This is a bit different when it comes to the breaststroke and butterfly stroke, because your body undulates instead of being perfectly balanced during the strokes.
Think about it: if your body is all scrunched up instead of stretched nice and tall, it’ll be more difficult to move through the water.
If you’re more of a visual thinker, take this advice from the swimmer, Garret McCaffery: “Imagine you are a whale, there is a blowhole on your neck, and you need that hole accessible at all times so you can breathe or you will die. If your neck is angled you closed the hole and you can’t breathe. You need to position your head so your neck is at the right angle. ”[10] X Research source
10-15% spent on an easy warm up (4 x 100 easy swimming with 20 seconds of rest between each distance) 10-20% spent on drills and kicking (8 x 50s as an alternating drill, with 1 kick with 15 seconds of rest) 40-70% spent on the main set (6 x 200 with 30 seconds of rest or 12 x 100 with 15 seconds of rest) 5-10% spent on cooling down (easy 100s)
If you do join a team, you have to commit to coming to practice every day. Push yourself at practice. Try to make the send-offs with 5-7 seconds rest. Once you’ve mastered that, try 10 seconds, 15, and so on.
You may even be able to find a clinic or a coach who can film you while you’re swimming, providing valuable feedback about how you can improve your technique. It’s hard to know where you can improve without having someone else watch you swim.
