Around the fourth lap of a person’s first swim lesson, a certain type of panic appears. It’s just a tightening of the shoulders and a refusal to exhale underwater, nothing dramatic or hazardous. Almost immediately, coaches notice it. Being told once as a child to hold their breath and hope for the best is one of the most obvious indicators that someone learned to swim, if you can call it that.
Strangely enough, the most frequent error that novice swimmers make into adulthood is that habit. It feels safer to hold your breath. It isn’t. Rapid carbon dioxide buildup causes the swimmer to feel exhausted in a manner unrelated to cardiovascular fitness after just one or two lengths. It’s not endurance, but chemistry. Most of it can be resolved by slowly exhaling underwater, the kind of constant stream of bubbles that teachers love to show. Because it is physically impossible to hum and hold your breath simultaneously, humming while submerged also works.
| Category | Detail |
|---|---|
| Topic | Beginner swimming technique and common errors |
| Most common issue | Breath holding underwater |
| Body position problem | Sinking hips, raised head |
| Stroke imbalance | Over-reliance on arms, weak or absent kick |
| Recommended aid | Training snorkel, short fins |
| Skill area affected | Freestyle (front crawl) coordination |
| Typical fix duration | A few sessions with focused drills |
Body position has its own set of problems, and because it doesn’t feel bad at the time, self-diagnosis is more difficult. To prevent getting water in the face, heads are raised. When left on their own, legs and hips sink. Instead of gliding across the top of the water, the swimmer ends up plowing through it at an angle, which produces a substantial amount of drag. Imagine tilting a flat board diagonally as opposed to pushing it across a pool. One slide. Throughout, the other fights you. Unknowingly performing the second one, the majority of beginners wonder why they are worn out after two lengths.
This specific error has an almost universal quality. It might originate from a deeper instinct, a sort of physiological reasoning that tells you to “keep your head up, keep your face out of danger”. Swimming poses the opposite question. With your face down and your eyes fixed on the pool’s bottom, press your chest forward slightly to raise your hips. It seems counterintuitive until it doesn’t, at which point the swimmer feels as though the water is supporting them rather than working against them.
The kick or lack thereof comes next. Many novices show up at the pool with the unconscious belief that their legs are just along for the ride and their arms do the work. Sometimes the swimmer kicks like a bicycle, bending their knees awkwardly as if they were pedaling underwater. Sometimes it’s just two legs trailing limply behind, hardly a kick at all. In any case, the arms end up performing two tasks at once, which quickly wears them out.
At this point, the situation becomes somewhat counterintuitive once more. The swimmer is propelled forward by a kick that originates from the hips, has loose ankles, and only slightly bends the knee. Additionally, it counteracts the natural rotation that occurs in freestyle by stabilizing the body. All of that is undercut by stiff ankles. It functions similarly to a brake when the toes are pointed rigidly downward, as in ballet. U.S. Masters coach Scott Curl your toes like you’re picking up a penny off the floor to loosen tight ankles. This is a small, slightly strange tip for swimming. It sounds insignificant. In any case, it usually works.
Observing how these three errors are actually connected across hundreds of beginner lessons is fascinating. The body becomes tense when one breathes poorly. At the hips, a tense body sinks. The kick is killed by sinking hips. It’s like pulling a single thread fixing one tends to loosen the other two. Instructors believe that novices overthink the sequence of operations, but in reality, the body sorts a lot of things out once breathing calms down first.
It’s not magic, but equipment does help. A nervous swimmer can concentrate only on exhaling and remaining horizontal by using a basic training snorkel, which completely eliminates the need to time breathing with stroke rotation. Similar effects are produced on the legs by short fins, which increase propulsion and compel attention to hip position, which is otherwise simple to overlook. Technique is not replaced by either tool. They merely buy time to experience proper form before muscle memory takes over.
Why so many adults show up for swimming lessons believing they should already know this as if breathing underwater were instinctive rather than taught remains a mystery. It isn’t. Most of the time, children learn it through play. Instead of trusting the water, adults typically arrive stiffer, more self-conscious, and more likely to white-knuckle their way through a length. Even from the side of the deck, it is strangely satisfying to watch that shift the moment someone stops fighting the pool and starts floating with it.
These errors are not irreversible. They are merely early-formed patterns that are seldom analyzed. Most of it unwinds more quickly than people anticipate with a few concentrated sessions, the appropriate drills, and perhaps a snorkel or some fins. It turns out that the issue was never with the water.
i) https://www.swimdesignspace.com/blog/beginner-swimming-mistakes-fix-guide
ii) https://blog.myswimpro.com/2018/07/25/the-most-common-freestyle-mistakes-made-by-beginner-swimmers/
iii) https://swimstars.co/en/blog/advice-en/common-mistakes-made-by-beginner-swimmers-and-how-to-avoid-them/
iv) https://www.swimnow.co.uk/stroke-improvement/how-to-swim-freestyle-without-getting-tired/
v) https://www.sports-fitness.co.uk/blog/swimming-pitfalls-for-beginners-to-avoid