3.1. What does a single-arm freestyle pull look like?

How many strokes do you think a professional competitive swimmer takes to swim a 50m pool doing freestyle? And how many strokes does an adult hobby swimmer take for a fifty-meter freestyle? The number of strokes per pool length is, besides time, the most commonly discussed metric – it tells us how many meters each stroke propels us forward. For competitive swimmers, it’s about 2 meters per arm stroke; for beginners, it can be less than 1 meter. Those of you who are quick with mental math like me have already calculated that pros take around 25 strokes for 50 meters, while beginners typically take between 40 and 70 strokes per pool length. Try counting your strokes sometime when swimming your perfect freestyle.
So what causes such a difference? Every chapter we’ll cover in our course affects the stroke count, but two factors probably have the biggest impact: body position (how much water you’re pushing in front of you) and what you’re doing with your hand underwater. And I’m not talking about strength at all, because even a thin, small female swimmer can take fewer strokes per pool length than a muscular man.
What propels us forward when swimming? Mainly our arms, maybe a bit from our legs, but nothing else. Once breathing stops being hell, you’ll start focusing on speed and wondering why that woman in the next lane is swimming faster. So let’s look at the proper technique that will move us forward most efficiently.
Think of the stroke as a huge oval. It starts with an extended arm, we fix the elbow near the surface, the forearm drops down, and then pulls through a bent arm position all the way back to the thigh, returning to a straight position. The recovery above water goes from the thigh with a straight arm, through a bent position with the elbow pointing toward the ceiling, back to an extended position.
So once more. We start with an extended, even stretched-out arm, then begin the pull phase where we try to position the largest possible surface area of the upper limb against the swimming direction. This transitions into the push phase of the stroke, which is very important and provides a lot of forward momentum, but is often completely skipped by swimmers without competitive experience, which is a mistake. Then we need to return the arm above the surface in the same way – from extended, through bent with the elbow toward the ceiling, back to extended. The whole motion looks like an oval.
When you’re starting with freestyle, it’s perfectly fine to spend your first X hours practicing freestyle strokes with just one arm. You probably won’t get to full freestyle until after several training sessions – maybe five, maybe ten, maybe later – but that’s normal, don’t worry. First, you need to build the foundations. You’ll learn everything systematically in the practical section, but to give you an idea of how it looks, here are the individual steps you might follow:
– Start by swimming a few meters with one freestyle arm without breathing, holding your breath with your head pointing toward the bottom. Focus on these points:
– full range of motion, extending the arm far forward and back;
– trunk rotation – when your arms are extended forward, you’re on your stomach, and when you pull, you rotate your entire trunk to the side;
– head position – while your shoulders, hips, and feet rotate with each stroke, your head doesn’t move at all and keeps looking down;
– powerful underwater pull – to move forward, you need to push with your entire arm, as if pushing a huge boulder all the way back to your thigh.
– The next step is adding breathing, so again swim a few meters with one freestyle arm, but take a breath with each stroke. Focus on these points:
– Just like before, full range of motion, extending the arm far forward and back;
– Turning your head with each stroke to exhale when your arms are extended together, and inhale when your arm completes the stroke at your thigh.
– We’ve already covered how to do this in the breathing chapter.
– Once breathing while swimming with one arm feels comfortable, start trying a few meters with both arms, still without breathing. Focus on these points:
– we’ll cover proper timing of the exchange in the next lesson, but we’ll show it right away – when swimming with both arms, focus on gliding a bit on each arm at the front, so your arms aren’t spinning like a propeller, but instead try to extend them forward;
– also pay attention to trunk rotation, so your body rolls from one side to the other with each stroke;
– and just like before, mind your head position – while your shoulders, hips, and feet rotate with each stroke, your head doesn’t move at all and keeps looking down.
– Once you understand the timing of freestyle arm exchange, you can try to breathe in rhythm with this pattern.

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