[Mel2606]

Okay, I need to improve my swimming. So, when I swim front crawl, my motions are quite fast, but I don't progress quite quickly in the water. How can I improve my strokes to make my swimming more efficient?

[Hellz_Bellz!]

Try kicking your feet.

[Saint]

Searching for this on google would be more helpful surely?

[Aeschylus]

90% of people who swim frontcrawl don't kick enough. So the motion is entirely arms, which wastes a great deal of energy for not much. Look at olympic 1500m swimmers they look at ease swimming through the water.

Tips
1) Smooth entry of the hand into the water and a long stretch. I teach it to my kids as imagining someone has their iPod in front of them and they have to reach out to touch it.
2) Kick. There should be a slight, but only slight bend at the knees. Most of the work should be done by your ankles. Your ankles should be loose and flexible. you should kick from the hip
3) Breath every 3 strokes.
4) fully extend the arm behind you before you bring it out the water. Bring it out elbow first,
5) Count how many strokes you need to do a length. Try and cut it down every session. So if you're doing 30, try 29, then 28 etc. At the moment I do 7 frontcrawl strokes a length.


Breastroke
1) Slow strokes. If you do rapid strokes you'll go nowhere and tire your arms out.
2) It's in this order. Pull-Breathe-Kick-Glide. Arms start before legs. When your arms and legs have finished HOLD the stroke for 2 seconds and you'll 'glide a lot easier'
3) Only make little circles with your breastroke arms. Wide circles mean your arms are left in inconvenient positions and encounter more water resistance.
I'll do more later but now dinner calls.

[StephenNeill]

(Original post by Hellz_Bellz!)
Try kicking your feet.

OT: Try to learn a good rhythm for the front crawl. As Saint said, a Google search might be your best bet.