Improving my freestyle swimming without lessons

Seigla

Hi,

I've been swimming with a friend for the last six months. We are training for triathlon. I am teaching myself, and because I started earlier I also taught her, but now her swimming technique is as good as mine (or as bad) and I would like us to become better (I am getting better because I am becoming stronger, but I would also like to have better technique - my record for 500 meters is 9:03 - which I guess is ok, but it always looks more like I am drowning than I am swimming). Taking some swimming lessons would be a great idea, but we can't afford that right now. Do you have advice on what we can do to become better? Are there any (online) materials that could help us?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Jasper

RoxieDawn

I googled "becoming a better swimmer" and it came up with lot's of stuff.

cheshirecatastrophe

Here's a list of common mistakes/problems with freestyle, including videos of how to do it correctly:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Swimming/comments/168m6r/the_most_common_freestylefront_crawl_errors_i_see/

Also, you could try asking one of the faster swimmers at the pool. Swimmers with competitive experience tend to be a friendly and helpful bunch who are THRILLED to evangelize their sport. I'd say your odds are pretty good that you could get a free mini-lesson.

cblue315

There are several thousand videos on youtube. Search for triathlon swim techniques. These will help you get good swim times while conserving your legs for the bike.

Seigla

@gia07 - yeah I know, but it's hard to choose what to choose from that and I thought it would be nice topic to discuss.

@cheshirecatastrophe - excellent advice! I will talk to a top swimmer, I know exactly who to ask! There is this swiss girl and she swims 5-8 kilometers every day with excellent technique - I am always impressed when I see her.
And good link! I recognize a lot of those mistakes. I will swim with my friend today and I'll propose to meet an hour earlier so we can check this material and decide what we need to pay attention to first. Thx!

@cblue315 - I will, thx!

csman49

swiss girl, there are no other comments needed!

My swimming is poor, way poor! I'm getting better though. Have a look at Total Immersion