How to swim

by James H. Sterrett

The Crawl Stroke

The crawl stroke is undoubtedly the greatest stroke that has ever been invented or discovered in connection with the art of swimming, and until its adoption and subsequent improvement by experimenting with it until it was brought up to a high point of efficiency, the swimmers of the world had practically reached their limit of speed performances, having perfected the other strokes beyond further improvement, and thus it was that they were eager to take up the new-found method by which it has been discovered that a person can go still faster through the water.

And now, before describing the stroke and the action of the arms and legs when swimming the crawl, as we have done in our previous lessons, we will tell you the secret of why this new method is so much faster than the others, and the whole thing is a matter of eliminating resistance, or minimizing the negative parts of the stroke and getting a maximum amount of positive action; or, in other words, doing the same thing as has been done in many other things to produce greater speed—applying the maximum of power while at the same time reducing resistance to the minimum.

The crawl stroke originated in Australia, and Dick Cavil, one of the members of that famous family of expert swimmers, and one of the best all-around swimmers the author has ever seen, told the writer that his brother, “Tums,” in an argument with another swimmer as to their relative ability, said he could tie his feet together and then beat the other chap for a length of the pool, and when the contest came off he made good his boast.

“Tums” Cavil always argued that the legs were not of much use to him in fast swimming, and he believed that they hindered other swimmers when going at top speed, because in drawing them up and separating them they stopped the run on the stroke, and he at once started experimenting on this theory, with the result that a new stroke was developed and launched on the natatorial world and at once became popular, until now it is used by all the fast swimmers of the world.

At the Olympic games in 1912, Hodgson, the Canadian swimmer, beat all the fastest swimmers in the world at middle distance swimming, using the double-over-arm stroke, and Duke Kahanamoku, the Hawaiian, beat all the short distance men of the world with the crawl stroke, swimming 100 meters (109 1-3 yards) in 61 seconds, and since then the big bronze-skin athlete, at his home in Honolulu, swam 50 yards in 23 seconds and 100 yards in 53 1-5 seconds, which shows how very fast he can go through the water with the crawl stroke.

The Important Point

The most important thing to remember in swimming the crawl stroke is the fact that the body should be kept perfectly flat on the water, the face and head partly submerged, the eyes preferably above the water and looking straight ahead. The arms are alternately reached out at a comfortable distance in front of the head, and on a direct line with the body, not pointing out sideways, but, if anything, pointing at the start of the arm stroke more nearly to the center line of the body.

The catch on the water should be taken at the beginning of each arm stroke, using the weight of the shoulders, without over-reaching, to get a good leverage on the downward pull. The arms must be brought straight down, stopping the pull about on a line parallel with the shoulders, and in recovering, describe a long oval, making sure that before the power of one hand is fully expended the other has taken up the motion, that it may be continuous, for it is this regular and steady pull of the arms, and not the thrash of the legs, that has the most to do with propelling the crawl swimmer through the water.

Breathing while using this stroke is harder than the other strokes, because the swimmer must not roll the body out of its straight line; therefore, the head and shoulders must be slightly turned in order to get the breath, which can be taken after swimming two or three strokes, but later on, when one has mastered the movements better, breathing should be done on each stroke, exhaling slowly under water.