Hi chaps,
Just a quick question: what is the most efficient style of swimming reasonably long distances?
Say for example in a survival situation if you fall out of a boat and have to swim to shore. Are you better off doing front crawl or breast stroke? Or a different stroke altogether? Or does it just depend on your personal preference and skill?
Sorry if it’s a stupid question, and thanks for your time.
As someone who used to swim a lot and has done plenty of open water swimming in the sea I think in general from a speed perspective go for frontcrawl, you’ll cover a lot of distance efficiently and quickly. However it you need to be able to breathe ahead rather than just to the sides to check you are on course. Backstroke is good for conserving energy and can make breathing easier unless it is choppy but you’ll need to turn over now and again to make sure you’re on course. The third stroke to consider in the combat swimmer stroke which I’ve never used but it must be used for a reason. If any of that doesn’t make sense, ask, and I’ll explain in more detail.
[quote]Brendan1996 wrote:
As someone who used to swim a lot and has done plenty of open water swimming in the sea I think in general from a speed perspective go for frontcrawl, you’ll cover a lot of distance efficiently and quickly. However it you need to be able to breathe ahead rather than just to the sides to check you are on course. Backstroke is good for conserving energy and can make breathing easier unless it is choppy but you’ll need to turn over now and again to make sure you’re on course. The third stroke to consider in the combat swimmer stroke which I’ve never used but it must be used for a reason. If any of that doesn’t make sense, ask, and I’ll explain in more detail.[/quote]
Thanks a lot Brendan! What exactly is the combat swimmer stroke? Is that the one where you’re on your side?
It’s essentially an updated version of the side stroke. You can alternate sides to keep from getting tired, and it’s a very lazy yet effective swimming method. I used it a lot for my military and LE swim qualifications.
George Carlin (rip) Swimming is Not a sport, Swimming is controlled Drowning !
Crawl stroke is the fastest but if you are untrained will drain your strength before you get very far. In addition you can’t see where you are going doing the crawl stroke in open water since the stroke is done with the face submerged and breathing is done to the side.
When doing the crawl stroke in open water, as in Triathlon, the swimmer must look forward every few strokes to take a sighting on a bouy or landmark and then continue to swim face down.
The alternative is to do the crawl stroke with your head out of the water and looking forward, known as Tarzan swimming. This is very inefficient. Head up makes the legs sink. The Tarzan stroke will exhaust you in no time.
So to answer your question I would suggest the crawl stroke with periodic sighting until you start to tire, then turn on your back and do a slow back stroke to recover, then back to the crawl stroke, repeat.
The side stroke is a good second choice. It takes less energy than the crawl stroke and can be done for a longer period of time because you can breathe normally. But it is slower.