5. Excessive use of your legs
To complement sinking legs. Many novice swimmers (including me ) initially swim like crazy with their legs. That’s where they get the most speed. Not only does it make you very tired, it is also not efficient. Front crawl is mainly an arm stroke. You get the most return from your arms and not from your legs with lifeguard course near me.
Do you mainly need your legs and can’t you calm down with your legs without falling silent? Then you have work to do on your arm stroke technique.
How can you improve it
Let the legs go for what they are and keep it quiet. Also try to keep your leg stroke efficient (so not too much from your knees). And focus on your body position and being high in the water.
If necessary, use a pull buoy to keep your legs still and high and to be able to fully focus on your arms (with snorkel , for example).
6. Swimming on the handbrake
What is the purpose?
The idea is that you put your hand straight in and keep it nice and flat. That way you have minimal resistance. And you literally slow down.
Why is it wrong?
It all sounds so logical, but why does it go wrong? Holding your hand up can be a sign of imbalance. You use your hand / arm, as it were, to find balance. For example, I only did it with my left hand when I breathe on the right (my favorite side). I then looked for extra support with the left during a breath.
I unlearned it by being aware of it first. And then focus only on that hand for a month at the insertion point. So keep your hand straight, rather bent slightly down than pointing up.
7. Catch don’t drop/drag
The catch is the part where you (should) catch the most water underwater. To do this, the strike with a high elbow is also used. With a dragging catch you do not have a moment when you really grab water. You actually drag right from the bet to the back. You do this by pulling your elbow back and not putting it down nicely (you miss the moment in the photo, where you do have a clear moment that the elbow is standing without it going directly back). A shame, because because of this you miss a lot of water, which you could have taken.
Why is it wrong?
Front crawl requires a lot of technique. Starting too soon with ‘normal’ swimming is often a cause of missing a real catch and dragging as a result. Sculling are good exercises for working your high elbow for the catch and developing a sense of water.
8. No narrow pull
What is the purpose?
The idea is that your arm ‘rests’ as much as possible during the pull. So from the moment you take your hand out of the water, until you put it back in. That is the takeover and is also called the ‘recovery phase’. At this stage, you want to be as narrow as possible. So preferably no wide arms over the water.
Still, there are many swimmers who use a wide pull. For example, open water swimmers (who may be limited by their wetsuit), or when you have less flexibility in your shoulders. So it is not necessarily wrong, but ideally a narrow pull is better.
Why is it important?
Your persuasion is again the basis for the approach. The wider you swipe (as in the photo to the left), the more likely you are to insert incorrectly (crossover). You take yourself out of balance. Your entry and extension is a bit easier with a narrow pass where your elbow is the highest point (see photo on the right).
An exercise for the narrow pull is to drag your hand just over the water (fingers through the water) on the pull. You take your hand out of the water and drag it back forward along your body. Or you tap your hip, rib, shoulders, head. You also practice the rotation right away.
