Swim Faster by Pointing Your Toes

I'm about to tell you a tip that could make a huge difference in your swimming speed immediately, with nearly zero adaptation time.  

Get a kickboard, lay prone in the water, and start kicking your way across the pool.  While kicking, point your toes as far away from your head as possible, making your feet like flippers.  You cruise across the pool nicely, right?  

Now, keep kicking and turn your feet and ankles so that your toes are pointing directly at the bottom of the pool.  See how you come to a dead stop?  And in some cases, you even start going backwards.  

With most people, the could be swimming much faster if they just pointed their toes away from their head.  An easy way to adapt to this is to put on flippers and feel how they create pressure on the top of your foot with each kick.  Take off the flippers, point your toes and kick, and look for that same feeling of pressure on the top of your foot.  Good job - now you're doing it right!

Enjoy!