water. You also need to ensure that your arms should be moved in ‘S’ pattern. You should try to make sure that your head is always out of the water.
Crawl (Freestyle)
This is the swimming technique that is considered to be the best for beginners. The crawl is done on the belly and it involves moving your hands in the windmill arm motion. The difficult part of this swimming technique is the breathing. Many people find it difficult to breathe as most of the time the head is under the water. So it is best to turn your head to one side so that you can catch a breath.
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