Humans have enjoyed swimming for thousands of years and the swimming strokes they've used have evolved over the centuries. Today, rules for national and international competition standardize strokes and describe in detail what constitutes fair or foul during swimming competitions. You benefit from diverse cultural influences every time you move across a pool or other body of water.
Early Influences
Egyptian art dating from 2,000 B.C. depicts swimmers performing a stroke similar to the front crawl, and Assyrian stone carvings show swimmers performing a symmetrical stroke similar to the breaststroke, according to "The Washington Post." An early French written work on swimming dating from 1696 describes an early breaststroke style performed with the swimmer's head held over the water. The British popularized swimming in the modern era and upper-class and aristocratic Englishmen performed the breaststroke and the sidestroke, which evolved from the "doggie paddle," according to FINA.org. Even though European visitors and settlers witnessed American Indians swimming a fast, crawl-like stroke, they initially labeled the style "wild" and stuck to the familiar breaststroke, according to DeAnza College.
Adaptations
English spectators witnessed Native Americans swimming the fast "windmill style" when Ojibbeway tribesmen Flying Gull and Tobacco participated in swimming competitions in London in 1844. The swimmers surprised the audience and trounced the competition when they swam in their signature arm-over-arm recovery and "downward" kicking motion. The style evolved into the freestyle stroke used by many swimmers today. Despite the success of the two Native American swimmers, Europeans stuck to the breaststroke and the sidestroke until Arthur Trungen adopted the faster stroke in 1873, combining the arm-over-arm stroke with a breaststroke kick, says FINA.org. The stroke improved swimmers' speed but quickly exhausted them. In the early 1900s, Richard Cavill described his evolved arm-over-arm stroke combined with a flutter kick as "crawling" through the water. The term stuck and today the "front crawl," or "Australian crawl," is the fastest official stroke used in competitive swimming.
Refinements
Swimmer and innovator H. Jamison "Jam" Handy put his face and head in the water rather than keeping it above water during the crawl stroke, first testing his experiment in in competition in 1906, according to the International Swimming Hall of Fame. He exhaled underwater and rotated his head to the side, bringing it just above the water to inhale. In championing underwater breathing, "Jam" Handy realigned the head and body in the water, permitting the legs to kick slower or trail behind. The result was a more streamlined and efficient stroke that allowed swimmers to do distance swimming and increase speed in the water.
Butterfly and Backstroke
Handy also pioneered using the alternate arm stroke backstroke, which before required swimmers to fling both arms backward at the same time, more like a breaststroke pull performed on the back. The butterfly started out as a variant of breaststroke, with its over-water, double-arm recovery paired with a frog-style kick. Swimmers discovered that a dolphin kick was more efficient and faster than the breaststroke kick, so competitors used the stroke to their advantage in races. Butterfly branched off into official status at the 1956 Olympics when swimmers competed in the first autonomous butterfly races. Today, the four official strokes, breast, back, free and fly, comprise all the events in national and international competition.
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