Breaststroke Tips

If you're just starting out into swimming, then you'll need to know about the breaststroke technique. This article will give you some breaststroke tips to help make your swimming experience more enjoyable and beneficial.
Breaststroke is perhaps the easiest swimming technique that one can learn. For most, the breaststroke technique is the first technique that is learned before they foray into other, more difficult techniques like the butterfly stroke. Many new swimmers are encouraged to learn the breaststroke swimming technique for this same reason. If you're a new swimmer and are just about to start learning how to swim, then a list of some breaststroke tips will help you plenty. These tips will help you understand the basic techniques of this particular stroke and therefore will make your job easier. So here it goes.

Breaststroke Swimming Tips

The first thing that one needs to learn is how to swim using the breaststroke correctly. For this, there are certain steps that you need to keep in mind. They are as follows.

Step One - The Legs
  1. Make sure that the whole body is at the same level when at the surface.
  2. Maintain a position that allows the shoulders to be in one line and the hips flat in the water.
  3. Now imagine a frog swimming and repeat the same action.
  4. Bend the knees outwards and bring the feet close to the hips.
  5. Now turn the feet out so you can push back with the bottom of the foot.
  6. Push with your feet and legs so that now your legs are straight and at an angle to each other.
  7. Now close your legs so that the knee touch.
  8. Make sure that both legs are doing the same thing at the same time.
Step Two - The Hands
  1. Learning the breaststroke is much easier on the arms because one can see them and what exactly is happening.
  2. First of all, stretch your arms out in front of you. These should be under the surface of the water.
  3. Now draw both hands out in the form of a complete circle. Make sure that both arms move simultaneously and are in front of your shoulders.
  4. Finish the step by stretching out the arms in front of you again.
  5. Between each stroke, stretch out fully.
  6. Stretch out by making your body long and thin.
  7. The arms and legs should be under water all the time.
  8. One of the most important breaststroke tips to remember, is that there should be no splashing sound made and this can only happen if the arms and legs are under water.
Step Three - Breathing
  1. Make sure to get the face out of the water followed by the arm movement and then the legs.
  2. When you stretch your arms forwards, that is the time you lift your head up over the surface of the water to draw in a breath.
  3. Now go back to completing the full circle motion with your arms.
  4. It'll take a little time to get the coordination just right.
Step Four - All Together
  1. Once you have mastered the three essential pointers of the breaststroke technique, all one needs to do is bring them all in together.
  2. This is how you should go about it.
  3. Pull the water with your arms then come up for air.
  4. Now kick the water with your legs.
  5. Stretch your entire body to make it long and thin.
When you get the breaststroke technique down pat, practice and practice harder. This will help you to know how to swim breaststroke faster as well.

General Breaststroke Swimming Tips

Here are some other breaststroke tips that you can use for improving your swimming strokes.
  1. Make the body lift and fall. This will help you do the swimming technique better.
  2. Lift your shoulders and your chest when your arms pull together. This will make the shoulders steer clear of the water.
  3. So also, make your hips rise and fall by kicking into the water with flat feet.
  4. When you bend your knees to move them apart, make certain that the knees are behind he body. So also, make sure that the feet are kept slightly apart when you lift them to the bottom.
  5. Make sure to bend the elbows and keep them near the surface of the water when you are about to move them in a circle. Now bring them back and tuck them into your chest when you come back.
Swimming has been known to be a very good exercise technique to maintain good health and encourage high levels of fitness training. Here's hoping that these tips helped you in understanding this technique better and that you will make proper use of the same to thereby train yourself better and therefore achieve high levels of fitness.
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Published: 4/30/2010
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