How To Swim Freestyle Properly

Freestyle or Front Crawl is a stroke we are all familiar with, it's probably the first proper stroke you adopted when you learned to swim! Even though generally speaking it is a straightforward stroke, there are always ways to revise and improve! Here are some technique tips from Mark and James!

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[zekevfab]

For the rotation, the best advice I received from my coach is to extend the arm in front by focusing to engage the lats, when you do so the body will rotate automatically at the right angle. You can try on dry land to extend your arm and feel when your lats are engaged

[WILDFOXRUNNING]

James has been getting so much better at speaking in front of the camera, sounds a lot natural now. Great work, keep it up. Also, my first triathlon is coming up in just two days, lets Thanks for all your lessons guys.

[christoph_wattever]

Shoutout to James, such a great addition to the channel! Also all the best to Fraser, miss you in front of the camera, hope you're doing well :)

[brendancade]

I've heard the "look <x> distance ahead of you" in regard to head position SO often, but doesn't that entirely depend on how deep the pool is?

[scottbarclay]

Loving the South African accent! Very good video. I am no freestyle swimmer but from watching other help videos I think it is important to avoid your left arm collapsing as soon as you take a breath from your right hand side. The left arm needs to go into the catch in tandem with the head rotating back into the water rather than before. I saw a bit of a collapsed arm in the video! Sorry if I am wrong in saying this but this was a tip from the My Swim Pro videos was Fares thanks!

[KlemenSuligojTri]

I went from swimming 2:40/100m to 1:30/100m just by watching this video!

[kuoroakihamza]

Swimming is relaxing, learning it is also relaxing which always keep you motivated! :)

[AmericusMaximus]

Thanks to wonderful videos live this one, I enjoy constantly working on my stroke, and have plenty on which to focus and concentrate—there’s always something, and then something else. Miss, however, allowing my thoughts to wander and ponder other things as I floundered about in blissful ignorance..

[sharonmorrison]

I love your videos. Can you please do a video focusing more on breathing? I have difficulty breathing not sure if I should be breathing out of the nose and mouth, or just my nose. Also I find that when I turn my head for air I get water in my mouth. Please help!! If there is a video already on this that I have missed. Please provide the link.❤❤😊

[DavidFritzIII]

#gtncoachescorner so it's generally accepted that shaving reduces drag in the pool and on the bike, but would leaving arm hair unshaved create additional drag during the pull phase thus creating more propulsion and faster times

[inz_uzi]

I filmed myself this week and I've learnt (again) that my technique is terrible. When I breathe I keep my front arm extended for too long - almost like in catch up - and my whole body sinks quite a bit. Because I start my next breath movement (I breathe every two strokes) from a low position it forces me to push hard to lift my torso and my head back to the surface. I lift my head and rotate too much to take breath and this prevents me from keeping my hips and legs hight. I go up and down like this in every cycle. Funny thing is that this bad technique felt smooth with "long" gliding, something I aspired to achieve being inspired by videos with good swimmers doing that. In reality it's terrible. I'll try to change my timing to the 'galloping' style. Starting my stroke much sooner while taking a breath should keep my body closer to the surface. I hope it will allow me to keep my head flat when breathing and to keep my hips and legs higher. Unfortunately I caught cold and I can't try it out in a pool today.

[ngdawgs]

Happy thanksgiving GTN 🦃🍽🍁🇺🇸 ! Always thankful for all the great vids. My swimming just keeps getting better thanks to all the great tips. Working on my flip turn now to be fancy 🧐.

[corpounknown]

7:19 how you gonna breathe if you dont rotate your body. first time i actually could catch a breathe was when i rotated with my arms

[jeffreywiddop]

Good advice definitely. But I think a swimmer should incorporate head-up; the water polo or life saving front crawl into their training with fins or even without. A swimmer doing this can really feel the catch and pull and find out their best arm to hand entry width angle. This that suits their own personal shoulder mobility.

[nixland]

I've just been learning free style for couple of months. Self taught. Slow progress. My question: when the hand enter the water, where is the position the other hand. I saw tutorial videos where the other hand is about to pedal, other videos show where the other hand already half way, even 2/3 way. It confused me 😊

[GrilledPhoenix]

I don’t get how rotation can be left last.. If you don’t rotate how would you recover the arm?

[jamiefuhrman]

#gtncoachescorner can breathing predominantly to one side cause imbalances? I’m able to breathe to both and practice before races but prefer to stick to one side for the majority of my training.

[clairhardywynn]

I have a lot of work to do ! I’m really struggling with rotation - I also swim looking up as if I’m looking for the end of a pool so I’m currently trying to remember to look down - this is now happening more often than not but I’m really struggling with the whole rotation thing - my shoulders are always racing down and I tend to just use my arms which is casing my shoulder / arm joints to ache when I’m swimming longer distances :(

[NickMaovich]

Should have mentioned billion times per video that water is 800 more dense than air (like MySwimPro guys do all the time lmao)

[sumbohdeeluv]

really confused about why so many tutorials leave rotation to the end, isn’t body rotation crucial for allowing your head to rotate for a breath?