How to Swim: Basic Freestyle

Dan Kutler: My name is Dan Kutler and I am going to teach you how to swim - Basic freestyle now. We are going to learn how to move our arms. We are going to learn how to move our legs. We are going to learn how to breathe, and then we are going to pull it all together into a very simple but easy freestyle stroke. Male Speaker: So the freestyle stroke is also known as the crawl stroke because it resembles that of the crawl. You are essentially reaching with one arm and reaching with the other, reaching with one arm, reaching with the other and so on and so forth. Right now, we are going to focus on the three main parts to the freestyle stroke. And for that manner, every stroke has three main components to the arm movement. First part of every stroke is called the catch. The catch is when the arm enters the water and it's basically trying to grab onto a big mess of water. That sets, so far for the second part which is the pull. In while, one arm is in the pull phase, the other is in the catch phase and so you get into a freestyle rhythm. Catch, pull, catch, pull, catch, pull. So the third part to every stroke is called the recovery and it's what you are looking at here and it's basically the arm setting itself up to begin the catch and pull phase. In all four strokes the recovery happens outside of the water except for breaststroke, which happens in the water. Alright. So lets talk a little bit about legs here, the flutter kick is the kind of kick that you do in the freestyle and this is basically just kicking back and forth, kicking back and forth. The question I want to address about the kick is actually where just the kick began which is -- a question I have heard of from students over the years, does it began at your ankles, at your knees, at your hips? The answer is C, it actually the kick should originate from your hips and sort of travel down each leg like a wave. Just make sure you keep your ankles and your knees loose throughout the kick. Alright. So lets get into some drills and start learning proper freestyle technique. The first drill that I want you to learn is called finger tip drag and what this drill does is basically forces your arm into the proper position. I am talking about the recovery phase when the arm is coming out of the water. As you can see here my elbows are high and my finger tips are driving across the surface of the water, when I bring my arm forward. So watch my fingertips is a kind of just graze across the top of the water, what that does is force your arm into the problems to right position, you know proper technique doing your recovery phase is basically high elbows and then letting your forearm and your hand kind of dangle underneath your elbow. So you basically - when your arm comes out of the water, you want to think about lifting with your elbow, letting your form and hand dangle underneath and then reaching forward in front of you. Lifting with your elbow, letting you forearm hand dangle and reaching forward. And this drill is what helps you do that. So the fingertip drill focused on technique. In this drill the catch up stoke will focus on timing, the timing of your stroke. Basically, you don't want your arms at opposite ends of each other. You don't want one arm out in front and the other completely back. You want to kind of overlap your stroke as I am doing here. You can see that one arm will wait for the other arm just sort of touch it or tag team in before it began the catch and pull phase. Now lets talk about breathing. First thing I want to say is to -- I want to dispel the myth about, I am having feeling obligated to breathe on both sides. It does not matter what side you breathe to and if you can only breathe to one side that is fine. A lot of world class swimmers today breathe on one side, it's no big deal. As long as you get your air and you can continue to swam and swim smoothly, it doesn't matter what side you breathe to. If you happen to learn how to breathe to both sides, that's great. But it's not necessary. So how do we breathe? We breathe by rolling our head to the side, taking air in through your mouth, holding it for a few strokes and then exhaling through your nose and mouth to get another breathe. You don't have to lift your head out of the water to get a breathe. You want to keep it down and let it roll to the side, left or right to get that air. So we have learned about what to do with our arms, we have learned about our legs, we have learned about breathing, we have learned a few drills to help make it happen. So lets just go over it real quickly entering the water, catch, pull, catch, pull, making sure to keep the flutter kick going throughout the stroke. High elbows with your hand come underneath. Try to overlap your stroke. Stay relaxed and your swimming freestyle. Dan Kutler: So that's basically in as simple as that, that's how you swim freestyle. And now we are going to move on to the breaststroke.