How to be a good swimmer - Swim faster

How long does it take to be a good swimmer? Well it depends on what you define as “good”. For example It took michael phelps 8 years to qualify for the 2000 Sydney olympics. He started swimming at age 7. Which means that he was only 16 when he broke the 200 meters butterfly world record. So if you are Michael Phelps and you are 7 years old, it takes 9 years to be the best.

But what if you are not Michael Phelps, you are not 7 years old and you don’t necessarily want to be the best in the world. Well if you start from zero, but you have the best coach which could be yourself, and the best attitude towards learning, it can take as little as 20 hours of deliberate practice for you to learn how to swim a couple of laps. From then on progress starts to get more difficult. The most difficult part is that progress is not linear. That means that you can work very hard all year long and still be slower than last year.

So it depends on a lot of things, like how hard you work, how good your genes are, but I think most importantly your will and humility to search for new ways of getting better. Notice that I didn’t mention age. That is because you can learn how to swim at any age. In fact a lot of people have written comments on our videos saying they started to learn how to swim at 60 or at 70 years and are now in love with the sport.

When I started swimming competitively at age 8, it took me around 2 to 3 years to became one of the fastest swimmers on the team. What is surprising is that I wasn’t the tallest, the strongest or the most hard working one and yet I could manage to out swim most of my teammates. The only reason that I did that is that I had one of the best swimming techniques on my team. My technique allowed me to swim faster and with less effort than my teammates. This wasn’t a secret either. My closest friends and brother always helped each other after practice on perfecting our technique. That is why I always say that our expertise is teaching good swimming technique and that is why a lot of people write comments thanking us for helping them improve their technique.

Sadly, through youtube we can only help people with more general tips and advice. To truly help swimmers beyond what they think is possible we need to analyze their swimming abilities in person. That is why we are holding a swimming camp this summer. I invite you to join us for a full week to improve your technique. In order to have time to focus on each athlete we are only accepting 15 to 20 swimmers. So make sure to talk to us quickly about this opportunity.

Swimming camps:
You can find out more and reserve your spot here:

Thailand:

Mexico:

Thanks for watching!
Swim fast!

[e.m.]

As a birthday gift to myself, at 60 y.o. I took up swim lessons. (Was on my bucket list).that was 2.5 years ago.. I'm still not the best or fastest swimmer but I can do front crawl. Must note that I've always been afraid of the water. Not water per se but drowning..not sure where that fear came from...but I'm living proof that one can teach an old dog new tricks...haha... Thanks for this video. 😃

[alexalexander]

To all the young ones out there good technique prevents injuries. If you are injured get it fixed. If I roll over in my sleep the wrong way my shoulder pops out and my arm goes numb and it’s 20 years later. I was too hyper competitive to have a slow season to fix my technique. Don’t wait till your 30’s to think there may be something to this technique thing.

[denisd]

I've started swimming lessons at 5 y.o. (thanks mom!) and have always swum. I was on a master swimming team from 1993 to 2002. Now 56 y.o. and still learning. It's one of your videos which taught me not to stick my fingers together when I swim freestyle and it makes a difference. Never too late to improve or shed a bad habit. Thanks!

[billybob]

I’ve been swimmjng for 5 years and my friend has been swimming for 2 but now he’s faster than me

[feelingzhakkaas]

I m 59 and started just few days back.... watching your videos... excellent videos..
Now I m amazed to see my progress..I beat other regular swimmers with graceful swimming

[djokotriono]

Came to this channel due to low back pain in March 2017 watching smooth freestyle from zero. Today at 47 years old still have to learn one google underwater and endurance still sucks but my 100m time is consistently above 1:50ish below 2 min with 25m in 11 stroke. 3-4 times a week starting from 300m each session and now 600m. Progress is like revelation. 1 year sucks, then the next day boom, you just know the correct way and have to keep practicing it and maintain it. Self taught until today but thinking on taking lessons this year. Never underestimate the power of YouTube. God bless guys 🙏

[alanhsu]

Thank you so much to share this point. I totally agreed that the improvement is non-linear so the practice should be constant.

[Jenesis]

I learned a lot of good tips from you. As a self starter at 56, swimming teaches me to be patient and to take risks. It was really scary whenever I pushed myself a little bit but pushing I did. I want to be able to swim well to enjoy it into old age.

[chloeglace]

I love your channel, turns out that I want to go back in swimming again. I quitted because of some circumstances but every time I watched your videos it encourages me to go back. Thank you for the tips, it helps me to think wider in swimming

[juanrozo]

Thank you so much for having this channel. I can say I've learned a lot of things watching your videos.
Please, make the swimmer camp next year too, I definitely want to have that experience.

[thibod]

I am on my 63th birthday and I am starting to swim my second year with a master swimming team which allowed extra swimmers to join the team that are not racers themselves. To join that team in training was a very good decision as they are so motivated and are constantly working on their technic. I get so many recommendations on how to improve that I am sur that it is also an excellent exercise for my brain. I guess my next step will be to go to a training camp to move up another notch in my technic. Last summer I swam in an outdoor 50 meters pool and it was nirvana. What a beautiful sport is swimming and proper technic surely enhance the pleasure specially when learning each different strokes which each have something special to offer. I will check about your training camp but not this year.

[shatab]

I am 32 and hydrophopic but I over came that and started swim lesson about 9 months ago. Right now I can swim without worries about water and do just fine but very slow in water which I think it will show progress with time and practice.

[mitkovlogz]

I started swimming when i was 5 now i am 13 and a half and swim 50 m butterfly for 29 seconds and 100 m butterfly for 1:06 and i was second in the whole country on both disciplines last year

[claire]

I started swimming at 11 and now I’m thirteen. For my first two years I swam on a non competitive team that practiced once a week and I just recently changed to one that practices 5 time a week. I have done technique but I struggle a lot with speed and breathing. Is there anything I can do to work on those out of water?

[sewgood]

I've been learning to swim for 40 years... without any success. Just because I love to be in water and I'm fearless I started to go to a swimming school 6 months ago. Unfortunately I'm not flexible at all, especially my legs and hips, so my kicks are horrible. Today it was my 60th lesson and I have to tell you there are some small changes in my technique already. So I don't want to give up :) Swimming is cool.

[ArtArt-xhoq]

For the past 5 months in my dryland training, I've been doing yoga regularly on a daily basis! And what it taught me is... deep belly breathing! Which my deep belly breathing technique REALLY REALLY helped me a lot with my swimming!😊💓🏊 It helped me a lot with pushing through my freestyle flip turns without running out of breath out of my freestyle flip turns! It helped me with, reaching farther & long as long as possible in my freestyle stroke!

In my Butterflystroke, I did the same technique for my breathing, but I learned to when doing the Butterflystroke pull, you should pull gently and relaxed! Do NOT pause then do the pull!! That will cause you to loose momentum and speed in your Butterflystroke!

So that's how my swimming went TODAY!😊😁

[chaluvarajub]

Sir pls upload a video, regarding about pull buoy and which type of pull buoy we buy. pls reply nabaiji pull buoy is better or not sir, tq

[fjodorvandenberghe]

I'am from belgium and i like your video's

[michaelsimmank]

I am ready to improve my technique. Your videos help me think about how I swim. I swim because it make me feel amazing physically and mentally. I will never lose interest in the sport of swimming. Thanks for all your outstanding videos!!!

[arishzida]

Nice very good for practice swimming 🏊‍♂️