This article is for those of you who still struggle with your swim stroke. The problem is not the effort you put into the stroke, it’s due to a lack of stroke efficiency. Inefficient swimming means your body is out of position and rather than gliding down the lane, you’re pushing against all the resistance that water presents.. Here are steps for a freestyle you can swim for a long time without becoming exhausted.

A note on kicking. Kicking is essential to an effortless freestyle. Improving your kick is a process and a matter of conditioning. The more you kick in a practice, the more you will develop a fluid kick. The kickboard is your friend.

I recommend in this progression that you wear training fins. This takes strong kicking out of the equation for the most part. If you’re already a good kicker, fine! If not, find some training fins. 

Let’s begin.

Step 1 — Think Glide

Do this several times: At the wall, sink below the surface and push off in a glide. Don’t kick, just glide until you stop. Return to the wall and repeat. Raise your hands straight over your head, fingers locked with your arms pressed against your head in a streamline position. Repeat a few more times, challenging yourself to see how far you can glide.

This isn’t just an exercise, it’s a mindset. (Although as you get better and perform turns, pushing off the wall in a streamline improves your lap time, and gives your arms a little rest on each lap.) Notice that when you push off in that streamline, how your body is like an arrow. Efficient freestyle is a matter of maintaining that streamline–from fingertips to toes–throughout the stroke.

Step 2 — Develop a Level Body Position

Watch a speedboat when it first starts, the bow is high and the stern low. But as the boat gains speed, it levels off into an efficient position. We want to use that same idea in swimming. You head, hips and heels need to be on the same level. And while a good kick helps to maintain that position, we need to think whole body.

Our lungs are air-filled but they are not in the center of the body. For most of us, if you float face down, your legs will start to sink because your center of gravity is somewhere around the diaphragm. Coaches will tell you to “press your chest.” I say it a lot, but it is not intuitive. I found the drill, the Superman Drill, to be helpful. 

With our hand on the edge of the pool, float face down. Kick a little to maintain a level body position. Then push away from the wall about a foot or two. Keep holding a level body position. Press your chest a little deep into the water while your head stays neutral. Gently kick back to the wall and repeat. This exercise helps to find your balance point — head, hips and heels on the surface.

Step 3 – Kicking and Breathing on Your Side

Push off and hold one arm straight out while the other rests on your hip. Maintain a streamline body position, and kick for one length. Breath forward when you need to, then return to your streamline position Switch arms on the way back. Repeat this drill several times to become comfortable holding a good body position on your side. You can use fins for additional stability.

Now grab a kickboard. Holding the board in the outstretched arm, look to the bottom of the pool. Exhale with your face down, then rotate your head and shoulders to breath. Keep one ear in the water, so that your head continues on the same axis as your spine — in other words, don’t lift your head. Just rotate and inhale. Repeat until you become comfortable kicking on your side, breathing rhythmically. Practice this until you can perform the drill without a kickboard.

Step 4 – Hand Entry and the Catch

This phase of training will take the most time, and constant improvement. The flaw I see in many swimmers is that they lead the arm pull by dragging the elbow backwards and don’t hold water until they are halfway through the pull, losing about a third to half of the propulsion. The key is to hold water at the top of the stroke..

You’ll find dozens of videos if you search for “high elbow catch.” They are all similar and instructive. The goal is to set up your forearm ahead of the pull phase in the stroke. Think of this: As soon as your hand angles into the water (fingertips, wrist, elbow, shoulder rotation), point your fingers downward, rolling over a ball. Once your hand is lower than your elbow, start pushing backwards in the stroke. This takes practice, but the limits are nearly endless. 

Step 5 – Relaxed Arm Recovery

Once you’ve finished the pull phase, you need to get your arm back to Step 4. There are a lot of particulars to this, and an improper arm recovery usually leads to a poor lateral body alignment (wiggling side to side) or not setting up a good catch. Two simple ideas to work on. Number 1. The arm should be relaxed, especially from the elbow (pointed high) and the hand. Number 2. Midway through the arm recovery, your forearm should be perpendicular to the water’s surface. 

A great drill to manage this, which also helps develop body rotation is the 6-1-6 Drill. Kicking six times on your side with your arm resting on your hip, raise your elbow (relaxed) high and into the catch position, and rotate to the other side. Now the opposite arm rests on your hip as you kick six times and rotate back to the original position. A similar and also useful drill is the Fingertip Drag Drill, which also helps you manage balance and rotation..

Step 6 – Stroke Timing

One of the main causes of shoulder injuries is due to a lack of body rotation and a windmill arm stroke where your arms move in complete opposition, like a kayak paddle. When you learn to rotate to your side, you recruit your larger chest and back muscles, and reduce stress on the shoulders. 

But you also need to adopt a longer, front quadrant style stroke, which means one arm is always in the front part of the stroke, anchoring your body position whilst your pulling arm moves you forward. We started in Step 1 with acquiring a feel for the streamline, and this is where it pays off. That anchoring arm in front sets up a streamline body position, eliminating a lot of resistance whilst you pull.

A very common drill is the Catch-Up Drill, where one hand meets the other at the top of recovery. This is difficult for early swimmers because they haven’t developed a stroke that compensates for the resistance when no arm is pulling. However, over time and training, you will gain strength and the Catch-Up becomes valuable. Once you’re comfortable with a Catch-Up stroke, transition to a Three-quarter Catch-Up Stroke. 

This is essentially the perfect stroke for longer distances (over 100 yards/meters), marrying your good streamline with stroke timing that focuses on constant power in the stroke cycle. I frequently create up a set with my swimmers where they start a lap in a Catch-Up Stroke and then transitions to a three quarter (front quadrant) stroke. I actually like to use the analogy of a waltz rhythm in your stroke timing – think 1 2 3 – 1 2 3 as you stroke along.

Puttling it All Together

There you have it. Learning how to adopt a streamlined body position with body rotation enables proper breathing, and reduces a lot of the resistance that makes your stroke a struggle. Next focus on how your hands and arms enter the water, catch the water and pull you forward as the opposite arm recovers in a relaxed manner. Over time you will develop a long and strong front quadrant stroke that gets you through an hour’s swim, or a mile or two in the lake. Keep kicking in your practices to where you don’t need training fins to swim smoothly and with much less effort.