Archive for July, 2007

Winter Backpacking Survival Tips

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Why do you need survival tips for winter backpacking? Because even with the most careful planning there is always a greater risk with winter camping. Of course, getting lost or having an accident is always a possibility, but cold weather makes either of these a more serious matter.

Winter Survival Tip Number One

Stay warm! This is obvious. Hypothermia is the single biggest danger for backpackers, killing far more people than accidents or wild animals. What isn’t always so obvious is how poor planning and not thinking on the trail leads to getting cold.

One cold autumn day, a friend of mine fell in a stream while we were backpacking. He was soon chilled pretty severely. He naturally thought this was just an accident, but looking back on it now, it is clear that we didn’t have a proper survival mind set.

Streams have to be crossed, of course, but we were crossing this one as evening approached. A better plan would have been to get the hiking done earlier in the day. Why? Because it leaves time to deal with accidents like this. It may have been sunny enough to get his clothes dried before nightfall, and it is always easier to find fuel for a fire in the daylight.

In addition, we knew the rocks were slippery, yet we crossed as we were. Seeing the potential for a fall, we could have removed our coats and put them in a plastic bag until we were across. Had we taken this simple precaution, my friend would have at least had a dry coat to put on later.

Had this happened in colder weather (it was above freezing) it could have been very serious. You have to stay warm to survive. To stay warm it helps to stay dry. To stay dry, you have to think.

Insulation

Staying warm is about staying insulated. The value of insulation is determined by the thickness of the air around you that isn’t moving. This is the air trapped in your down coat, and between layers of clothing. Always think in terms of insulation thickness. In planning, this means you need more “loft”in your sleeping bag in winter, and more (or thicker) layers of clothing.

In a survival situation, this means you should immediately look for a way to create more insulation. This can mean setting your sleeping bag on a pile of leaves, or sleeping under a pile of dried grass. You might even stuff your jacket (if it is loose) with the fluff from cattail or milkweed plants, in order to increase the insulation value.

More Winter Backpacking Survival Tips

- Check the weather report before you go, and plan accordingly.

- Be careful when it is near or just above freezing. It is easier to get wet than when it is really cold.

- Drink enough fluids. Dehydration can cause a drop in body temperature.

- Down coats are great – if you can keep them dry. They are almost worthless when wet.

- Avoid sweating, to avoid getting chilled from the moisture later.

- Don’t use cotton clothes in winter, because they get wet easily and then don’t insulate well.

- Have more than one way to start a fire (matches, lighter, fire starter, skills).

- Learn to make a fire in cold wet conditions, and practice.

In 2006, I was trying to climb Crestone Peak here in Colorado, after an early snow. I gave up at about 13,000 in four feet of snow. I was in running shoes, and was soaked from the knees down. It would be below freezing that night, and I had just a tarp and 17-ounce sleeping bag. Does that sound risky? I was actually well prepared.

First of all, it was clear and sunny, and forecast to remain so for days. Back down near the lakes the snow was patchy, with many areas of dry grass. I quickly made a thick mattress of dry grass and thistle stalks to sleep on. I had quit early, so I had many hours to dry my shoes, socks and pants in the sun. They were completely dry long before dark.

As a back-up plan, I had a small fire laid, with a piece of bark covering it in case of rain or snow (I never needed to light it). I drank plenty of water and had fatty foods, which create heat as they digest. I also had more dry socks, and other necessary supplies, despite my 11-pound total pack weight. As you can see, survival when winter backpacking is as much about planning and thinking as it is about good gear.

Copyright Steve Gillman. To get the ebook the-ultralight-site.com “Ultralight Backpacking Secrets (And Wilderness Survival Tips)” for FREE, as well as photos, gear recommendations, and a new wilderness survival section, visit: The-Ultralight-Site.com The-Ultralight-Site.com

Debt Consolidation Pros and Cons

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Do you like to learn about new and interesting things about Debt Consolidation? If so, then this article will be right up your alley!

Many people find that over time they have accumulated more debt than they can repay. When that happens, there is a reinforcing downward spiral. The failure to repay the debt leads to additional interest charges and penalties, making it still harder to repay the total payable.

One frequent suggestion for breaking this vicious circle is to employ debt consolidation. For thousands, this has seemed like the way out, the way back to economic wellbeing. But there are pros and cons to debt consolidation, no matter what form it takes. Being conscious of those will help you choose if it is the salvation in your particular circumstances.

Keep reading further to learn how this topic can benefit you, as the rest of this article will supply you with the needed information.

First, what is ‘debt consolidation’? At base, it’s a simple proposition. Collect all your numerous sources of debt into one debt and make a sole payment every month to a sole debtor.

But for that to be helpful, some things have to take place at once. After all, whether you pay $150 $50 $25 to three debtors or $225 to another it’s the same amount. With online bill payment it isn’t even essential these days to make out three checks. You aren’t even saving on postage stamps!

In order for debt consolidation to be effective one or more of the following has to happen: (1) either the full monthly payment has to reduce , or, (2) the net amount of interest has to reduce, or, (3) the actual full debt has to go down as a result of consolidation. Which, if any, of these take place depends on the precise debt consolidation plan you have planned.

In the perfect case, which seldom happens, all three take place. The most frequent scenario is that the monthly payment is lowered. This has numerous advantages to the debt ridden. When the payment is lowered, you have a much higher chance of being able to pay it consistently.

That helps stop piling more debt (interest and late charges) against existing debt. You also have a much more relaxed frame of mind, knowing you can meet the monthly debt obligation without sacrificing other desired stuff.

The danger is that if the payment is too low, some of the psychological factors that led to extreme debt in the first place can rise again. Thinking you have bags to spare can cause you to relax too much too rapidly. Continual anxiety is not healthy, commitment and concern are – if your goal is to become debt free.

Unfortunately, many plans reduce that payment by extending the life of the credit long enough to guard paying off the full original amount payable. That leads to more interest paid over the long term. That’s fair to the lender, while you do owe the money. But some will settle for less if they have good reason to believe they will actually get repaid. Try to negotiate a reduced settlement, then consistently make the agreed on payments every month.

Losing debt is like losing weight. Consistency, and a commitment to reduce it, and keep it lowered, is the key to long-term victory.

What you have learned while reading this informative article, is knowledge that you can keep with you for a lifetime.

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Non Profit Debt Consolidation Advice

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Debt consolidation advice is meant for consumers who are in need of support and guidance due to their mismanagement of their financial situation. This advice is given by non profit debt consolidation organizations. It is a service now given by these organizations or ‘consolidators’ to counsel and educate the clients of their financial issues, namely in their budgeting plans. Their main objective is to help their consumers gain control of their finances and plan their budget well.

Budgets are plans that each and every working person needs to achieve financial freedom. Many people have trouble setting or following their budgets and go into debt as a result, and that is where non profit debt consolidation organizations come in to personally assist them in keeping a stable budget. They will advise the consumers on their inflow and outflow of money and will design a payment plan that is specific to their individual needs. The advice given is not merely a guideline but also a stepping stone for the individuals to take reign over their financial situation. Regardless of the consumer’s location, they would have access over online materials, guideline books, and financial planning books.

Such advice does not cover only budgeting plans, but credit debts and plans for keeping the financial level of the consumer at a safe level. The advice given is on consolidating their debts as one single loan and other programs. The main objective is to assist the consumers in keeping up with a safe financial plan.

Ever since the beginning of this service, it had helped various types of people with debt problems.

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5 Ways to Ruin Your Self-Defense Training, Part 4

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Part 4: Disregarding Vital Targets

“You may wonder what might prevent your attacker from using these tactics also. Actually nothing, except that you will be better at it. Guided Chaos levels the playing field. The ability to both deliver and avoid these tactics for survival is based purely on looseness, body unity, balance and sensitivity- aspects virtually no one else teaches, especially on the ground.” –From the book Attack Proof: The Ultimate Guide to Personal Protection

Taking It to the Ground…

Since people panic on the ground and move with tension, they telegraph their movements and move in a “reaching” instead of “striking” fashion, thus leaving their limbs susceptible to locks and breaks before they can even reach their targets. As the hand is faster than the eye, an object moving between two points can’t be picked up by the focus zones of the eye if it travels faster than approximately 1/16th of a second. For this reason, it is important to think in terms of hundredths of seconds instead of tenths or full seconds, as that type of movement would be far too slow for our purposes.

Also, because our sphere of influence moves to the ground on our own terms while still maintaining the same attributes from our upright position, our mobility is not affected in the same manner as a grappler or another striker who is uncomfortable with the ground. It is because of this maintenance of speed and mobility that we are able to attack these vital targets with impunity, even from the ground.

Maintaining mobility and power on the ground completely allows you to strike any and every part of your attacker’s body with incapacitating damage. However, for the purpose of this section, I’d like to focus on two primary target “areas”, the eyes and throat. A secondary and highly controversial target is the groin which is ideally attacked with crushing/twisting force.

Grappling Creates Open Targets

There is a lot of misunderstanding as to how you should attack the eyes and a lot more mythology going on about eye gouges and throat attacks not altering the nature of a fight. Contrary to what many proponents of grappling have been mislead to believe, a person cannot sacrifice the usage of both of their arms and simultaneously protect these targets, even if they have what they believe to be positional dominance.

Unless you have engaged in either entanglement or resisted in some fashion, it is entirely too easy to target these areas with either multiple, repeated blows or as a method of gaining control of the attacker’s head. As a side note, we do not support the belief of one “magic blow”. To do so would be a violation of the sub principle of “Reactive Looseness”. We don’t stop moving until we can either escape or the opponent can no longer attack.

The problem is that people have become so fixated on grappling being the equivalent or “end all” of ground fighting that they are completely overlooking these methods because of the extreme simplicity. When non-grapplers mention the eyes and throat, grapplers envision them attempting to break out of some complicated twist or lock that they have manipulated their opponent into by way of superior position (knee on mount, side control, etc.) This is not the case, because if you move correctly, those complex locks will never occur in the first place as the transition into positional dominance, or positional dominance itself leaves them completely exposed. The reason I can speak in this manner is not overconfidence, but the simple fact that this stuff really is that simple to counter as they literally provide a free path to those targets when they sacrifice their mobility for setup or control purposes. This is fine for sport, but not self defense.

Grappling Mythology

Here’s an email from Lt. Col. Al that further supports and explains this view:

“One of the problems we have is that the counters to such grappling techniques are truly ‘so simple’ that no one wants to believe it. The simpler something seems, the less likely people are to believe in its effectiveness, it’s just the way our minds work, even in the military there are many people including combat vets who think that grappling works in real fights.” “The head is very easy to manipulate and takes less effort to control than the body. However, any sort of head manipulation is also dangerous, which is why in sport fighting, there are all sorts of rules as to what you can and can’t do when grabbing the head. The eye sockets and nose are like natural handles when manipulating the head and make it too easy to control or injure someone, which once again is why they are not allowed in sport fighting. Besides, if such techniques were allowed, they would invalidate many of the techniques of various fighting arts which pride themselves on being able to control people through physical technique and athletic prowess.”

“[In real conditions] if they are able to get away with it, it’s only because they were dealing with someone who is not skilled in the art of assassination, which brings me to my next point. Real martial arts are rooted in the dark art of “quick” [incapacitation or even] death! I cannot overemphasize that final point.” Even after a demonstration where I attempted the mount, I found it extremely difficult to accept that simple, high speed, potentially lethal strikes could nullify these positions with such ease. All of the techniques that I’d learned previously were much more complicated, involved entanglement and were a lot slower.

The Groin Attack

Very often, we will hear absolutely ridiculous counterarguments to attacking vital targets along the lines of “it is difficult to attack the groin when a lot of people these days fashionably “sag” their pants”, or “what if the guy has on a cup?” Here Lt. Col. Al will elaborate from an email where we discussed this matter:

“Like yourself, I’ve heard this all before as well and I have to tell you that you don’t need to be a martial arts expert to understand that this is nothing more than a bogus argument.”

“What you need to remind people of is that the only fight we are really training for is the one that comes in the form of an attack [in the real world], not a sportive contest. First of all, bad guys don’t walk around wearing a cup and if they do, then they’re probably not right in the head to begin with, so you have a bigger problem on your hands aside from dealing with a guy trying to protect his family jewels in a fight. Also, the primary target areas that people want to focus on are the eyes and throat anyway.”

“As for someone wearing a lot of clothing, remember that multiple layers will provide some protection against slashes with a knife and protect the skin, but it will not protect against a compression injury. Any type of strike capable of penetrating to the bone will not be affected by someone wearing say a large jacket. Even someone wearing a flack vest is not immune from getting their body compressed if a strike, such as a powerful kick is properly placed.” “As a final note to all of this, remember that people who say things such as, “well, what if they are wearing a cup?”, these folks are knuckleheads and should not be taken seriously. This is the same mindset of people who when they know you study a martial art, the first thing they say to you is, “well what would you do if I had a gun, pulled a gun, etc…”, you know the lines. The reason they say such things is completely out of deep rooted fears and insecurities as they know that anyone who trains in the dark art of death could possibly “end it” for them in an instant or at least completely invalidate their nonsense. You are a threat to their egos so they have to say such things to make themselves feel better. Trust me, even my buddies who are grapplers go through the same type of nonsense. It’s interesting too because whenever challenged these guys become very sheepish [Note: a person that wants to assassinate you will just shoot you and will not let you know what their intentions are until it's probably too late for you to react.]“

“Usually this shuts them down and they cut the crap, but it also reveals their real fears. We had a guy one time make an unbelievably stupid comment at one of our schools when John was explaining the importance of focusing on eye and throat strikes. This jerk who was observing the class made a comment along the lines of “well what if they are wearing goggles?” So John asked, “Does anyone think that if a person were wearing a pair of goggles it would deter you from crushing their skull?” John also added, “What kind of moron walks around the street wearing a pair of safety goggles?” or words to that effect. He was then offered the opportunity to join the class which he of course sheepishly declined, typical.” to be continued…

Next–Part 5, The Conclusion: “OK, here I am, now hit me!”

Ken Freeman is a 1st degree Black Belt in Guided Chaos (Ki Chuan Do), the adaptive, free-form internal art created by former forensic homicide investigator John Perkins. He is the leader of the Chicago KCD Training Group. See attackproof.com/ attackproof.com/ More articles and DVDs can be found at attackproof.com/FREE-self-defense-NEWSLETTER.html attackproof.com/FREE-self-defense-NEWSLETTER.html

Investing May Be As Simple As Paying Down Your Debt

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

If you have begun to research investing, then it is a sign that you are interested in taking full responsibility for your financial state in general. The first step in doing so is to examine your financial status in four different categories: income, expenses, assets, and liabilities.

Income and expenses are pretty straightforward. Income is the money that is coming into your account, and expenses are the money that is going out. If you are responsibly budgeting, then you have more income than expenses, allowing you to invest the excess. However, many of us in this day and age are living beyond our means, using credit as a way of making up the difference between what we spend and what we earn. For many people, this means that investing is difficult due to irresponsible spending habits.

Assets are those items or funds that you own. These could be funds that you have invested, or property that you own. You should be aware that some assets are actually likely to depreciate in value, such as cars. And that if you are making payments on your car, you will not get all of that money back if you were to sell it. However, your home is hopefully an asset that is appreciating, or growing in value. In this case, you can count the equity in your home as an asset. In contrast, liabilities are those amounts that you owe, including the debt that you have. The total of your assets, minus the total amount of liabilities that you owe, gives you a picture of your net worth. For many of us, it is shocking to realize that our net worth may actually be a negative number, simply due to the amount of financial liabilities that we have incurred.

So one of the easiest ways to invest, at least if you are just beginning, is to simply ‘invest’ in your financial health by paying off your debt. For example, start by looking at the bills that you are paying on a monthly basis. Are any of them credit cards of payment plans of some kind? What are the percentage rates that you are paying on those debts? If you were to sit down and calculate the total amount of interest that you are paying in a month, you may be shocked to learn the amount of money that you are actually ‘throwing away’ by carrying that debt. To stop throwing that money away, concentrate on paying down the debt.

While making minimum payments is the requirement of the credit company, it is also their way of keeping your account open by encouraging you to pay a smaller amount than you could. The longer you carry a balance, the more money that they make. So start by identifying which accounts have the highest interest rates (or have the largest balances and so are costing your more in finance charges), and pay as much as possible on that account while continuing to pay the minimum amount on your other accounts. When you have paid off that debt, move to the account with the next highest interest rate and do the same. Eventually, you will have decreased your liabilities greatly, and can then focus on investing in ways that will add to your assets as well.

Visit the

How Sports Entertainment Is Hurting Wrestling

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Watching TNA iMPACT! this week I was reminded of a comment that former WWE wrestler Lance Storm made several months ago. Storm opined that there is a difference between wrestling angles and storylines. Storm’s comment was in reference to something that WWE was doing at the time, but it applies to all wrestling promotions.

Storylines vs. Angles

The concept is actually quite simple. A storyline is a series of events that occurs between two or more characters over the course of several shows. A wrestling angle on the other hand builds directly to a climax in the wrestling ring.

The difference may seem very minor, but it comes hugely significant when you see how both WWE and TNA have approached their storylines recently.

Both companies are guilty of running storylines in the last few months which cannot ever result in a real wrestling match. The most obvious example right now would be TNA’s use of Earl Hebner in a storyline where he is feuding with Larry Zbyszko and Slick Johnson. None of the three participants in this story are active wrestlers so there is no possibility of a satisfactory conclusion to the angle.

Sports Entertainment

The problem stems I think from the re-definition of wrestling in to Sports Entertainment, an action triggered by Vince McMahon and his then World Wrestling Federation. McMahon has gone to great lengths to differentiate the product he presents from old-fashioned wrestling federations.

As the dominant force in the wrestling industry, WWE’s re-branding has had inevitable knock-on effect on every other wrestling promotion. In order to compete with WWE’s populist approach to the sport, their competitors have been forced to adopt some of the same elements that seem to have made WWE so successful.

With no one left trying to pull things back to a more traditional sports event based format, the result had been a continual slide further towards televised drama and away from presenting wrestling matches.

Soap Opera For Men

Over the last decade this situation has reached some sort of tipping point where the whole focus of the shows has changed. Less and less matches are presented as more and more time is spent presenting us with a “soap opera for men”.

The result is that less and less time is spent on wrestling angles (in fact many of the matches we do get seem more like a backdrop to the storyline rather than the exclamation point). That lack of attention on the core product (call it whatever you want, but it’s a wrestling show) has its costs.

Many reviewers have pointed out the lack of sizzle (for want of a better term) for recent WWE and TNA PPVs. Even when the announced matches seem like they ought to be a big deal, the presentation of them just doesn’t bring that home.

When the final show down between two wrestlers is no longer the climax of weeks of booking, but rather just a short pause before they go back to exchanging witty repartee, why would anyone pay to actually watch that match?

prowrestlingnewsdirect.com Visit Pro-Wrestling News Direct For The Latest News and Rumors from WWE and TNA

Eoghann Irving is a wrestling fanatic he posts reviews of all the national pro-wrestling tv shows each week in addition to daily news and rumor updates.

Forex Trading – Where to Place Your Stops

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

Whether or not forex brokers actively hunt for stops is open for debate. However, I believe that they do succumb to the temptation sometimes. And the killer is most forex traders make it easy for them.

If you’ve got your stop ten to thirty pips way from the price when you enter your order, you’re a sitting duck. You’re asking for the broker to take your money.

Just last week a trader wrote to me and complained (rather vehemently) that all brokers where crooks. He’s got a point. However, most traders just make it way too easy. Way too easy.

So where should you place your stops? Where you don’t expect the market to go. That such a simple (and extremely effective) idea, that I want to repeat it just to let it settle in.

Put your stop where you think the market won’t go.

It’s a beautiful concept, is it not? Of course, then the difficulty becomes determining where the market won’t (or more correctly) shouldn’t go.

This isn’t as hard to figure out as you might expect. For example, finding a resistance area (or support area) in the market and place your stop behind it. Guarantee you that if a major resistance point is taken out, your trade wasn’t going to work any way.

Another one of my favorite techniques is to place my stop outside of Bollinger bands. After all, if 95% of the price is inside of the bands, only 5% of the time would my stop be hit (that is an overly simplistic overview, but the basic idea still holds true).

Do you want to learn more about how I trade? I have just completed my brand new guide, “Forex Trading – What Finally Worked For Me”.

Download it free here:

Online Brokers

Monday, July 30th, 2007

ONLINE BROKERS – a technological revolution

Online brokers – Just perfect examples to point towards the evolutions and revolutions in the businesses and services, throughout the world. Internet is no more only an information superhighway; rather it has been the largest market of products and services throughout the world. A marketer has an access to the target markets in other countries. It is a technological revolution that has over-crossed the boundaries of different countries.

Share world going online is no more a news. All the transactions are done online related to stocks. The stocks market is no more a clumsy, crowded market with people shouting and screaming, yelling at phones and carrying unusual gestures along. Stock market, now, is a modern market with technological advances. The trading of stocks is done online and the manual stock exchange is replaced by the computerized one. With the share market going online, it is natural that the simple brokerages are turning to online brokerages.

A trader cannot trade himself. An expertise is always needed to wave him the path in dark ways of stock market. The person who assists the investments in return of brokerage is known as broker. He is the one who seeks that no stone remain unturned to fetch more and more profit. In return, he expects a fair amount of brokerage from the investor. This amount is pre-decided and acts as motivation for the broker to sort out the complications of the trader. The broker may be an individual or a firm. An individual broker assists his clients individually and has the full share of brokerage earned. However, this is not the case in share brokerage firms. These firms hire individual brokers to help assist their clients and the brokerage is then divided in the firm’s and broker’s name. The benefit of working with firm lies in the increased credibility and the security to the investors in the name of the company, whereas, individuals work on their own reputation and eats up whole amount of brokerage.

Apart from the expertise, there are many benefits provided by

Credit Scores – Do They Really Matter?

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Well, like it or not the answer is Yes. Unfortunately they actually play a bigger role in our lives than most people realize. Not only are your credit scores factored in when looking for any type of financing, they also come into play in other areas such as insurance and employment.

In today’s technological world everything is centered on being as efficient and productive as possible, in other words, let the computers handle as much of the workload as possible. Since we all know that computers are not at the point of being able to reason or make decisions based on judgment, it stands to reason that computers must be fed a number of facts before a decision can be made. One of those primary facts is your credit score. This is a number between 450 and 850 made up of a number of complex factors (so many factors that even most credit company insiders cannot tell you the formula used) that basically predicts how well you will pay. The higher the number, the more likely you are to pay your bills.

Insurance companies are interested in this because they bill out most of their premiums. In other words, they become one of the many bills received every month and they want to know how likely you are to pay the bill. If your score is below a certain level one of two things could happen; you will be turned down for the insurance or you will be charged a higher premium to offset the risk that based on your score you may not pay the bill. As you can see neither of these option are preferable.

Employers like to see higher credit scores because to them it represents stability. This is especially important for climbing the corporate ladder into management positions and outside sales where a person may not be supervised at all times. If you will notice on almost any employment application these days you are authorizing the potential employer to check your credit, read the fine print.

These are just two examples outside of the loan process, which almost always will involve your credit scores, that shows how your scores can save or cost you money. So what does this mean? Know where you stand. Know what your scores are and learn how to keep them as high as possible. This could potentially save you thousands of dollars in fees, interest, premiums, etc…

Here is one little bit of information that will help your scores tremendously; keep your balances on your credit cards below 75% of the credit line. In other words, if you have a credit card with a $1,000 balance, keep your balance below $750.00. Credit cards can be very dangerous to a consumer and it is usually the first thing that does not get paid when someone is struggling financially. Because of this credit cards are weighted heavily in your credit score and higher balances usually indicate that someone is having to use the cards to survive or is spending out of control. Keep your balances low to avoid a major hit in your credit score. Use this and any knowledge you can get your hands on to keep your scores high and enjoy the savings.

Rich Ruzic has been in the mortgage business for 15 years and publishes articles on the subject for both individuals and corporations.

loaninfonline.com loaninfonline.com

Swimming – The Four Strokes

Monday, July 30th, 2007

When it comes to competitive swimming there are various strokes and distances that can be competed in at most competitions. Competitive swimming started to become increasingly popular in the in the 1800’s , and due to its popularity is and has been for a long time one of the most popular events in the summer Olympics.

Competitive swimming has an international governing body that goes by the world recognised name of FINA. The governing body of FINA includes local sub groups such as Amateur Swimming Association (ASA) and Swimming Teachers Association (STA) in the United Kingdom ,USA Swimming (USAS) and United States Masters Swimming (USMS) in the United States. FINA regulates the four swimming disciplines, swum over different distances as outlined below.

Freestyle, also known as ‘front crawl’, can be swum using any technique or style the swimmer chooses, although front crawl is swum 99% of the time, and thus in swimming competitions bares no restrictions on what action the swimmers use. The only exception to this is when the swimmer is swimming the freestyle part of an individual medley event. The following events are held for freestyle in distances of 50 m, 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800 m and 1500 m. All of these can be swum in regular competitions and major games.

Butterfly events require that the swimmer’s actions are equal at both sides; therefore the left side of the body has to do the same as the right. The leg kick of the butterfly stroke is commonly known as the ‘dolphin’ leg kick. Butterfly is considered one of the most physically challenging of the swimmingforums.com swimming strokes. The following events are held for Butterfly at distances of 50 m, 100 m, and 200 m. The 50m Butterfly can be swum in practically all competitions accept for the Olympics at the time of writing this, much this may change in the future.

Breaststroke is the stroke from which butterfly evolved. The restriction with Breaststroke is that the swimmer’s hands must be pushed forward together from the chest. Breaststroke is the slowest stroke in competitive swimming, and always will be. The following events are held for Breaststroke at distances of 50 m, 100 m, and 200 m. The 50m Breaststroke can be swum in practically all competitions accept for the Olympics at the time of writing this, much this may change in the future.

Backstroke is basically front crawl on your back. Swimmers have to lie on their back at all times except during turns to perform the stroke. Swimmers rotate their arms back over their shoulder one at a time and pull their arms back through under the water to provide a push, with a constant flowing leg kick. The following events are held for Backstroke at distances of 50 m, 100 m, and 200 m. The 50m Backstroke can be swum in practically all competitions accept for the Olympics at the time of writing this, much this may change in the future.

Paul Callis is a retired swimmer with great experience at all levels of competing. You can visit his website and catch up with swimmers from all across the world swimmingforums.com swimmingforums.com.