by Steve Cline

For a lot of us, summer is swimming season. When we swim, we use the upper and lower body, aid the heart, lungs, muscles and bones, and burn about twice as many calories a minute as a brisk walk.

Swimming is also easy on the hips, knees and ankles. Water is about 800 times more dense than air, so it helps support your weight. That helps make swimming a great pursuit for people who worry about joint pain or injury.

All in all, swimming sounds like the ideal exercise. But for most of us, it isn’t.

That’s because most of us are poor swimmers. “Poor swimmers can’t go far enough [to fully benefit from swimming] because they get exhausted so quickly,” says Joel Stager, Ph.D., director of Indiana University’s Human Performance Laboratory.

Blame poor technique. Most of us were taught to swim in a way that stressed effort over efficiency. We learned to kick vigorously and windmill our arms. When we didn’t move fast enough, we were urged to work harder. Only the most basic thought went into the body’s orientation in the water.

“What people are really doing is practicing survival skills,” says Terry Laughlin, swim coach and co-author of Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier. “The movement of their arms and legs is countering the tendency of the body to sink. It has very little to do with propelling them forward through the water.”

Simple changes and a little practice can help you swim better, enjoy it more and reap its health benefits. Here are three tips.

1. Relax in the Water
The best way to improve your swimming might seem counterproductive — relaxing in the water.

Relaxing? Aren’t we trying to work out? “Let’s stop talking about swimming as a workout,” Mr. Laughlin says, “and start thinking about it as a practice like tai chi or yoga.”

In swimming, as in those activities, awareness of body alignment and precision of movement matter more than muscle power. Before you work on the finer points, though, slow down and feel the way your body interacts with the water.

“It’s about getting comfortable and being able to relax,” Mr. Laughlin says. Competitive swimmers have learned that secret, Dr. Stager adds. “The best swimmers make it look easy, and that is in part because they are able to relax in the water,” he says.

2. Get Your Balance
Now that you’re relaxed, you’ve probably noticed that you’re sinking. That’s why most people aren’t efficient swimmers: The human body naturally sinks, especially the legs. Air in the lungs keeps the upper body more buoyant.

As a result, swimmers tip in the water like a teeter-totter. Their heads are too high and their legs dip down. “The most common mistake I see is people swimming with their heads held very high,” says Nancy Ridout, former president of U.S. Masters Swimming. “It’s difficult to get through the water that way.”

To counter this, try to be as horizontal as you can. Practice in the water on your back with your hands reaching over your head. Make your body as long as possible and feel how it settles in the water. Then turn on your stomach and seek that same sense of balance.

3. Fine Tune Your Kick
Improving your kick can really help you take off in the water. The muscles of the buttocks and thighs power an efficient kick, which features relaxed ankles and toes slightly pointed in.

Again, relaxing and keeping the movement fluid is as important as the amount of effort you put into your kick. You can check your progress by noticing if you’re creating air bubbles. The fewer bubbles, the better.

Lifelong payoff
Those three simple principles are just a start, but they should help you move more easily through the water. To refine your technique, you may want to take a swim class. Instructional books and videos can also help.

“Even as you are aging, you can become a better swimmer because you can refine these movements,” Mr. Laughlin says.

At a recent Masters Swimming Championships, a four-man relay team from Texas helped prove that point. The team members, who competed in the 200-meter medley and freestyle relays, were ages 90, 92, 92 and 94.

“They were really moving,” Ms. Ridout says.

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