The Art of Crawl

So I wrote a piece last week about how, once again, near I am to mastering the dark art of front crawl.
I’m still really enjoying the swimming lessons, my arm and leg technique has been applauded by my coach – we’re now even trying to implement in a slight rotation into my repertoire. However, my breathing is still letting me down. Maybe I’m thinking about it too much and need to get more Zen and properly focus and relax to make that full length of the pool.

Part of the reason for trying rotation was that I chanced upon an article in yesterdays Guardian advocating how to improve your front crawl – there’s a whole series on improving your swimming technique as apparently as a nation we’re doing it wrong and not reaping the benefits of our time in the pool! Sam Murphy, who usually gives great advice about running, wrote this article on front crawl and this superb one page PDF that offers a great starting point for anyone like me. In the article she also references a great website called ‘The Art of Swimming’ which shows these easy to follow tips on front crawl as well.

Hope these help you if you’re interested. If you can advise further on catching a bigger breath between strokes, I’d be keen to hear. I’m almost there, making a point of slowly breathing out underwater but still am gasping a bit/struggling to take in breath when I come up for air!