Swimming is fun and great for health and fitness but a lot of people do not really know how to swim or do not swim with proper technique. This is okay if you’re just looking to enjoy a splash in the pool but to really get all the health benefits of swimming, it is advisable that you learn how to swim with proper technique. Also, you never know when your swimming skills may be called upon, perhaps to save a drowning person or even to save your own life.
Whatever you’re the motive for your interest in swimming, you hopefully agree with us that improving your swimming technique is a good idea. Don’t stop reading now, though, as we’re going to show you practical ways you can learn do this.
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Get Fitter
A lot of people swim to get fit and tone their muscles—this is a good idea but if you’re looking for ways to improve on your swimming technique you probably should be doing the reverse: do other exercises to develop strength for swimming.
Of special interest should be the muscles in your back, arms, core, and legs (pretty much your entire body actually). Some great exercises to develop these areas are pushups (especially useful for developing your pectorals and triceps for the front crawl), pull-ups to develop your back muscles and squats to build up your lower body muscles such as hamstrings and quads. With all these exercises, you will be doing a secondary core workout if you do them properly; but to further strengthen your core, you could also do planks, crunches or sit-ups. You don’t want to get too heavy, though, as that could slow you down in the water.
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Practice
Practice is necessary to master pretty much any skill in life. With consistent practice, not only will you become better, but you will develop muscle memory which is very important. Mastering how to execute a technique and getting your body to master it are two slightly different things. Muscle memory as the name implies is the ability of your muscles to remember certain moves after having performed them repeatedly over a period of time. This is why, for example, when you play soccer often enough, you get to a point where you could probably kick a ball with the great technique without having to think too much about it. The same applies to swim.
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Keep Studying the Technique
You might consider yourself to be a very good swimmer, but even the pros have a higher level of improvement that they aspire to. You ought to keep studying the various swimming techniques, and perhaps you’ll spot some way in which you could improve. If you’ve mastered the front crawl, then it might be a good time to improve on that weak butterfly stroke. This step could be as simple as getting on Youtube and doing a search for swimming techniques or watching videos of really great swimmers.
Conclusion
These 3 simple tips are sure ways to help you improve your swimming technique so be sure to use them consistently for the best results.