To optimize your swimming freestyle racing performance you need to work on start, turn, and underwater kick. In this article I will go through all three underlining the key factors to perform them at best and giving suggestions on how to train them.
The freestyle start
The freestyle start, as the for butterfly and breaststroke can be performed in two ways. The traditional way with the two feet both on the front edge of the starting block, positioned slightly apart from each other with the hand in between. And the runner start, now the most used one during competitions, which simulates a typical track sprinter start with one foot at the front and one at the rear of the starting block. This second start is better in many ways. First the weight is distributed more centrally over the block making it safer against false starts movements which would make you disqualified during a race. And second it provides better Read more »
We have identified the key factors you need to work on to improve your freestyle technique and speed, but how do you train them? When it comes to improving your technique I am a strong believer in performing drills. Drills are swimming exercises that isolate a part of a stroke, or identify a new kind of movement which can be used to improve the overall technique of a swimming stroke. In this article you will find some basic drills to do every time you go to the pool for training. Make them part of your routine. you can perform these drills during warm up, during the hard phase of the training or during a cool down. Competitive swimmers do drills all the time and even have full swimming training sessions dedicated just to doing drills to improve swimming technique and sensitivity in the water.
Every swimming stroke has its own drills. In this article we will have a look at some of the most useful drills for freestyle swimming.
Freestyle Breathing
Breathing is a key factor in swimming freestyle. To improve the breathing technique and make it as efficient and natural as possible you can train in varying Read more »
Whether you are a master swimmer trying to get some seconds off your freestyle record or you just want to get better at swimming, go on reading. I am going to give you some killer tips on how to train for improving your freestyle technique and speed. Swimming freestyle is not complicated, but swimming freestyle like a champion is a matter of small details making the difference. I will show you what these details are and propose a swimming workout to work on them.
Let’s try to analyze the freestyle technique of one of the best swimmer I have ever seen in a pool: Ian Thorpe. Ian Thorpe has a slightly different freestyle technique than Michael Phelps, I personally prefer Ian Thorpe way of swimming freestyle but you need to bare in mind that at that level, every swimmer has his own style and all are correct. Read more »
Swimming interval training is one of the most effective swimming workouts when it comes to boost your overall cardiovascular conditioning and swimming speed. It is a tough training if performed with a certain level of ambition and it might be too strenuous for the average swimmer. Also, depending when in your swimming program you are, you might want to focus more on building endurance than speed. Fartlek swimming is very effective in building up your aerobic capacity without killing your base speed and it is less intense than interval training making it a valuable workout even for the average swimmer.
Fartlek Swimming: An alternative to Swimming Interval Training to built endurance.
Fartlek is a Swedish word which means “speed play” and refers to a training technique used by distance runners for many years. Fartlek workouts consists in short high intensity efforts in between a steady state aerobic effort. The high intensity work Read more »
Let me share with you a very personal story. I have a three year old lovely kid, who is afraid of water. Yes I know, it sounds crazy, but indeed my kid is afraid of water. I mean, I, his father grew up in a swimming pool, and my kid does not want water in his eyes. My kid starts screaming even when he needs to take a bath. My kid does not like the swimming pool at all. Or rather…, he didn’t.
In this article I will tell you how with some intelligence and perseverance I took him from being afraid of water, all the way to dive, swim, play and shower on his own.
Being afraid of water and not liking even few drops of it in the eyes is a perfectly normal thing for small kids. I would say that kids who don’t feel like that are more of an exception. I have been teaching kids how to swim and feel comfortable in the water for many year and all of them, as they start, are shaky and a bit scared. Water is not something they are used to, the swimming pool is usually noisy and mom and dad are faraway. They enter into a new world with new rules they can not grasp at once. My boy was so afraid at start, you wont believe it.
My kid is afraid of water: overcoming the fear one step at the time.
I knew three things which would make him change idea. First, all kids fancy a new game, especially if they can do it with their daddy. Two, all kids are curious and Read more »
This is the second part of a two part article on the benefits of swimming. The first part dealt with the physical benefits of swimming. Swimming is a great physical exercise and it is highly effective in training your cardiovascular system, lung, heart and in shaping up your muscles. It has a great impact on your physical posture, overall fitness and flexibility of your body making it less prone to injuries. Swimming as fitness activity has the benifits of being performed in a weightless environment which makes the training easy on your joints and ligaments. Swimming is great for burning the extra calories and as a weight loss routine.
In this second part I want to focus more on the mental benefits of swimming and on how it can help you to go through life with less stress and more peace of mind.
Mental benefits of swimming
Those of us who love physical exercise well know that training gives a healthier body but also, makes your mind wonder freely, relieving it from the everyday stress. Those who need to train to function properly, as I do, feel this even more and recognize that letting your body exercise makes you have more mental energy and makes you feel in balance with yourself. Among all the physical activities I have done in my life I have always found swimming to be special when Read more »
The benefits of swimming are widely recognized. Swimming as regular part of your fitness program has great positive influence on your body and soul balance. Swimming indeed, completely fulfills the Latin saying “Mens sans in corpore sano” which means “A healthy mind in a healthy body”. In the first part of this post on benefits of swimming I will explain why swimming is such a good body fitness exercise. In the second part, I will focus on the mental benefits of swimming.
Physical benefits of swimming
As we mentioned on several of our posts on swimming workouts, swimming provides a great all-around cardiovascular fitness training, improves strength and endurance and keeps your body flexible and injuries free. The standard swimming strokes, freestyle, butterfly, breaststrokes and backstroke, engage all the major Read more »
Combining gym workout and swimming training routine to lose weight is highly effective. These two fitness activities combined together with an healthy diet provide the calorie consumption and fun you need to train and lose weight.  In this article I will go trough the basics for making the most out of your weight loss effort and I will give you all the information needed for understanding why combing a gym workout with a swimming training can give you excellent results. If you are a regular reader to these blog (and you should, of course) you know I strongly believe that following my articles all my readers should become capable of understanding the basic rules of physical training and water fitness. I strongly believe the best way to undertake anything in life is doing it with a solid understanding of what is the reason why you are acting in a certain way. Never give anything for granted, try it yourself and learn from your own experience.
Weight loss basics
Your body needs calories to function properly. How many calories does an average adult male needs, though? It is generally understood that the average adult male needs about 2500 kcal a day. As you might understand this is a just an average which is computed by taking under consideration a large variety of people with different height and weight, different fat percentage of body mass, different level of activities and different metabolism. By the way, women typically need something less, around 2000 kcal. All those variables will have an impact on your personal need for calories. To lose weight you need to reduce the amount of calories you take in and burn more.
So let’s say you would like to reduce your dayly calories intake of about 300 kcal, if you do that consistently and do not change your life style, so you do not change the calories you need to function, you will gradually lose weight. So, what if you do change your lifestyle? Well, in the case if you get more active but you still eat the some amount of food you will have the same net effect of weight loss. Great, so be more active and intake Read more »
Experts agree there are two factors that play the most important role in growing old in the best possible way. Keeping active both physically and mentally and being socially engaged. Enrolling in aqua aerobics class in your community provides great benefits on all these factors. Regularly taking part in the water fitness exercises improves Read more »
Keeping up your fitness plan while pregnant is essential for your well being. Because of the support water provides to your body, swimming or water aerobics are the best solution for pregnant women.
During pregnancy your body goes through a metamorphosis which creates unbalanced body posture and, as a consequence, muscles pain. Your back especially, needs to provide extra support because of your prominent belly and extra weight you carry around. Supporting the changes happening to your body with some light training gives the extra strength the muscles on your back need, relieving you from the frustrating pain.
Aqua aerobics exercises train your back muscles without making you feel the weight of your body, giving you the benefits of training without risk of injuries. It has been proved that exercising during pregnancy and, Read more »
For your interval training use the Gymboss Interval Timer and keep your focus only on the exercise, not on your clock.
Tabata Jogging:
set your first Gymboss Interval Timer time interval to 20 secs; set your second Gymboss time interval to 20 secs push start and start improving your anaerobic fitness level.
Swimming interval training:
Select one Gymboss Interval Timer time interval option and set the time to your repetition time. Choose the number of repetitions per set and start swimming.
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