Ryan Woodruff, Lynchburg YMCA

Download PDF Freestyle Technique 1

This freestyle swim practice is great for building aerobic conditioning and power development.

Building up a good level of swimming endurance can be highly beneficial for all swimmers. Whether you’re a competitive swimmer, open water swimmer or just a recreational swimmer. You will benefit from having higher levels of swim endurance, you will be able to swim faster and for longer time periods.

One of the most common mistakes in technique that we see in all strokes is in the pulling motion of backstroke. Part of the reason for this technical error is that to pull correctly, a swimmer needs to rotate the body significantly from one side to the other. That involves more work. To avoid that extra work, swimmers often choose to minimize the amount of body rotation. To avoid breaking the surface of the water with the hand moving backward, which reduces power, swimmers find an easier…