Swimming: Drills – Are They Worth It?
Do you prefer to use swim drills or ‘swim with focus’ to improve your swim technique?
That’s the question I posed to swimmers recently.
A mixed reaction. Some swimmers love doing drills, others would much rather ‘swim with focus’, whilst others didn’t quite answer the question and suggested both!
As a general rule, I prefer asking swimmers to swim full stroke and then try to focus on a particular aspect of that stroke.
For example, if I want to think about rotation, I’ll usually ask swimmers to think about the reach part of their stroke – rather than do a drill such as the classic six kicks, three arm strokes, six kicks – which requires swimmers to be good at other things (strong kick, good posture) to do it well.
Another example was when I was working with a swimmer recently trying to improve her catch. We used imagery and analogies to help her develop this (particularly tricky) part of her stroke. It worked a treat, immediately knocking chunks off her swim times.
In my experience, for the swimmers I tend to work with, the full stroke approach works better.
Some swimmers, particularly swimmers just starting out, will benefit from some drill work. However, if a swimmer has been doing swim drills for a while and is seeing little to no improvement, then a switch to ‘swim with focus’ might be the answer!
Drill Into Swim
If we do use drills – and we do sometimes – then we would do the drill then follow it up immediately with full stroke.
So, if we’re trying to improve posture and body position, for example, we might do half a length of kick only (with hands outstretched) to focus on posture and body position, and then switch to full stroke for the rest of the length, trying to keep the feeling we had during the drill and maintaining the same posture.
Or if we’re thinking about stroke timing, we might start off the set with catch up, then progress to three quarter catch up, then progress to full stroke.
Drill Sets & Pre-Main Sets
We rarely do ‘a set of drills’. By a set of drills, I mean those sets where you do four or five drills, one after the other. Any drills we do have a specific purpose and are not just part of the warm up / to fill time before the main set.
Instead of a drill set, we might do a short stroke-focused set to get us feeling good. We think about our technique – and improve it – by focusing on an area of the stroke. We might do a set similar to the one below to get us feeling like we have a nice long stroke, with a good hold on the water, moving well with every pull.
4 x 25m long strong, easy, no real pressure or force
4 x 25m long stroke, adding some tension into the hands and wrist to better hold the water
4 x 25m long stroke, with tension in hands and wrist, accelerating the pull
4 x 25m long stroke, with tension in hands and wrist, accelerating the pull – and lifting the overall pace
By the end of those 16 x 25m, swimmers are usually feeling smooth and strong, primed to take on the main set.
Time & Place
A small part of the reason I don’t include much drill work in our sessions is time.
Most of our swimmers swim twice per week, for maybe two hours total swim time. I don’t want to take up a good portion of their training time trying to master a drill that may or may not transfer to their actual swim stroke.
We have an 8-10 week technique phase within the Swim Squad year. This is the time where we might do a few more drills.
Top Five
I probably have less than five drills that I use ‘regularly’ within the Squads.
Can you name them?
If pushed, I would say …
Water Polo Drill – to support work on hand entry, early catch and stroke rate.
Catch Up / Three Quarter Catch Up – to think about stroke timing, avoiding starting our stroke too early and keeping our leading arm high in the water.
Sculling – to think about feel for the water, feeling the benefit of a strong hand and strong wrist and the impact various pressure / tension gives us.
Doggie Paddle / Long Doggie Paddle – thinking about our catch as well as concentrating on reach and rotation.
Swimming With Fists – again, thinking about the catch, keeping our elbows high under the water and some ‘feel for the water’ work.
That’s my approach to drills.
What do you reckon? Does this differ with your own swim experience? Do you like / dislike this approach?
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