are more important...legs or arms in swimming?

Question

if somebody asks advice for swimming faster everybody instinctively answers..more legs...are they more important?

Answer 1

It depends on the stroke and the distance. If you are talking about breaststroke, far and away the most important part is the legs. However, if you are talking about front crawl the arms provide more power. Most of the time though, the arms are at their full potential when swimming allout and people don't focus on their kick. Thus, if the kick improves and the arms stay at their full potential you will swim faster.

Answer 2

When you get to a high level of ability you can tell the difference between the muscles used. I'll talk about arms here. What most people probably don't know is that your abdominal and lower back muscles (I don't know their names) are more powerful than the muscles in your upper shoulders and arms. What this means is, if you're swimming at a moderate pace, your arms will be doing the work (forget the legs for a second). But if you move your arms more quickly and take faster strokes (obviously to move faster) your abdominal and lower back muscles on your sides move you through the water and are better at doing so than your arms. Think of your arms as anchors that you must pass, like buoys in the water, not as pulling devices, because if you have the technique correct, your arms will simply be "anchoring" you ahead and your core muscles will power you through. It's a lot more labor intensive though (duh). I'm not as strong in my legs as in my arms but I can definitely tell the difference between "using" my arms and "using" my core muscles when I really put on the fire. For me, arms are more important.

Answer 3

What I have learned when swimming is think about is this way they are both equally important but most of the time people arent kicking hard enough and they dont know it. People just kind of kick but its not the hardest they could and they focus more on their arms and their turns more. That's good but kicking is important too. What I learned is that you use your arms for POWER, and your legs for SPEED, so the harder you kick the faster you go, and the harder you pull with your arms the more distance you cover.

Answer 4

I think that it is basicly a 50-50 cooperation. It also depends on what you are doing.

If you are a sprinter, I think that the legs are more important.

If you are a distance swimmer, the arms are way more important.

You know that saying "Individals win races, teams win meets" It is kinda like that. You cannot do legs without arms and visa versa!

Answer 5

Legs power the swimmer, arms maintain boyancy & direction. They're both important, but it depends what you're looking for speed or direction?

Some will say the arms, as you can't swim with just your legs, but you CAN if you're on your back.

Answer 6

When you swim you can literaly drag your legs and you still can swim, but you cant swim only kicking... at least not for long... so i say arms are more important. Legs add speed to your swimming.

Answer 7

they are not exactly more important, but they are harder to use. if you work on your arms, then you will not make as much progress because usually they are already better. if you work on your legs, you can improve more than if you worked on your legs. if you want to see which are better, try timing yourself doing a 25 or 50 of each one, the one with the worse time should be worked on more

Answer 8

I would think that if you are looking to improve speed it would be the legs, but if you had to use either arms or legs, the arms would make biggest impact

Answer 9

Well Arms are more important theoreticaly but legs obviously make you faster, it also depends on how you kick

Answer 10

Legs are most use part in swimming