Why do they call it freestyle swimming

In the World Championships, one swimmer began the fourth leg of the Individual Medley with a series of dolphin butterfly kicks on his back. Such kicks are allowable now only for backstroke push-offs or in a freestyle event, but not on the final IM leg. Swimming the crawl is fastest because it involves a continuous propulsive force from alternating arms and simultaneous kicking. In the butterfly stroke, which is essentially a double-arm crawl, there is a slight period of non-propulsion while both arms are recovering over the water.

In the back crawl the propulsive force is created farther from the midline of the body than in the front crawl. This means that it creates a small rotational force that detracts from an otherwise purely forward thrust.

Breaststroke is the slowest of the usual four competitive strokes. How could you leave that out? Mel's best event was the butterfly. Notify of. I allow to use my email address and send notification about new comments and replies you can unsubscribe at any time.

Inline Feedbacks. Reply to Jiggs 8 years ago. Scott Tucker. Ovetta Sampson. Don't want to miss anything? Subscribe to our newsletter and receive our latest updates! Lactate makes your muscles feel heavy and weak. So what is neat about the Freestyle stroke is depending on the set or race distance—swimmers have the ability to use both or either one of these energy systems while racing. Within this, it also allows swimmers to create different training 'zones'.

Ever heard of your threshold zone or fat-burning zone? The Backstroke stroke elongates your chest muscles as you are swimming, and shortens your upper back muscles. This is the opposite of Freestyle, where you contract your chest muscles and lengthen your upper back muscles. As humans, we are naturally stronger on our front side, versus our backside—so the Freestyle stroke is easier for us to do for longer periods of time! Having the option and different training zones too in Backstroke does come in handy, especially during those long, grueling Freestyle sets too.

It's always good for the body to mix things up too.