Swimming Drills

There is an immense amount of swim drills and exercises, on both dry land and in the water. Below is a list of recognized drills that have worked for thousands of swimmers. You will have to practice the correct motions that will eventually be part of an efficient freestyle stroke. You also might want to wear fins as you practice any drill until you master it with bare

1. Swimming Balance Drills
Learning to stand up and to be balanced is a prerequisite to learning to walk. Similarly, learning to stay balanced while simply kicking is a prerequisite to highly effective swimming.

Back-kick
Lie on your back, with your shoulders down and your hips lifted. This will place your head mostly underwater, with only your nose and mouth exposed. This means you’re balanced. Back-kick on your back and then rotate onto your side for twist-down a few kicks, then rotate your chin so you are looking down at bottom of pool for a few kicks. Rotate your chin back to the side-facing position. Then return your body to the original position on your back. Repeat for the other side.

Vertical Kick
Most swimmers waste a lot of energy on kicking with incorrect leg motions, kicking mainly from the knees. Vertical kicking will assist you with effective kicking motions while conditioning the right muscles. Simply place one hand on the top of the other on your chest and start kicking in a deep area of the pool. As you are learning this drill, use full-size training fins.

Sidekick
With your arms down, kick with your arms at the sides for one length. Rotate your head and spinal alignment and alter the firmness. Good balance requires less breathing, only an occasional chin rotation.

2. Arm Stroke Swimming Drills

Catch Up
This drill helps swimmers focus on stroking correctly while using Just one arm at a time. It starts with swimmers in a prone position with both arms extended, begin the freestyle stroke with one arm while leaving the other extended. Complete the one-arm stroke and after fully extending the stroke arm, begin the alternate sidestroke. Emphasizes glide, full extension, and the correct catch, pull, and recovery. Begin this drill slowly, and after experience, you can speed up to normal stroke pace.

Single Arm
Single Arm is probably the most popular of all freestyle drills. The main point is to examine on each part of the arm stoke. As with the catch-up drill, start with both arms extended, perform one-arm stroke, and repeat with same arm for entire length. Switch arms for consecutive lengths. This drill can be combined with fins to work on fast hand-entry, but can also be done without them after proper experience.

Fist
The purpose of the fist drill is to teach you how to use the arms for propulsion.
Clinch your fingers and thumb in a moderately tight fist. Perform freestyle stroke by reaching over a barrel during hand-entry and catch. Using your feet, forearm and fist as a single unit for propulsion. This can be accomplished by holding a tennis ball instead of clinching your fist. This drill is useful as an active recovery lap between interval sets.

Back sculling
This drill improves motion in water and your balance. While on your back look beyond your feet, keep your arms at your sides while sculling with your hands, with your hands moving your body backward.

Stroke count
With a steady, premeditated stroke, count the strokes for one length of a pool. Attempt to reduce strokes on consecutive lengths by streamlining and extending stroke. Maintain new stroke-count numbers on full-speed interval sets. Excellent for testing and as active recovery between interval sets.

3. Breathing Drills

Offside
Repeat breathing on your opposite side on consecutive strokes. The left side is weaker for about 90 percent of swimmers. Breathe at least one length on the offside and then alternate. Practice breathing off sets in the middle of longer intervals or open water swims.

Buoy sighting
For pool practices, set a block, or chair on the middle of the lane wall and practice slightly lifting your head for sightings every 5-10 strokes. Find the idyllic number of strokes between sightings. Only lift your goggles slightly above waterline, preferably on a breath stroke. This works well with bilateral breathing.

Drafting
Practice breathing and stroke pacing directly behind a leading swimmer’s feet. Maintain focus on feet and avoid anything more than occasional light touching, yet keep head down for most strokes.

4. Speed Swimming & Interval drills
Once you are past the beginner’s stage, you should be doing intervals in almost every workout. You cannot really swim faster unless you train faster and work harder in your interval sets. It is very difficult to uphold or enhance speed by swimming continuously so long swims should be limited to 1500m

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