Why can I swim longer with breaststroke then with freestyle?

I tought freestyle is the more efficient style, but I can swim longer distances with the breaststroke. Am I doing something wrong with my freestyle?|||An easy way to answer your question would be that you take a glide in your breaststroke, in this glide you can rest (and stretch) usually for 1-3 seconds (in a lap-swimmer non-competitive style breaststroke). You do not get this pause/rest/glide in freestyle, thus it feels like you are working harder in freestyle and can swim for longer with breaststroke.


By The Way...Bogeythedog's comments are also valid, take them on board also.|||You can probably swim the longest with breaststroke because while swimming breaststroke your body position is the easiest to take breaths. The breaststroke allows the head to rise above the surface of the water. The whole body is used to lift the head out of the water. Taking a full breath is easier than a stroke like the front crawl (freestyle) where half your head is in the water and only the mouth breaks te surface of the water.


A competitive breaststroke has evolved where the upperbody rises high out of the water and the hands are thrust forward above the surface of the water. This competitive breaststroke consumes more energy, is supposed to be faster (if done correctly) and is a lot harder than a simple breaststroke (and even the front crawl) to maintain over long distances. The freestyle is the most efficient stroke of the four competitive strokes because you can cover the largest amount of distance, in the shortest amount of time, consuming the least amount of energy.|||Breaststroke is the slowest stroke, and therefore doesn't use as much energy. Freestyle, however is the fastest out of all four of the strokes, and uses much more energy, especially when racing.|||Well the reason is that you arnet's swimming as hard as you can if u swam as hard as u could ur calfs would starting hurting trust me it hurts





The person before me you get most tyred in fly not free its 100 times harder thats why they only have 200 fly and the 1650 free