Swimming is one of the most physically, challenging sports. Before swimming, the reader must learn to swim, know the strokes and learn to dive, then it helps to know what swimming does for the body. This paper will help explain in detail how much work goes into gaining these attributes.

In freestyle swimming, any stroke may be used, but the crawl, considered the fastest, is almost always favored. In races, facility in diving from a firm surface is essential, except in the backstroke. Most people today refer to crawl as freestyle since everyone uses the crawl stroke in freestyle races albeit any stroke may be used. No matter what the stroke, breathing should be easy, since the specific gravity of the body is almost always such that the body floats if the lungs are working right. 

The breastroke is believed to be the oldest of the strokes, and slowest compared to the other strokes. Breastroke is useful in rough waters. Breaststroke is also referred to as frog kick, because it consists of a wide pull of the arms, and a frog like kick. This is a very popular stroke among swimmers, but it also gets difficult at long distances. In opinion, the breastroke kick is hard to get correct, and the whole combination of the stroke can get extremely tiring after a while. 

The backstroke is another kind of competitive swimming. When starting this stroke, the swimmer doesn't start on the blocks, but the handles underneath them. From experience noted, when swimming the backstroke it is, in opinion, to get use to how long it takes to get from the flags to the wall by counting strokes and to get it to fit the swimmer so the swimmer can turn at the right time to get the best results when flip turning.