There’s so many different styles in swimming that it’s ridiculous to get everyone to swim the exact same way. There’s a number of different factors that can impact how you swim and the type of stroke you use. I like to focus on an athlete’s natural strengths and style and use those to their advantage.

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So, yes, there’s definitely fundamentals that everyone should have, but we don’t try and box everyone into the same exact way of swimming freestyle because it’s going to be very limited for those people.

Someone emailed me the other day and they asked what kind of style is effortless swimming? Is it like this? Is it like that? But the thing with teaching one way of swimming freestyle is it’s very limited. If you look at the top ten summers at the Olympics in the 100 freestyle or the 1500 freestyle or open water, you’ll find ten different styles of freestyle. So if we were to try and box everyone into this same technique and same way of swimming freestyle, it would be a disservice to 90% of the swimmers there. So when people come to us at clinics and when they come to us at camps, we work with them on an individual basis and we look at what are the two or three things that this person can do and they can focus on, to get faster because everyone is different. And so we try and customize things as much as possible.

So yes, there’s definitely fundamentals that everyone should have, but we don’t try and box everyone into the same exact way of swimming freestyle because it’s going to be very limited for those people. So what we try to do at clinics is we look at, all right, this person is doing a triathlon. They’re training for iron man. They might be wearing a wetsuit for most of their races. This is how they currently swim. They might be 5 foot 10. They might be quite tight through the shoulders. So we’re not going to try and have them swim like someone who’s 6 foot 4, has swum forever. It’d be a very different style.

So that’s why when people ask what kind of style is effortless swimming, it’s not one style. Yes, we have those five core principles of fast freestyle that we teach, but there are so many different ways to use those five core principles and that’s why you see me try and give a lot of detail and nuance to the different things that we teach because there’s so many different styles and ways to swim fast. So if someone says, “This is how you have to swim.” That may not be the case because there are so many different styles out there.

Let me know what you think in the comments. Do you agree, or do you think that everyone should be swimming with the exact same style? Let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you next week.