Week 7 of 8: Dive Into Excellence: Mastering Swimming Drills for (Your Own) Stroke Perfection
In Summary (TL;DR)
This is week 7: being purposeful about your drills
Why do drills?
What can you hope to achieve with them?
The “Sunday Shaper” - a great set to apply your drills
So, the big question is, did you try the Goldilocks set, and if so, how did you get on?
Despite drills and technique work being core to our Swim Smooth methodology, you might find it slightly strange that we are featuring them so late within this 8-week Improvement Initiative.
This is for the very simple reason that I do see far too many people zoning in on drills and technique work, sometimes to the detriment of some of the basics (as we've discussed in weeks 1 to 6).
So here goes for Week 7: drills with purpose
Guidance
Simple pointers for all swimmers, triathletes and their coaches
Originally, way back in 2004, the sole purpose of the Swim Smooth DVD Boxset was to showcase a range of 35+ drills that I'd been developing in Perth, Western Australia as part of my coaching repertoire at the Stadium Triathlon Club.
I wanted to be able to demonstrate these drills and technique work to help a range of swimmers of different ability levels (some things never change 😉).
I produced the DVD layered with examples of swimmers struggling with their strokes alongside Olympic gold medallist, Bill Kirby, demonstrating the drills.
The drills were broken down into sections to target specific areas of the stroke, e.g.
Breathing
Body Position & Leg Kick
Posture & Alignment
Rotation
Arm Recovery Action
Catch & Pull Through
Rhythm & Timing
Without a doubt, the most important aspect about doing drills is to know WHY you're doing them and how they can help you.
Understanding
Deeper insight into how to improve this aspect of your swimming
Certainly over the years, my use of the 35 drills we featured back in 2004 has narrowed somewhat in terms of focus, and if I were to recommend one single drill for most every swimmer to try, it would be the Javelin drill as featured here in my Endless Pool at home:
This drill ticks all the right boxes as it can work on your breathing, your body position, your alignment, your catch and your rhythm and timing all in one go. It's the perfect complement to our Swim Smooth Stroke Correction Hierarchy in fact:
Routine
Actionable advice with a practical program that works
All Swim Smooth drill videos have always featured: 1) their Purpose; 2) their Key Points; and 3) their Progression into the full stroke - without this, you would be well to argue what's the point of doing them?
Since my early university days (1997-2001), I've always liked to fall back on a simple technique session that allows me to apply a range of drills and transfer the feeling of these across into my stroke. Typically I used to do this on a Sunday afternoon to prepare me for a good week of training ahead, so I called it the “Sunday Shaper”.
Here's how it goes:
Warm-up:
10-15 minutes of easy, continuous freestyle
Main set:
2 x (10 x 50) - 1st set focusing on drills to work on posture, alignment and rotation | 2nd set focusing on drills to work on your catch and pull through. Take 10-15 seconds rest between intervals.
Odd # intervals in Set 1 = full 50 drill with fins
Even # intervals in Set 1 = 25 fast + 25 easy freestyle
Odd # intervals in Set 2 = 25 drill + 25 swim with pull buoy
Even # intervals in Set 2 = full 50 fast with pull buoy
Suggested drills for Set 1 could include:
Side kicking
6/1/6
6/3/6
Broken Arrow
Doggy Paddle Extension
Suggested drills for Set 2 could include:
Scull #1
Scull #2
Scull #3
Scull Combo
Doggy Paddle
Ultimate
Nothing beats direct - and truly individualised - coaching from one of our Swim Smooth Coaches
Sw-improvers:
Nothing Beats a Real Coach!
The empathetic and expert coaching service being offered to the Sw-improvers is very much what you can expect when visiting any of our Swim Smooth Coaches - consider booking a session with one today by following this link.
Let's hear now from the Sw-improvers and learn which drills they thought were best for them, and why?
