Not only is swimming a fun, low-impact activity, it is also good for your health and can keep you in great shape. However, you can only reap the maximum benefits of swimming if you execute the proper form.
If you want to improve your swimming form, then you need to be able to understand what it is that your body is trying to do when you are in the water. It will take some practice, but you will get better at it over time if you put in the time and energy.
To learn how to improve your swimming techniques, here are a couple of things you should keep in mind:
- Learn Basic Breathing Techniques
Make sure that when you are learning how to swim, you understand how to breathe correctly. Breathing correctly means that you get the right amount of air into your lungs at the right time. If you do not breathe, it will be difficult to maintain your pace and will cause you to lose speed.
Blowing bubbles underwater is a good breathing exercise to help you learn how to control your breathing. Once you’ve mastered this, you can learn to float effortlessly and incorporate your breathing so you can focus on executing the proper swimming form.
- Decrease Your Fluid Drag
Swimmers often focus on increasing their speed when they practice swimming. However, if you want to improve your swimming technique, you should learn how to swim with less drag. Drag is the resistance of your body against the force in the water. There are many ways you can reduce drag in the water, and these include:
- Keep your body completely flat when swimming.
- Roll your body from side to side while breathing
- Keep your head down to keep it aligned with your body and reduce surface wave drag
- Keep your kick tight when doing strokes to minimize frontal drag
- Point your toes upon entry into the water.
Reducing drag is also essential to see the effects of doing proper swimming form when you try to learn how to swim faster.
- Strengthen Your Core Muscles
One benefit of lap swimming is that it gives you a full-body workout. However, when you want to improve your swimming, you should first develop your core strength. The main reason you need your core muscles when swimming is that they will help you stay stable on the water. Many people concentrate on getting more robust and doing more repetitions with glamor muscles when working out. However, without the ability to use your body correctly and use your core correctly, you will not see any progress with your strength and may even end up with back pain.
- Use a Two-Beat Kick
Using a two-beat kick is great for endurance swimming for long distances or when you’re learning to focus your energy on executing your strokes with the best form.
The two-beat kick is an action of your feet coordinated with the timing of the rotation and arm-switch in front. It’s one kick per stroke. It’s efficient because it emphasizes propulsion from the core rather than generating movement by thrusting your legs up and down.
- Work Out Your Leg Muscles
One of the most critical swimming exercises that you should focus on if you’re trying to increase your swimming efficiency and performance is leg work. Most people tend to do squats when they’re trying to gain strength, but doing leg lifts while swimming will work both your leg and core muscles, which are essential to your overall swimming efficiency. Lunges and hip flexor stretches will also help to build your endurance.
Final Thoughts
Swimming isn’t just one of the bests ways to beat the heat during the summer season—swimming is also a great way to get in shape and improve your health. It’s a great form of exercise that will benefit your cardiovascular system. Swimming works all of your muscles, and the more muscles that you use, the more calories you will burn. As you build up your endurance, you may even begin to see an improvement in your heart rate and metabolism.
However, to get the optimum benefits of swimming, you need to do proper execution of the strokes. To accomplish that, you need to strengthen your core and leg muscles and, at the same time, practice adequate breathing. Lastly, it would be best if you learned how to decrease your drag and do the two-beat kick so that you can maximize your speed and endurance. Above all, just make sure to practice and keep up a consistent routine.
