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Swimming Drills
By Rich Strauss

In the last 5 months I have been providing swim coaching to a small group of my clients. This has been 80% stroke technique work. During this time I have had to radically realign my perception of what is efficient, fast swimming and how to best teach these skills to triathletes, not to full-time swimmers. In short, triathlon swimming is about efficiency, then fitness and speed. For full-time swimmers, technique was learned at a very early age and so swimming is much more about fitness, power and speed. These differences demand radically different approaches to all aspects of swimming. Please start by reading my article, Improving Your Swim Technique. This article is meant to give the essence of what I'm talking about here, and to give you a few very valuable measurement tools. I will explain common swim technique errors and the drills used to fix them. The first section delves into the subject of Balance and Side Swimming, the second section will be devoted to explaining some common drills, and then provide a matrix of common swim problems and associated drill fixes.

So Many Problems, So Many Drills. Where do I begin?

Just as our fitness training follows a logical progression, our skills training does as well. It's difficult to fix C if A and B are also jacked up. My progression is as follows:

1. Proper Balance: this refers to a swimmers ability to perform all movements fluidly around a natural point of buoyancy. This skill is reflected in a proper horizontal body position and smooth transition from side to side while swimming. For some athletes, improper balance can be caused by an ineffective kick. I have included a Fin Progression below to help you fix this.
   
   
2. Side Swimming: It's my term, I don't know if someone else has already claimed it. By this I mean that the swimmer should try to spend as much time as possible swimming on his side. This accomplishes at least two things:

   a) Reduces frontal area exposed to the water, thus reducing drag.

   b) Gets the large lat and shoulder muscles into the pull of your stroke. A flat shoulder style of swimming recruits the smaller delt muscles.

3. Propulsive movements: this refers to the stuff that makes you go forward. These are drills that teach you how to catch and pull the water more efficiently and effectively.

Balance and Side Swimming

You will hear "Balance" a lot these days in triathlon circles. I suspect it's because some very smart folks realized that they had to teach something to non-swimmers that swimmers could already do instinctively from years of practice: maintain a horizontal and streamlined position in the water. Fortunately, the most common drills that solve balance problems also develop side swimming skills.

You swim in a tube. Anything sticking outside of this tube creates drag. Drag slows you down. The most common source of drag is your legs. We have all seen people that swim with their legs 12-18 inches below the water line. This is a huge source of drag and must be fixed before we can move on to anything else.

Kicking/Lower Body Balance and Side Swimming Drills

1. Stomach Kick: Kick on your stomach, head first, arms are at your side. Try to achieve horizontal body position by using buoyancy to bring legs up.

   Head: Neutral to down. Experiment with head position to bring feet to surface.

   Arms: Both arms held loosely at your sides.

   Legs: Toes pointed, ankles relaxed. ÿBoil the water on the surface, no big splashes. Small kick.

   Breath: Roll head easily to side. This is the hard part. It helps to exhale slowly and smoothly while your head is underwater.

   Remarks: Imagine that you have a float in your chest. Push down on this float to bring your feet up. Use this downhill swimming technique and head position to bring feet up, NOT a harder kick. Buoyancy vs Power.

2. Right Side Kick (RSK): Kick on your right side, with right shoulder pointed to the sky.

   Head: Relaxed, underwater, look at the side of the pool. Advanced it to look at the bottom, but be sure to maintain vertical shoulders when on your side: shoulders perpendicular to bottom of the pool.

   Arms: Left arm extended, right hand rests on left thigh.

   Legs: Toes pointed, ankles relaxed. Keep width of kick within "tube" created by your body: relatively narrow.

   Breath: Take a small sculling motion with right hand and roll head easily to breathe. Exhale slowly and smoothly.

   Remarks: Keep shoulders perpendicular to pool bottom. "Point belly to the side of the pool." Relatively narrow kick. Smooth breath by rolling your head up to the sky.

3. Left Side Kick (LSK): Kick on your left side, with left shoulder pointed to the sky.

   Head: Relaxed, underwater, look at the side of the pool. Advanced is to look at the bottom, but be sure to maintain vertical shoulders when on your side: shoulders perpendicular to bottom of the pool.

   Arms: Right arm extended, left hand rests on right thigh.

   Legs: Toes pointed, ankles relaxed. Keep width of kick within "tube" created by your body: relatively narrow.

   Breath: Take a small sculling motion with left hand and roll head easily to breathe. Exhale slowly and smoothly.

   Remarks: Keep shoulders perpendicular to pool bottom: "Point belly to the side of the pool." Relatively narrow kick. Smooth breath by rolling your head up to the sky.

4. Single Switch (SSwitch): 1 arm pull to move from right to left side. Start with Right Side Kick. 6 kicks, then pull and roll over to Left Side Kick. 6 kicks left side, roll, repeat.

   Head: Relaxed, underwater, look at the side of the pool. Advanced is to look at the bottom, but be sure to maintain vertical shoulders when on your side: shoulders perpendicular to bottom of the pool.

   Arms: Left arm extended, right hand rests on left thigh. Pull with left arm to initiate roll, right arm return over the water to Left Side Kick position.

   Legs: Toes pointed, ankles relaxed. Keep width of kick within "tube" created by your body: relatively narrow.

   Breath: Breathe when you pull and roll to alternate side. Exhale slowly and smoothly.

   Remarks: Keep shoulders perpendicular to pool bottom. Relatively narrow kick. Smooth roll from right to left and back again. Roll from the hips, as well from the shoulders. Think "Point belly to the side of the pool."

5. Triple Switch (TSwitch): 3 arm pulls to move from right side to left side. Start with Right Side Kick. 6 kicks, then pull three arms strokes, ending up on your left side. Kick 6 kicks on your left side, then take 3 arm pulls to rotate over to your right side. Repeat.

   Head: Relaxed, underwater, look at the side of the pool. Advanced is to look at the bottom, but be sure to maintain vertical shoulders when on your side: shoulders perpendicular to bottom of the pool.

   Arms: Left arm extended, right hand rests on left thigh. Pull with left arm to initiate roll, right arm return over the water to Left Side Kick position.

   Legs: Toes pointed, ankles relaxed. Keep width of kick within "tube" created by your body: relatively narrow.

   Breath: Breathe when you pull and roll to alternate side. Exhale slowly and smoothly.

   Remarks: Keep shoulders perpendicular to pool bottom. Relatively narrow kick. Smooth roll from right to left and back again. Roll from the hips too. Think "Point belly to the side of the pool." Focus on transferring "Side Kick" skill to "Side Swimming" skill.

Kicking/Lower Body Balance and Side Swimming Drill Progression

Application: poor horizontal position, "dragging the legs," caused by poor balance (has not found buoyancy "sweet spot.") and/or inefficient kick. Inefficient transfer from side to side, with too much "flat shoulder" swimming. If inefficient or ineffective kick, use Fin Progression below.

Purpose: it is helpful if you understand the purpose of this progression. First, we get you comfortable with kicking on each side: good body position. Then we get you comfortable with switching from side to side, by taking an arm pull. Then we get you comfortable executing this switch with three arm pulls (TSwitch). From there is it only one small step (just swimming normaly) to swimming with:

1. Good horizontal body position.
2. Good body roll (swimming on your side as much as possible).

Distance: These drills are not about fitness. Do not keep track of how far you go when performing these drills. Instead, move to the next drill in the progression when you are comfortable and have achieved the other criteria below.

• Stomach Kick Drill

  1. Try to relax, slowly exhaling while your head is under water helps.

  2. Use buoyancy (downhill swimming and head position) to bring feet to the surface, NOT a more powerful kick.

  3. Point your toes and relax your ankles.

  4. Breathing is what gets people with this drill. I recommend slowly turning your head and one shoulder to the side and breathing. Lifting your head to breath causes your legs to sink and is counter productive to the drill.

  5. Take as much rest as you want. This is not about fitness. Relax.

  6. Graduation Criteria: when your body is horizontal, feet boiling the water, and you are comfortable, move to next drill.

• Right Side Kick Drill

  1. Relax, exhale slowly under water.

  2. "Point your belly to the side." "Look at the pretty girls in lane 8." Kick on your side, shoulders perpendicular to pool bottom.

  3. This is where we begin to develop side swimming skills, as well as balance. Lead hand extended, try resting ear on your shoulder. Try resting trail hand either on your thigh, or even put it behind your thigh. This will pull your top shoulder back a bit and help maintain perpendicular shoulder.

  4. Limit width of kick to the tube created by your body.

  5. Take as much rest as you want. This is not about fitness, relax.

  6. Graduation Criteria: when you can maintain a proper perpendicular body position and are comfortable breathing, move to next drill.

• Left Side Kick Drill, until comfortable (see guidance for Right Side above)
  
  
• Single Switch (SSwitch)

  1. Refer to Side Kick guidance.

  2. When rolling from one side to the other, pull naturally with the lead arm.

  3. Try to think of recovering the trail arm along the same plane form by your shoulders. In other words, don't swing it out to the side, but instead recover it over the water along the line formed by your body.

  4. "Point your belly to the side."

  5. Again, take as much rest as you want.

  6. Breathe AFTER you have completed the switch and are back into position. If you try to breath while you are making the switch, you will lift your head and your hips will sink.

  7. Graduation Criteria: when you are comfortable breathing and transitioning from side to side, move to next drill.

• Triple Switch (TSwitch)

  1. Refer to SSwitch guidance.

  2. This drill is the same as SSwitch, except you simply take 3 arms strokes to go from right side to left side.

  3. Breathing guidance is the same as SSwitch. In fact, the hardest part about this drill is probably just learning when to breath

Sample Workout

This is an example of how to use this progression in a workout. Only go as far as you are able to in the progression, according to your ability to satisfy the Graduation Criteria of each drill. Don't take short cuts and skip steps. Exercise Patience and Discipline.

Warm-up

• 5' easy swimming
• 4 x 25 swim w/:30 rest
• 2 x 50 Add-Up

Main Set 1:

• 15 x 50yd/m w/:30 rest
• #1-3: Stomach kick
• #4-6: Right Side Kick
• #7-9: Left Side Kick
• #10-12: Six Kick Change
• #13-15: Six/Three Swim Transition

  *if you need to, do more or fewer 50's of a particular drill. Again, mastery of a drill determines progression, not yardage.

• 1 x 50 easy, relax

Main Set 2:

• 4 x 25 swim w/:30 rest. Apply balance and side swimming skills.
• 2 x 50 Add-Up. How did you do compared to first set of Add-Ups?

Cool Down:

• 5-10' easy swimming.
• Stretch afterwards and immediately take some notes on your session. What worked, what didn't, observations, questions, concerns, frustrations and victories.

Fin Progression

First, if you have difficulty maintaining a horizontal body position, try fixing it using the Balance Progression above, not by applying more power to your kick, in an effort to kick your legs to the surface. This is wasted energy. Body position and buoyancy are free.

• Think of your kick as doing two things for you:

  1. Acts as a counter to your arms, as your arms do in running.

2. Provides some lift to your legs and helps you maintain a horizontal body position.

• DO NOT think of your legs as another tool to push you through the water. Those large leg muscles use up a lot of aerobic capacity and return relatively little propulsion, compared to your arms. Save your investment for the bike and run.
  
  
• Keep in mind that many problems are helped by a wetsuit. The constriction at the knee actually makes it difficult to kick effectively, but the suit adds a great deal of lower body buoyancy.

This progression uses fins to teach your legs how to kick efficiently and effectively. A larger fin actually forces your legs to kick more effectively. We use a larger fin to create this muscle memory, and then decrease the fin size. When we get to "feet," you should have an effective kick.

This is a lot of kicking. You may need to split this up over 2 sessions.

Warm-up

• 5' easy swimming
• 4 x 25 swim w/:30 rest
• 2 x 50 Add-Up

Main Set 1:

• 10 x 50yd/m w/:30 rest. Use a larger fin, like the cheap black ones you see at pools. The muscle memory is created by the larger fin + wide kick.
• #1-3: Right Side Kick, #1 is very wide kick, #2 is less wide, #3 is normal
• #4-6: Left Side Kick, #4 is very wide kick, #5 is less wide, #6 is normal
• #7-10: Six Kick Change Side Kick, #7 is very wide kick, #8 is less wide, #9-10 are normal.

Main Set 2:

• Repeat Main Set 1, but with a smaller fin, like Zoomers.

Main Set 3:

• 4 x 50 kick w/:30 rest, NO FINS. Right, Left, Six-Kick, Six-Three-Transition
• 50 easy swim

Main Set 4:

• 4 x 25 swim w/:30 rest (these are optional)
• 2 x 50 Add-Up. How does this compare to first set of Add-Ups?

Cool Down:

• 5-10' easy swimming.
• Stretch afterwards and immediately take some notes on your session. Your ankles may feel fatigued. What worked, what didn't, observations, questions, concerns, frustrations and victories.

Drill Application

PROBLEM: Ineffective kick

DRILL: Vertical Kick Drill

• Kick a normal freestyle (flutter) kick, with your body in a vertical position. Keep hands at side and experiment with feet wide, narrow, slow, fast, bent knee, straight knee. Find the best way to keep your chin above the water. For swimmers with very weak kick, hold on to the side of the pool and experiment. Progress to letting go for a few seconds at a time.
• Once this is accomplished, practice rotating 90 degrees by using your core and kick to initiate the movement.

PROBLEM: Dropping Elbow on Catch

DRILL: Fist Drill

• Swim regular freestyle with a closed fist for a half length, then open your hand and feel the increase in power.
• Use normal to fast arm speed and do not use fins.¾ Concentrate on pulling with the forearms.

PROBLEM: General Stroke Mechanics

DRILL: Single Arm Drill

• Keep one arm extended out in front and use the other to stroke. "Reach, Catch, Crank, Snap, Line."
• Drill allows you to focus on the dynamics of pulling, on arm at a time. Use fins with this drill.

PROBLEM: General Stroke Mechanics

DRILL: Catch-Up Drill

• Each arm takes a full stroke, coming to rest in the forward position, before the other arm starts its pull.
• Good for working on rotation and timing of your stroke. Hold for 2 seconds, then 1, then touch and go.

PROBLEM: Short Finish

DRILL: Flicker Drill

• Aggressively accelerate the hand at the end of the stroke, brushing your thumb against your thigh. Hand exits explosively and "flicks" water behind you. Do half lap of Flicker, half lap swim. Keep the acceleration and thumb-to-thigh, lose the flicker.
• Finishing your stroke, every stroke is critical. When swimming, always brush your thumb against you thigh. This is adds 3-4 inches to every pull, but requires more tricep endurance.

PROBLEM: "Wind-milling"

DRILL: Finger Tip Drag Drill

• Drag your finger tips along the water during the arm recovery. Also, work on the "Line" portion of your stroke.
• Helps the "Line" and relaxation of your recovery.

Pool Toys

Essential

• Fins: help maintain speed and proper body position. Helps swimmer experience fast swimming and encourages streamlining. When used in a progression of large fin to smaller fin, to no fin, can be used to create the muscle memory of efficient kicking. Also increases ankle flexibility, which is a common problem among runners.
• Stretchcordz: these are bands of surgical tubing attached to paddles, very useful for sport specific strength training. Go here for an excellent training protocol by Coach Gordo Byrn.

Non-Essential

• Pull Bouy: useful for strength building sets. However, can also hide body position flaws and can become a crutch. Do no more than 25% of a workout pulling and pay close attention to maintaining proper body roll.
• Paddles: use paddles with holes drilled, to reduce resistance. Useful, when use during easy swimming, to develop feel for the water and the "catch" phase. For more advanced swimmers, paddles are useful to add resistance and build strength. However, new swimmers should avoid high intensity sets with paddles, as the risk of shoulder injury is greatly increased.
• Ankle band, small inner tube, drag suits:increase drag during pull sets, increasing resistance. Again, only for experienced swimmer.

Useless Gadgets

• Fistgloves: these are used to close your fist, for use during fist drill. It's better to perform this drill as half a length fistdrill, half length open hand, so you can feel the transition. This is not possible with fistgloves.
• Kickboard: should be used sparingly, if at all. Kickboards give the body unnatural support and do not allow the swimmer to incorporate rotation with the kick. It is an inefficient use of training time to improve kicking fitness, as the power of the kick should be deemphasized in distance swimming. Instead, do drills that produce an effective kick and then incorporate this kick into an efficient swimming stroke.

Considerations for Swim Workouts

1. Volume vs intensity: because swimming is non-impact and generally much less stressful than either running or cycling, think of swim training in terms of track sessions. The key difference is that once you have established a good base through a period of easy aerobic swimming, you can then perform swimming interval sessions at the same or higher intensity and with greater frequency than you can with track sessions. The common mistake that triathletes make is to equate run training with swim training. Swim training should be more intense, as there is less risk.
   
2. Importance of continued stroke work: swimming is a very technical sport. ALWAYS include drill sets in every workout, and count your strokes all the time. Continue to focus on technique, regardless of volume or intensity.
   
3. How do I structure a workout?
   • Warm-up: focus on relaxed breathing. Include Add-ups at the end to establish a baseline.
   • Drills: work on your weaknesses. Consult drills matrix for ideas.
   • Main set: interval based workout. Measure intensity by pace or PE. Can also use pulse at the neck, 10 seconds x 6 = HR.
   • Short sprints: 25's or 50's, to develop economy and speed.
   • Cool Down
   • Dryland Exercises: Core, cords, and stretch.
4. Do I need to do long swims? In my opinion, I think it is better to build your endurance with shorter intervals (5-10 min) at a pace slighly faster than race pace. It is good to do a long, continuous swim on occasion, to get you use to swimming for this length of time, but this should be the exception rather than the rule. Swimming long and slow makes you very good at swimming long and slow.
   
5. How should I fit in open water swimming? As stated above, quality pool sessions will build your endurance, technique, and speed. Maximize these adaptations by extending these sessions far into your season, saving the open water swimming for closer to race time. If, however, you have some anxiety about open water swimming, get familiar with it sooner rather than later.

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