Swimming Strokes

Swimming Strokes

There are many styles of swimming, but in competitive swimming there are only four; freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly. Of these most people swim freestyle; that means anything but the other three.

Breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly have rigid rules for the stroke itself and also for starting and turning. There are no style rules for freestyle; the only rule is that the full distance must be covered, which means that the pool ends must be touched by some part of the body when turning.

Freestyle;
In competitive terms at higher levels this means frontcrawl. But at minor swimming competitions any stroke may be used as long as the full distance is covered. Once mastered, frontcrawl is the most natural stroke and any distance can be swum without ill effect, apart from tiredness.

Other natural freestyle strokes are sidestroke and trudgeon. Sidestroke is wellknown, but trudgeon is seldom swum now although it was popular at one time. It is similar to sidestroke, but one arm is recovered clear of the water, while the legs kick back together similar to breaststroke. It is rather jerky, unlike the smooth front crawl.

Breaststroke;
Breaststoke is swum entirely on the breast, and arm and legs must make symmetrical movement on either side. Failure to do this with the legs is termed a 'screw kick' and means instant disqualification. Not more than one in a hundred swimmers who say they swim breaststroke would pass this test. It is impossible to judge this for oneself; you need a qualified teacher or coach to check this for you constantly as it's easy to slip into bad habits. For serious competitive breaststroke swimmers, the stroke puts strain on the knee joints and can cause problems.

Swum properly breaststroke involves putting the head under water at each stroke and the rules state that some part of the head must surface at each stroke. This is because in the early days, some Olympic swimmers used to dive in and swim the whole 100 yards of a race underwater because swimming underwater is faster. Officials decided to stop the practices as it was deemed to be unhealthy. Now swimmers are allowed to swim a short distance underwater after diving in and at turns. For this they use a modified arm stroke that sweeps from as far as possible above the head right to the swimmer's sides.

When turning at the pool ends and at the finish, swimmers must touch with both hands at the same time.

Backstroke;
Backstroke has to be swum entirely on the back except for turns. For the start the swimmer is in the water, back to the course, holding onto the end of the pool with both hands. At the starting signal the swimmer does a back dive, and is allowed to swim a short distance under water before surfacing. Exceeding the distance brings disqualification.

At one time when turning, the hand had to touch the wall with the swimmer still on the back and then the swimmer swiveled on the back before pushing off. This has been modified so that the swimmer can turn on the front during the turn, pushing off underwater on the back.

The arms can be used alternately or together although the latter is seldom seen (Old English backstroke). The legs kick up and down alternately except that when swimming underwater at start and turn, the dolphin leg kick, where both legs kick up and down together is marginally faster.

Butterfly
The butterfly stroke began with an attempt to beat the rules of breastroke that were in use at that time. The rules said that the arms must be moved symmetrically but it was found that by bringing the arms above the water like a double-arm front crawl a speed advantage could be obtained.

In the early days butterfly was swum with a breaststroke leg kick but now the dolphin kick is invariably used - an up and down movement with both legs working together like a fishes tail. Unlike the front crawl kick that works from the hips, the dolphin kick is an undulation of the whole body and has to be synchronised with the arm movement. Ususlly two kicks are done for each arm movement.

Proficient butterfly swimmers have to be very flexible around the shoulders. Part of a butterfly swimmer's training routine are exercises to improve flexibility.

Of all the strokes butterfly is the most impractical and butterfly races are usually not more than 200 metres. But as it's now part of the individual medley aspiring medley swimmers must do it.