10 Swimming Tips For Beginners

The Need

No matter what your reasons are for playing a sport, something is for sure: it is healthy. Most of the people who have an active life exercise at least 3 times a week and each of them is choosing the sport that suits them best. Swimming, even though is known as one of the sports that are hard to be practiced and even harder to reach higher performance levels. But don’t panic as this article comes with 10 tips in order to improve your swimming skills especially aimed at beginners.

The Tips

1. Learn how to keep your goggles on for at least one hour. This requires no removing at all this time and it means that you should keep them on during the entire swim session. Warm up, the main set, kick or pull, and warm down will give you the chance to have little breaks when you could put them on your forehead, but what do you do if you will have a long distance race? Try to squint your eyes and let some water seep in. that water will prevent fogging your goggles.
2. Practice sighting. While practicing in the pool try to look up on every fourth lap of the arm cycle. If you want to have this technique done perfect, you can ask for some guidance and suggestions from your trainer.
3. When the hands are touching the water you should point the fingertips immediately straight down. This move should be followed by rolling your shoulder and pulling straight back.
4. In order to avoid crossing one foot over the other, you should try using a pair of fins and start kicking efficiently while increasing ankle flexibility.
5. Don’t be ashamed to use a snorkel. It will help you focus on the arm stroke and body rotation. This is a well-known practice among professionals.
6. Take with you two pairs of goggles. You might need a dark set and a clear set. The dark one will be useful in the sunny days and the clear ones will come handy when there will be cloudy, foggy or rainy days. Also, alternate the goggles while practicing in order to get used to them both.
7. If you train in cold waters then you should know that some of the people who do the same, use earplugs in order to limit irritation and prevent ear infections.
8. A good item to have with you while preparing for the race or for practicing is a clean towel. It will help you clean your hands off Vaseline or wipe your goggles when needed.
9. Follow the more experienced swimmers while they warm up before the race. You might get access to some tips and tricks and ‘steal’ from their know-how.
10. If you’re participating in a race, make sure you get a good night sleep beforehand. If you’re not 100% fit before a swimming session or even a rookie race, your body will have a hard time adjusting to the effort required by swimming.

So, no matter if you are getting ready for a new triathlon, for a summer swimming contest of just for cooling off in the hot summer days , try to keep these tips in mind and you will improve your swimming technique for sure.

Guest post by Kaya Johnson