What is the most important thing to keep yourself from drowning?
Getting out of the water—but treading water is a close second!
Treading Water Techniques
Treading water is the first thing everyone should learn before swimming, but unfortunately, many people learn the wrong technique and it ends up taking a lot of energy to stay afloat. There is a correct way to tread water and learning how to do it efficiently could possibly save your life! Training yourself to tread isn't as hard as you might think and all it takes is a little pool work.
Body Position to Tread Water
When treading water, your body stays upright, head above the surface. If you aren’t vertical, you’re technically swimming, not treading!
Your arms and legs move to keep you afloat, although you can tread temporarily with just arms or just legs.
It is important to stay calm and slow your breathing, since this will increase your energy efficiency and slow exhaustion.
You know you’re doing it right if your body is barely bobbing up and down. Your torso should remain motionless as your arms and legs work to keep you afloat.
Best Arm Movement to Tread Water
Move your arms horizontally in the water, back and forth. Moving them up and down will make you bob around, which wastes energy!
Your palms should face the direction that your arms are moving. This is called “sculling”.
PUSH the water out of your way! Use those muscles!
Legs: How to Tread Water with Kicking
There are lots of different ways to kick your legs when treading water.You can try using a flutter kick (freestyle), frog kick (breaststroke), or even just moving your legs in circles really fast. All of these will work to propel your body upward, counteracting gravity. But they waste a lot of energy!
The right technique is the rotary kick, moving your legs like an eggbeater, with each leg rotating a different direction.
Timing is everything! When one leg kicks out, the other should be coming in.
This motion is the hardest to master, but once you do, I promise you can go for hours without feeling a thing! Well, maybe not. But close.
With a waterproof Delphin Micro Tablet playing your favorite Spotify playlists, podcasts or a good book from Audible, you’ll be good to go for as many hours as your legs can handle.
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