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How to tread water

Swimming / Popular

Stay vertical and calm using eggbeater and sculling.

What coaches agree on

  • Scull with your hands and forearms in a smooth back-and-forth motion, often described as a figure-eight or infinity shape, angling your palms to push water downward as you sweep them in and out.
  • For your legs, alternate one at a time in an egg-beater motion, like a breaststroke kick split across two legs, trapping and redirecting water downward with your shins and the inside of your feet.
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  • Take a full breath in and let out only about half of it before your next inhale, since fully emptying your lungs is what makes you sink.
  • Draw your knees up toward your chest to concentrate your weight and increase your surface area for floating.

Common mistakes

  • Trying to power through with big, fast, forceful arm and leg movements, which fights the water and burns energy fast, when the same movements done slow and relaxed keep you up with far less effort.
  • Sculling with your whole arm in wide sweeps away from your body instead of keeping the motion small and close to your torso, mostly in the forearms and hands.
  • Trying to hold your head and shoulders high out of the water, when every part of your body above the surface is effectively far heavier to support than it is submerged, so staying low with your chin near the surface takes much less effort.
How to Tread Water #swimmingtips
Intermediate

How to Tread Water #swimmingtips

Coach's take: Best one in the batch, the candle analogies for hand and foot mechanics are genuinely great teaching, and it's honest about treading water's place relative to back floating.

3.9
Swimming Basics: Treading Water
Beginner

Swimming Basics: Treading Water

Coach's take: Best technical breakdown of eggbeater and scull in this batch, precise and correct, and it even covers how to progress a nervous swimmer through it.

3.7
Learn to Swim - Treading Water
Beginner

Learn to Swim - Treading Water

Coach's take: Very precise, very thorough on the modified breaststroke kick -- just doesn't touch the eggbeater option.

3.7
Steps to Make Treading Water Feel Easy!
Beginner

Steps to Make Treading Water Feel Easy!

Coach's take: The buoyancy self-test is the standout, genuinely useful, not something every coach thinks to teach. Solid start-to-finish lesson for a first-timer.

3.6
Treading Water | Fear of Water
Beginner

Treading Water | Fear of Water

Coach's take: Kind, patient tone for a nervous swimmer, but the actual technique taught is watered-down and won't hold up past a few seconds.

2.1