Common Swimming Mistakes and How to Fix Them

Watch any pool for ten minutes and you’ll spot the same handful of technique mistakes repeating across swimmers of all levels — not because swimming is inherently confusing, but because a few habits feel intuitively “right” while actually working against efficient technique. Recognising these patterns is often the fastest route to smoother, less exhausting swimming.

Mistake 1: Lifting the Head to Breathe

Lifting the head straight up to grab a breath, rather than rotating it to the side, is one of the most common and most costly habits in freestyle. It drops the hips and legs, breaking the horizontal body line and forcing the legs to work much harder to stay near the surface. The fix is rotating the head in line with the body’s natural roll, keeping one ear in the water even while breathing.

Mistake 2: Holding the Breath Underwater

Many beginners instinctively hold their breath underwater and try to both exhale and inhale in the brief window the face is turned to breathe. This creates a rushed, panicked gasp rather than a smooth breathing rhythm. Exhaling continuously underwater, so only an inhale is needed at the surface, resolves this almost immediately once practised.

Mistake 3: Overusing the Arms, Underusing the Kick

It’s tempting to think propulsion comes mostly from the arms, but a weak or inconsistent kick forces the arms to compensate, wasting energy and often dropping the legs lower in the water. Regular kickboard drills, focused purely on kick technique, help build the leg strength and rhythm that support the rest of the stroke.

Mistake 4: Tensing Up Instead of Relaxing

Especially among nervous swimmers, muscle tension throughout the body — clenched hands, rigid shoulders, a held breath — burns energy quickly and disrupts the natural buoyancy that makes swimming feel effortless. Consciously relaxing the hands, jaw, and shoulders during a swim, and practising floating regularly, helps break this habit over time.

Mistake 5: Poor Body Position (Swimming “Uphill”)

Many beginners swim with their hips and legs riding too low, effectively pushing water uphill with every stroke. This usually traces back to head position — looking too far forward rather than down — or insufficient core engagement to keep the body horizontal. Practising a strong front float with the head in a neutral position helps reset this habit.

Mistake 6: Rushing Stroke Technique for Speed

Especially among more advanced beginners eager to swim faster, rushing the arm pull or kick often reduces efficiency rather than improving it. A slower, more deliberate stroke with proper technique frequently covers distance faster and with far less fatigue than a rushed, sloppy one.

Mistake 7: Neglecting Bilateral Skills

Breathing or rotating consistently to only one side can create muscular imbalance over time and limits flexibility in open water or competitive settings. Practising bilateral breathing periodically, even for swimmers who prefer one side, builds more balanced, adaptable technique.

How to Actually Fix These Habits

1. Isolate one mistake at a time rather than trying to overhaul technique all at once.
2. Use targeted drills — kickboard work, side-breathing drills, float practice — rather than just swimming more laps and hoping for improvement.
3. Get feedback from a coach who can observe from outside the water, since most technique issues are difficult to self-diagnose while swimming.
4. Be patient — deeply ingrained habits typically take weeks of consistent, focused practice to retrain, not a single session.

Mistake 8: Ignoring the Glide Phase

Especially in breaststroke, many swimmers rush straight from the kick into the next pull without pausing for a brief glide, losing much of the propulsion the kick just generated. Building in a deliberate, if brief, glide phase after each kick allows the stroke to cover more distance per cycle with noticeably less effort, since the swimmer is making better use of momentum rather than fighting against it with constant, choppy movement.

This mistake often goes unnoticed because it doesn’t feel wrong in the moment — constant motion can feel like it should equal more speed. In practice, a controlled rhythm with proper glide phases is almost always more efficient than continuous, rushed movement, and it’s a habit worth specifically drilling with a coach’s feedback on timing.

Why Video Feedback Can Help

Many of these mistakes are genuinely difficult to feel from inside the stroke, since the sensation of swimming rarely matches what’s actually happening from an outside view. Some coaches use simple video recordings from poolside to show swimmers exactly what their head position, kick, or body line looks like in real time — a tool that often produces a genuine “oh, that’s what I’m doing” moment far more effectively than verbal description alone. If a coach offers this kind of feedback, it’s well worth taking advantage of, particularly for stubborn habits that haven’t responded to verbal correction over several sessions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I fix these mistakes on my own, or do I need a coach?

Some self-correction is possible with focused drill practice, but most swimmers benefit significantly from a coach’s outside perspective, since technique flaws are hard to notice from inside the stroke.

Why do I get tired so quickly even though I’m not swimming far?

This is frequently a sign of one or more of the mistakes above — tension, poor body position, or breath-holding — rather than a fitness issue specifically.

How long does it take to correct a bad swimming habit?

With regular, focused drill work, many swimmers see real improvement within a few weeks, though long-standing habits can take longer to fully retrain.

Is it normal to have more than one of these issues at once?

Very common, and usually best addressed one at a time rather than trying to fix everything simultaneously.

Do these mistakes apply to all strokes, or just freestyle?

Several — like tension and poor body position — apply broadly across strokes, while others, like head-lifting to breathe, are more freestyle-specific.

Can adults who’ve swum “wrong” for years still fix their technique?

Yes — technique habits are trainable at any age, though it does take deliberate practice and, often, some initial discomfort with the “correct” feeling before it becomes natural.

Getting Focused Technique Correction

SwimmingNearMe.sg connects Singapore swimmers with swimming coaches offering private, small group, and condo-based lessons, with flexible scheduling ideal for focused technique work. If any of these mistakes sound familiar, reach out via our contact page to get matched with a coach who can help correct them. Before booking, ask for the proposed coach’s current qualifications and relevant teaching experience.

Conclusion

Most swimming technique issues fall into a fairly predictable set of patterns, and recognising them is often the first step toward fixing them. With targeted drills, patience, and — ideally — an outside eye from an experienced coach, even long-standing habits can be retrained into smoother, more efficient swimming.