CornUponCob

Some advice from a former All-American distance swimmer...

Swimmers swim in a body position sometimes called "press the chest". Because in swimming the amount of air in your lungs affects your buoyancey you want to spend more time with more air in your lungs while at the same time focus on "pressing" your chest into the water. This action will raise your legs higher in the water. I would NOT recommend kicking a lot as this will just make you more tired than you already are. Your legs are great for moving you around on land, but are inefficient in the water (unless you have gigantic feet or fins). I do however recommend that you do a 1 or 2 beat kick (that's one or two kicks per stroke. I personally do a 1 beat crossover kick... don't worry about what that means).

Getting back to holding more air in your lungs as I stated earlier. This means that you want to exhale more quickly and then breathe in quickly knowing that the more time you spend with little air in your lungs the lower you will be in the water. This can take time as you have to strengthen your diaphragm to breathe in quickly with water pressure working against your chest cavity.

The main difference between a swimmer and non swimmer, (other than the far greater muscular endurance in the lats and tris of a swimmer) is body position. This simply takes a lot of time in the water to perfect.

In your specific case I would work on breathing faster and being mindful of where your feet are in the water. Try to keep your heels within 6 inches of the surface of the water. Try "pressing the chest" (again the sensation that you're trying to push your chest (not your head) deeper in the water so that your feet will rise up).

Also, for the record, "real" breastroke (the competitive version of the stroke) is the least effecient stroke one can do. If you put in the time and get the freestyle down pat, I guarentee you that you'll never want to resort to doing breastroke to rest. Breastroke is the only stroke that has an underwater recovery (the part of your stroke where your arms move forward to take the next stroke) for both the arms and the legs.