What's going on swim fans! in this video I'm gonna share with you the five biggest mistakes
that swimmers make in freestyle whether you're a beginner swimmer or a more veteran
i guarantee you're gonna learn something in this video so make sure you watch until the
very end in this video i'm not only going to break down what the biggest mistakes are
why they matter but also what you can do about it and how you can incorporate some of these skills
into your swimming so that you can improve your technique and swim faster and smarter than ever
before if you're new to the channel welcome to my swim pro where we share the latest and greatest
to help you take your swimming to the next level and improve your performance and health both in
and out of the water technique training workouts nutrition everything so make sure you subscribe to
the channel join our global community and let's get right into the video so the first mistake
is looking forward this is the biggest mistake and it's sort of counter-intuitive but you don't
need to look where you're going meaning if you're swimming in a pool the wall is not going anywhere
the pool length is fixed so you should be looking at the bottom of the pool should be looking at
that black or blue line i know it's boring i know it can get frustrating but that's going
to help you assume the fastest because when you swim looking forward and we'll talk about open
water in just a second you're going to have poor head position poor head position means
your body is not going to be in alignment and your legs are just going to sink like a rock
because if one thing goes up your head then your legs are going to go down you're going to create
all of this drag all this resistance and this increased drag remember water is 800 times more
dense than air it's a really thick medium so you want to minimize your drag as much as possible now
in open water you might ask well how am i going to see where i'm going sure in open water you're
going to have to lift your head up and that you can also incorporate to take a breath as well
but even in open water and in pool swimming if you are lifting your head up you want to minimize that
lift so that way your legs don't sink as much so if you're doing open water and you lift your head
you should try and keep your chin right at the surface of the water just like butterfly what goes
up goes down and if your head goes up your legs are going to go down also when you look forward
it actually decreases your stroke efficiency what i mean by not only are you increasing the drag
but when you try and take a pull and your head is elevated and your legs are sinking it's actually
going to make your pull less effective and you're going to get less leverage think about trying to
do a pull up right and if you try to do a pull-up with your arms really far away from your body it's
going to be really difficult to lift your body up whereas if you were just going to be hanging
straight up and so when you swim freestyle you want to keep your eyes at the bottom of the pool
lift up your hips and that's going to help you not only increase decrease your drag
but also increase your propulsion okay so problem number two mistake number two is kicking too much
i know sounds counterintuitive right you think i want to swim faster so i'm gonna kick more
wrong that's not how it works so oftentimes swimmers don't need to kick as much as they
think they do if anything it should actually be incorporated in the stroke through hip rotation
so i'm not saying kicking is the opposite of how you swim fast quite the opposite the best swimmers
in the world have an amazing kick but when you're training unless you're doing a kick set
or something that's really high speed you should be driving with a hip rotation also your amplitude
shouldn't be that large that's a huge huge mistake swimmers make with the freestyle kick
you want to have your amplitude meaning from your toes to your heels should be less than half a
meter you can't let your legs get really wide and you have a big scissors kick you might be able to
pull more water but you're increasing resistance remember the water is 800 times more dense than
air you want to have a short fast kick point your toes keep your legs relatively straight and like
i said it's short and fast but you don't wanna overemphasize it the rotation should actually come
from your hip rotation check out a whiteboard wednesday i did how to swim perfect freestyle
technique has over a million views here on youtube or whatever channel you're watching it on it's
one of the most popular videos i've done really breaks down all of the elements of the stroke and
we talk about what you should do with your legs okay moving on to number three is breathing now
i know what you're thinking oh my god it's a big mistake to breathe so do i hold my breath
just no breathing no that's not really how it works you want to make sure when you breathe
you don't want to lift your head up unless you're doing open water swimming and when you take that
breath you want to be rotating onto your side and try and keep one eye and one ear into the water
so again the whole goal is to keep your head and low profile in the water when you lift
your head similar to the first mistake you're going to create a lot of resistance so make
sure when you're taking your breath you rotate to the side it's a natural part of the stroke
and you don't really have to worry about lifting your head up and sinking your legs additionally
when it comes to actually holding your breath you don't want to hold it while you swim if anything
you're exhaling slowly through your nose while your face is under the water and then when you
need to take that breath you actually have a quick exhale and then you breathe in through your mouth
you don't want to swim freestyle or any stroke and just hold your breath the only time you do that
is on like a breaststroke pull out or when you're doing a long underwater dolphin kick that's a more
advanced skill but if you're just a beginner you really need to focus on making sure that you have
a slow exhale through your nose it'll improve your lung capacity and allow you to swim for a much
longer continuous period of time without feeling out of breath let's talk about mistake number four
is the crossover this is when we're talking about the fundamentals of how you actually catch the
water so you want to enter the water at 11 and 1 o'clock on the the hands of a clock so that's it
right in front of your shoulders and you should enter with your middle finger first at about a
45 degree angle to the water about half a meter to a meter not a meter half a meter in front of your
shoulder i'd say 18 inches uh for for my american friends 18 inches in front of the shoulder
in line with the shoulders so crossover is where you actually cross the midline of your body on the
arm stroke and that's why it's so important to enter in front of your shoulder and then
you rotate on the same line as that shoulder and then you pull under the water in the same line as
your shoulder so even as you rotate you're still under the same line crossover is where your hand
passes the midsection of your body you've got a laser that cuts your body and then you cross
over and this causes your body position to kind of swim like a worm so i say don't wiggle
don't do the worm because if you're trying to go fast in one direction a straight line is
the fastest point if you're kind of doing like a worm it's not really going to work
you're not a fish if you're a fish and you have musculature all across your body
that's how a fish swims you my friend are not a fish so make sure you're not wiggling not swimming
like a worm if you're interested check out some analysis videos i've done on michael phelps
katie ledecky caleb dressel and i break down the stroke those are some of the most popular videos
as well so make sure you check them out we'll link a few of those in the description below
the fifth mistake is pulling with a straight arm this is a big one this is really what separates
the the faster swimmers from the really fast swimmers or the beginner swimmers
from the intermediate swimmers this is really how you get to the next level so if you're if
you're a more advanced swimmer and you're really training hard and you're a veteran you know thumbs
up to the veterans in the crowd but really this is how you get to that next level and so what
happens when you pull down with a straight arm is you're actually pulling less water it's from a
from a biophysics standpoint just you know the overall mechanics you're actually going to pull
more water if you bend your elbow and you achieve that early vertical form this is called evf i did
a whiteboard wednesday on this topic specifically so make sure you check it out but a quick summary
you're essentially trying to increase the surface area of the water that you can pull so if you pull
with a straight arm if you think about it you're basically pushing yourself like down
and and really what you want to do is you want to pull yourself forward so if you imagine
putting your hand over a log or over a chair or something like that you want to increase the
surface area from your middle finger all the way up through your elbow and actually your entire arm
so the earlier you can get into that position the more water you're gonna pull the faster you go
if you watch the best swimmers in the world they are amazing at this and if you watch a beginner
swimmer this is normally an area where it's a big mistake and they're not really proficient
but this is an area that you can actually improve in relatively quickly if you do some smart drills
one drill being the fist drill this is i love this drill maybe every other time i swim i'll do this
for a few 25s or a few 50s you basically swim with your hands and a fist you might think why would
you do that you're going to have less traction and that's the point you're trying to decrease your
resistance on your hand so you can focus on your forearm you're going to feel slow
that's okay this is a great drill to do for a few 25s and then when you open up your hands
you're actually going to feel really fast because you're going to have the combination of pulling
with an increased feel of the water on your forearm and then you're going to have an increased
feel of your hand and it's all going to connect together it's amazing if you're looking for more
drills make sure you check out the my swim pro app for not only drills but also workouts and how the
drills actually incorporate into the workouts so that's really important to make sure you're not
pulling with a straight arm don't make the mistake really and all the strokes focus on that early
vertical forearm and now the bonus one i know i said five mistakes let me give you guys a bonus
one so the bonus number six the big mistake is not having a plan so if you just go to the pool and
you're just gonna swim or you go to a workout in a structured group and you've got a coach watching
you and you just go through the motions that's a huge mistake every time you swim is an opportunity
to improve upon yourself to improve something it could be your streamline it could be your
technique your kick your underwaters your breath control so if two scenarios let's say you already
swim in a team you've got a coach and you're following coach's workout that's awesome make sure
you're focusing on something because time is our most valuable asset so don't lose the opportunity
that you have in the pool to work on something that you can only do in the pool no matter how
strong you get in the weight room no matter how much mental training you do you only have so much
time in the water so make sure you're focusing on something and you continuously develop that skill
over and over it's a big mistake when you just go through the motions now let's say you're swimming
on your own and you are your own coach not to worry check out the my swim pro app because you
can get a personalized training program and you can follow that and by following a progression in
a series of workouts like you would as if you had a coach as if you had a team that's how you really
start to develop those skills if you're looking for drills technique workouts and training plans
like a six week plan to improve your mile time or a improve eight weeks to improve the individual
medley or maybe you want to go just from the couch and you want to go from couch to 1k we have all
these different training programs so make sure you check them out in the my swim pro app available
for ios and android and make sure you check out some other videos that i've done that talk about
technique training dryland and nutrition because here at my swim pro it's all about helping you
improve your performance and health both in and out of the water so check out the my swim pro app
and also if you're interested i just launched a book it's called swim like a pro it's amazing make
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you check out that group as always let me know what you think in the comments and happy swimming
you