Improve your swimming technique and learn all the swimming strokes!
These are the five different swimming strokes
To start at the beginning, we explain all the swimming strokes. Officially, there are six types of swimming with Lifeguard Certification strokes:
- Front crawl and freestyle
- Rugcrawl
- Butterfly stroke
- breaststroke
medley
1. Front crawl and freestyle
Front crawl is also known as freestyle. This is the stroke in which you move the fastest in the water. This battle starts with your lie in the water. Raise your position by tightening your abs and tilting your pelvis. You kick with your legs. It is important that you try to keep the stroke small and below the water’s edge. Try not to get the leg stroke from your knees but from your hips.
The arm stroke is the most important in this stroke with Lifeguard Certification. You have four phases for this: you pull with your arms, you push with your arms, you lunge and you skip. In the pulling phase, you pull your arms through the water from front to back. Make sure your fingers are together so that you get the most water. Then push your hand and arm out of the water with as much water in it as possible. Take it out and bring your arm forward again.
2. Rugcrawl
The back crawl is a stroke that is performed on the back. The back crawl is usually taught right away in children. You move on your back through the water and therefore see nothing. That’s why you have to look back every now and then and be careful. Back crawl is the same as front crawl, only your arms go the other way around. You can!
3. Butterfly stroke
In a butterfly stroke, your legs move up and down at the same time. It looks like a wave that rolls through your body: you put it in the hips and you strengthen it with your legs. At the same time, make sure that both your arms cross the water at the same time as you lower your legs. Underwater you make sure that your fingers stay together so that you make the most powerful stroke possible.
4. Breaststroke
The breaststroke is a stroke where you push the water to the side and back with your arms. The arms remain in the water. Your legs make a sideways and backward pedaling motion. During the breaststroke, start with the arm stroke and do the leg stroke directly after it.
5. Medley
The medley is not a separate technique, but is often swum at competitions. This is an alternation of all the above swimming strokes in succession. You start with the medley with butterfly, followed by backstroke, breaststroke and the freestyle. Often you swim 25 or 50 meters per stroke.
Different types of swimming
We know all these different swimming with Lifeguard Certification strokes mainly from short and long course swimming in a pool of 25 or 50 meters. We practice lap swimming most often. In addition, you have for example:
- open water swimming with Lifeguard Certification
- all-around swimming
- rescue swimming
Tips to get even better control of swimming technique
Good exercises to alternate with the arms are:
- With your fingers spread well, practice the insertion and removal of your arms. This means you don’t go so hard and you can pay close attention to how your arms move.
- make up. You also train the technique well. Only one arm moves at a time: so you hold both arms above your head and one arm makes a circle while the other waits. So you add with one arm with the other. This gives you more time to think about what you’re doing with your arms.
- Arm stroke counting: swimmers often count how many arm strokes they make per 25 and 50 meters. Now you can do a competition for yourself and so try to make each job less successful than the one before. This allows you to swim more powerfully and calmly.
