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Swimming is the sport or activity of moving through water by moving your arms and legs. Competitive swimming became popular in the nineteenth century.
The goal of competitive swimming is to beat the competitors in any given event. Swimming in competition should create the least resistance in order to obtain maximum speed. However, some professional swimmers who do not hold a national or world ranking are considered the best in regard to their technical skills.
Typically, an athlete goes through a cycle of training in which the body is overloaded with work in the beginning and middle segments of the cycle, and then the workload is decreased in the final stage as the swimmer approaches competition.
The final stage of swimming is referred to as “shave and taper”: the swimmer shaves off all exposed hair for the sake of reducing drag and having a sleeker and more hydrodynamic feel in the water.
Swimming is an event at the Summer Olympic Games, where male and female athletes compete in 16 of the recognized events each. Olympic events are held in a 50-meter pool, called a long course pool.
Swim styles
In competitive swimming, four major styles have been established. These have been relatively stable over the last 30–40 years with minor improvements. The four main strokes in swimming are:
- Butterfly (fly)
- Backstroke (back)
- Breaststroke (breast)
- Freestyle (free)
Events in competition may have only one of these styles except in the case of the individual medley, or IM, which contains all four. In this latter event, swimmers swim equal distances of butterfly, then backstroke, breaststroke, and finally, freestyle.
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