What is Artistic Swimming?
Artistic swimming (formally synchro) is a hybrid form of swimming, gymnastics, and dance consisting of swimmers performing a synchronized routine of complex and dynamic underwater movements (known as figures) and arm movements in the water accompanied by music. Duet and Team events also include many creative and acrobatic movements that require strength and skill.
Building the Artistic Swimmer
Artistic swimmers must be completely at home in the water and demonstrate outstanding fitness both in and out of the water. Artistic swimmers are known to be some of the fittest athletes in the world! Imagine running a race holding your breath while doing it. In order to develop into a world-class artistic swimmer, athletes must not only practice their artistic swimming or technical skills, but train in swimming, strength and other general athletic skills in and out of the water.
Artistic Swimming Requires
General Athletic Training:
Swimming
Agility
Ballet/Dance
Speed
Flexibility
Balance
Coordination
Strength
Artistic Swimming Skills:
Sculling
Routine Patterns
Propulsion Skills
Transition Movements
Basic Aquatic Skills:
Floating and breathing
Water entries
Stroking and Kicking
Body positions and water awareness
Taken From:
Langlois, J., Heald, K. (2019). Canada Artistic Swimming – A Parent’s guide to Artistic Swimming. Retrieved from https://artisticswimming.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Canada-Artistic-Swiming-A-Parents-Guide-to-Artistic-Swimming-May-2019.pdf
Parent information: Teaching Canadian Kids to Love Water!. Canada Artistic Swimming (2019). https://artisticswimming.ca/aquago/aquago-parents-teaching-canadian-kids-to-love-the-water/
New to Artistic Swimming?
The questions we know you want to ask!
What do you put in your hair?
That shinning hair? Oh, it is Gelatin! From their very first performances, the swimmers learn how to hold their hair up with tons and tons of hairpins and three coats of gelatine meticulously brushed into their hair. It is almost like a symbolic ritual performed before each competition. It can take up to 1.5 hours to make it perfect! It can sometimes turn out into a friendly competition among athletes to know who has the “best hair.”
What is a custom swimsuit?
As the athletes progress in the sport, their suits also get more elaborate. Suits are custom-made to represent the theme of the routine. Hours and hours of detailed work go into the suits, First by the parents who diligently glue stone by stone, bead by bead, to the fabric. Accomplished artists sometimes design top athletes’ suits, which are meticulously handmade. However, there has been a recent shift away from the importance of suits and makeup. Instead, the focus has been on the athletic components of the sport.
What is land drill?
Even though the name of the sport was recently changed from Synchronized Swimming to Artistic Swimming, synchronization is still a very dominant aspect of the sport. To train the precision of the movements to the music, the swimmers recreate the routine out of the water. Like sign language, there is a common international language for “landrill”. This “landrill” language is the interpretation of all the movements done in the water with hands and arms only,
How do you hear the music under the water?
First developed for Naval use, underwater speakers are designed to go in the pool. They allow swimmers to hear the music and be synchronized precisely.
Attention is also given to avoid shorting out, electrocuting swimmers or turning to driftwood.
This technology is only possible due to the properties of sound. Sound travels through both air and water. IN fact, sound waves move 4.3 times faster underwater than on land. It is important at Artistic Swimming competitions that the out-of-the-water speakers are reasonably near the swimmers so that the difference in speed does not jeopardize performance.
How can you hold your breath for so long?
Athletes progressively learn to hold their breath through both mental training and physical training. Artistic swimmers get lots practice holding their breath through workouts that focus on breath holding and doing multiple “run throughs” of their routines.