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. 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.