Which is better for endurance and longer swims: sidestroke or breast stroke?
Answers:
Sidestroke, but lean from side to side to change dominant arms.
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Technically, sidestroke isnt really a stroke and doesnt do much of a workout for your body.Breaststroke, however, tightens up your arm and strengthens your upper leg muscles. However the best endurance would be doing freestyle or as some people call it the front crawl
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Ok- you want endurance and longevity, not speed?Both breaststroke and sidestroke are what we term "resting strokes". Once you know how to do them, they are very easy and relaxing to do.
If, truth be told, you do want to swim slightly faster and get a workout while you're doing this endurance swim, you want to be doing a breaststroke. Concentrate on streamlining your body and making your stroke as smooth as possible. Don't keep your head out all the time! That puts strain on your chest muscles and can hurt your back. It also puts your body at a diagonal in the water, and slows you down a LOT.
When doing breaststroke, concentrate on the order of the stroke- "Pull, breathe, kick, glide". Don't leave out the glide just because you want to go faster. You won't- the glide allows you to use the speed and power from the arm and leg strokes to move forward. Starting the sequence again without gliding will actually slow you down.
If you truely want a relaxing stroke, go for sidestroke. That said, it is slower, and not as much of a workout as breaststroke.
Hope this helps.
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To answer your question, on Christmas Eve last year I took part in a charity swim where participants had to cumulatively swim a total of 7,000 laps the whole day. In the morning, I contributed 82 laps, or a distance of 4.1km. (Took me 3 hours.) My chosen stroke was a combination of breaststroke and sidestroke, the former coming naturally to me, and the latter allowing me to ease off the pressure on my arms for a while, one at a time. I find sidestroke more taxing as it places more stress on a single arm, and it may cause temporary distress and wastage of energy if you accidentally inhale water, especially if you're wearing goggles. (As a diver by training, I sometimes swim with my mask, in which case I'm in no danger of inhaling water.) So my recommendation is a mixture of both, and sidestroke not for long periods of swimming.More Questions & Answers...