Different strokes

Swimming is hugely popular but, shockingly, recent US research shows that 98 per cent of recreational swimmers do not make gains in aerobic fitness.

We simply aren't doing it very well - swimming neither fast enough nor for long enough to make a real difference.

In one study, it took untrained swimmers 50 per cent more oxygen to achieve the same speed in front crawl as trained swimmers. This is why many of us spend so much time gasping for breath in the shallow end.

With most sports, regular practice ensures that you improve, but you can swim for years and never really get any better.

That is because it is all about technique. By improving your technique you will find swimming more enjoyable, you will swim faster and reap greater fitness benefits.

Wedad Jaworski, from Awali, who runs swimming classes at the Dilmun Club in Saar, said: "The first and foremost rule is to get your strokes correct - once you are disciplined you can then slowly build up your stamina.

"Swimming is like any other exercise, if you do it the right way you will see better results."

So where should you start? According to Dan Bullock, director of SwimforTri (an organisation that offers swim coaching, with a focus on triathlon events), in front crawl there are four main factors:

1. Body position

"If you imagine you are looking at a swimmer from the side, the body should be flat from head to toe and parallel with the water's surface," says Bullock. "If your legs are too low, they will increase your frontal surface area, slowing you down."

To a degree, your body composition - the proportion of fat, muscle and bone - determines your body position in the water (fat floats better than muscle), but an error in positioning is more likely to result in poor streamlining. For example, a classic cause of the legs being too low is the head being held too high, says Bullock.

But while the body needs to be flat to minimise "drag", it should rotate lengthways as you swim. "If you watch elite swimmers, they roll from side to side," says Bullock.

Doing this reduces resistance and enables you to extend your reach in the water and engage the strong back muscles, rather than relying on the smaller and weaker shoulder muscles to power your stroke."

If you were watching a swimmer head-on, you would see their body rolling roughly 45 degrees from side to side. A good body-roll also facilitates the turning of the head to breath and assists a swimmer in their ability to lift their recovering arm high over the water, leading with the elbow.

2. Correct mechanics

Bullock likens forward motion in swimming to running. "When you run, you plant your foot and the body goes forwards. With swimming, you 'hold' the water and make progress via the body travelling over the hand," he explains. "Good swimmers will hold more water and pull their bodies further."

To gain hold on the water, the hand should move from the front of the stroke to the back in a "slow to fast" motion. Some people liken the motion to rolling the hand over a beach ball and then flinging it behind you.

Karen Pickering, a former world champion who now runs her own national swim school, advises "thinking long" while in the water. "Reach out as far as you can with the pulling arm (as it enters the water)," she says. "Make yourself as long and stretched out as possible."

3. Distance per stroke

Good swimmers don't cover distance with faster strokes - they simply travel further with each stroke. "The more distance you travel per stroke, the fewer strokes you'll take per length - conserving energy," says Bullock.

Improving distance per stroke is not a matter of kicking harder - which we will come to in a minute - it is more a case of breaking the stroke down into its key parts and maximising your efficiency in each before "rebuilding" it.

Counting your stroke rate (strokes per length of the pool) is a useful way to gauge progress. Obviously, you don't want to be counting strokes on every single lap, but you could pick, say, every fourth lap to count. Try not to let your stroke rate creep up during your swim.

A frequent mistake is to use the legs for propulsion.

"About 80 per cent of the work comes from the back, shoulders and arms in front crawl," says Bullock. "The legs help to balance you."

4. Timing

Good timing is everything. It helps you to maintain a streamlined position, maximises your distance per stroke and creates the time to breathe without being rushed. If you are "windmilling" - with your arms working at opposites - you will be going nowhere fast and expending a lot of energy in the process.

"You want one hand to enter the water just as the other begins pulling," says Bullock.

Breathe while the arm is recovering, but ensure your head is back in the water before the hand makes entry. It is common for novice swimmers to keep the head out too long.

"The reason beginners do this is that they are trying to breathe in and out while their head is out of the water," explains Pickering. "This results in you gasping for breath because you haven't got time to get enough oxygen in. Try to exhale the whole time the face is submerged."

And finally ...

Bullock recommends swimming as often as you can if you want to really make improvements. "It's better to hit the pool three or four times a week for 20-30 minutes than to go for one or two longer sessions," he says.

Pickering advises investing in some swim tools, such as kickboards, pull buoys and hand paddles to enable you to focus on different aspects of your stroke and to keep your sessions more varied and interesting.

"Goggles go without saying," she adds.