If you want to swim swim better and faster you must move your arms faster as well and with the instructions of lifeguard training. This is one of the established misconceptions as tips for swimming faster. In any case, more speed is achieved when more water is pushed, not when the arms move in the image and likeness of the windmills, since, in this way, what we will achieve is to tire ourselves more than necessary. The stroke is, therefore, key in swimming. There are many ways to improve your stroke, but we present the basic ones, which go through achieving a proper body position in the water:
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Shallow kicks
You don’t need to hit hard or fast kicks, but rather to kick your feet effectively. And how is it achieved? The feet must look like those of a ballet dancer, having the instep up, and we will let them break the surface of the water.
If the leg shake under the water is too strong, we will only generate friction. However, the action of the legs in swimming, especially in the front crawl, is necessary and important since it contributes to propulsion and helps total body coordination. A correct kick will influence that we have a good hydrodynamic position as well as stabilizing.
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Stretch your knees
In the event that the kick is not performed efficiently or correctly, it may be because we are doing the kick from the knees. We will know this if we bend them too much. If we do, we will be shaking the lower part of the body more than necessary, instead of propelling ourselves forward. How to correct it?
A pair of fins will help us to improve the execution of the kick, since they stabilize the swimmer, allow us to extend the leg in its entirety (in the style of mermaids), and prevent us from kicking from the knees. We can try swimming with fins and then detach from them to imitate the same movement without.
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Check the position of the head
If we do not maintain a good position we can cause this to interrupt our speed in the water. An inappropriate movement can cause the hips to move downwards and this causes us to drag ourselves more than correct.
Thus, changing the position of the head is one of the most effective ways to change swimming speed. To check a good performance we must start swimming with our eyes looking down and with our arms directly in front of us.
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Change the pace
If in a part of the training such as, for example, 10 × 100, we maintain the same rhythm for all the series, what we are going to achieve is to be able to maintain the same rhythm. On the other hand, when we are in a competition, the heart rate will reach the maximum, so we must train for it.
One of the ways to train the body to process these spikes in heart rate is with push-up exercises at the edge of the pool: Swim easily to the other side, get up, then jump back into the water and do the next Serie.
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Push the water instead of pulling it.
Many people give up in the middle of a stroke. He cannot make it complete. To change this tonic, you must push the water at the moment when the hand is at the level of the navel. If the stroke falls short, we must take into account that the thumbs rub against the quadriceps.
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Check yourself
If you want to get out of doubt, if you want to see that something works, nothing easy 6 × 100. Then do another 6 × 100. Watch the time and heart rate in each set – if you swim faster and your heart rate stays the same, it works. But if you have slowed down and, on the contrary, your heart rate has shot up, this change has not gone well for you.
