THE FREESTYLE, OR crawl, is both the fastest and the most efficient swimming technique. When it was introduced more than a hundred years ago, many thought the stroke too exhausting to be used for any distance longer than short sprints. But today it is used exclusively for all distance events, including English Channel swims and marathon races. Swum properly, the freestyle uses less energy than any other stroke.
Technically, the name for the fastest of all strokes is the front crawl. Freestyle literally means you can swim any stroke, or any combination of strokes, you like: backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, even sidestroke or elementary backstroke. Even in a race. But in modern swimming freestyle has come to be synonymous with the crawl. Throughout the remainder of this chapter—indeed, throughout this book—I use the two terms interchangeably.
Not only is the freestyle fast and efficient but most people find it the easiest stroke to learn. It is no surprise to discover, then, that it is far and away the most popular stroke.
In fact, even if you wind up specializing in one of the other strokes, you will probably find yourself swimming more laps of crawl stroke than of anything else in your workouts. The crawl stroke is the best way to maximize your yardage and squeeze a quality workout into a limited time. So it is important not only that you master the mechanics of this stroke but also that you learn to swim it smoothly and fluently.
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