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Improve Your Swimming With Swim Smooth!
Mr Smooth is our animated swimmer, showing you an 'ideal' freestyle stroke. Download the free app to your computer and take a close up look at his stroke from any angle - you'll be well on the way to better freestyle swimming!
Swimming is a fantastic sport - it's non-weight bearing, low force and uses nearly every muscle in your body! But for many people swimming can be a real challenge because it is a technique based sport. Swim Smooth is a swimming coaching company devoted to helping swimmers all over the world.
On this website you'll find great animations (we're sure you've already noticed Mr Smooth!), free hints, tips and plenty of video to develop your swimming technique. Take a good look round the know-how areas split into four section for beginners, intermediate, advanced swimmers and coaches
Swim Smooth Feed
The Finis SwiMP3 is a waterproof MP3 player, perfect for listening to your favourite music as you swim. We've tested all the waterproof MP3 players on the market and this has by far and away the best audio quality. Now with free international shipping!
Find out more here: Finis SwiMP3
Our link today, a special Swim Smooth analysis of 7 Time Tour De France Champion Lance Armstrong's swim stroke. We only got a short clip of his stroke taken whilst swimming in the ocean in Kona Hawaii. If you're a Lance fan we're sure you'll find it fascinating viewing!
Watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-pgQ-gpmNk
If you're already a strong swimmer it can be tempting to take your swimming for granted. Even if you have a strong swimming background with years of training behind you there are still many ways that you can improve, particularly by tuning up your open water swimming technique. Our article called You Can Always Be Faster takes you through three key areas that you can focus on to improve your swimming. We're not going to tear anything up and start again, just make some small tweaks and refinements to go from good to great!
Read the article here: You Can Always Be Faster
Swimming in the open-water (river, lake or ocean) can be very different to swimming in the clear waters of your local swimming pool. Besides the technical adjustments that you need to make to your stroke technique, the biggest factor for most people is adjusting to this strange environment and overcoming the fear and anxiety that it often represents.
Read our full article on succesfully adapting to this new environment: www.swimsmooth.com/triathlon
Just released on youtube: how your arm length effects your swimming
Swim Smooth Head Coach Paul Newsome takes time out from working with two professional triathletes to show you how their individual builds affect their swim strokes. Fascinating stuff and will apply directly to your swimming too:
Ankle flexibility is important in freestyle swimming - poor flexibility causes your legs to sink and adds a lot of drag.
Find out how to increase your ankle flexibility in our article: all about kick - it's not something you can change overnight but develop it over time and you'll really notice the benefits to your freestyle speed.
The Swim Smooth English Channel squad were swimming in the Swan River here in Perth today. The water's 15C at the moment, about the same temperature as they'll experience in the channel during their crossings in July, August and September this year.
Here's a shot of Paul Newsome showing us his swimming breathing technique:
When you breathe, aim to keep your head low in the water like this, even if you are swimming in open water like Paul. This will help keep your body higher in the water and so minimise drag. Many people feel a little anxious swimming in open water and this anxiety causes them to lift their head high to breathe. This is a problem because the bow wave created by the head dissapears as the head lifts high out of the water which means the waters surface is higher around your mouth. Instead, keep your head low and trust the bow wave trough to be there, you'll be faster and more efficient because of it!
Why download the free Console App to your computer? Because it will help you truly understand what a great freestyle stroke looks like. Watch Mr Smooth closely and you'll pick up lots of visual cues to help your own stroke. By taking these on board you'll start swimming more efficiently, and faster, as a result.