5 Tips on How to do Basic Front Crawl:

First off, I would like to tell you a little bit about front crawl. It’s the main stroke children learn in swimming lessons.  Even if people don’t know much about swimming they usually know what front crawl is. It could also be called, freestyle and/or front swim.


1. First, we start off with the basics, putting our hands up above our head and making our body into a pencil shape. We simply hop in the water and start kicking our legs when we are in this glide position. Make sure your face is in the water, looking down at the bottom.


2. Once you are in this glide position you are going to need to breathe. The biggest mistake most people make is bringing their heads up and looking ahead of them to breathe, wrong! We need to make sure when we breathe we are doing what is called a side glide. You simply drop one arm to your thigh and the other stays up above by your head with the same ear touching your shoulder (If the right arm is above then the right ear is on the shoulder and vice versa). You will be looking to the side and taking a 2-3 second breath and returning your face back in the water.


Note *(If you want steps one and two to be easier, do the exact same just with a flutter board.)*


3. Once you take your breath to the side, you are going to bring your arm over and around back to your arm that was in the glide position. This can be done on each side, alternating each time.


4. Next we are going to go into 3 arm movement’s pure breath. The arm movements are just like a big circle. There are three things to make sure of when you’re doing the arm movements. 1) Make sure your bringing your arm out nice and high. 2) When your arm is entering the water, do not slap the water. You want to slice the water or dive your hand into the water and 3). Make sure to bend your arm when it first comes out and then extend it in front of you, "Bend and Extend".


5. Once you have the breathing and arm movements to perfection, you are ready to do your front crawl. Make sure to roll your whole body to the side when you’re breathing and the kick your legs continuously.


Hope you enjoy it as much as I do. Good luck!


Xo.Laura