Leisure Kicks - The essencial sport and leisure guide

Competitive swimming consists of four different strokes: the butterfly, breaststroke, front crawl (or freestyle) and backstroke.

In competitive swimming, there are certain stylistic features necessary in each stroke. Freestyle is, as the name suggests, free in style. This means that any manner of unaided self-propulsion through the water is permitted. In other strokes, however, there are some rules:

Butterfly: Both hands must clear the water at the same time, and the swimmer must touch the wall with both hands simultaneously. 

Backstroke: Flip turns are permitted to turn at the end of each length of the pool when the swimmer comes onto their front to do an underwater ‘flip’ somersault. 

Breaststroke: The two hands must touch the wall simultaneously at every turn. At the start and at each turn you are allowed to push off under water, with one arm pull and one leg kick.

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