I’ve been asked a lot about drills lately.  So, as it’s the season, I thought it’d be good to provide you with some information about my favorite drills and why I do them.

To start, a definition:

Disciplined, repetitious exercise as a means of teaching and perfecting a skill or procedure.

Drilling is to repeat some skill with a goal of perfecting it.  It is not the only way to work to perfect a skill, but it is one approach of many to help us all improve how we swim.  You can take drilling to the nth degree and the drills completed can vary depending on your or your group’s goals at a given time.

Example

  • Early in the swim season, our team would focus on refining our strokes. So, drills focusing on minute areas of the stroke were chosen.
  • Late season, the coach would focus on starts and turns, especially before big competitions. So, we might spend some as much as 30 minutes on turns and 30 minutes on starts, and do this at least once per week.

Each coach and team might alter the drills based on his or her own thoughts, the abilities of the swimmers, and the group’s goals.

I’m going to give my own thoughts on drills, why you should do them, when you should do them and what you should be thinking about.  I would love to hear your thoughts on drills as well.  There are hundreds of drills, each with different purposes.  Learning new drills and avoiding repetition not only helps keep swimming interesting but helps you continue to learn.

In this first of a two-part posting, I will focus on only a select group of drills, what I call strength drills.  Technique-focused drills will be discussed in part 2.  This is in no way a complete list of drills.

Why I Do Drills

Drills allow you to practice some element of your swimming in isolation to allow you to learn about your stroke, re-enforce certain actions of your stroke, and to gain a feeling for your own stroke.  My thought here is that you should not be exerting yourself when drilling, with the exception of what I call strength drills.   While drilling, you should focus on the purpose of the drill and how you feel in the water while doing it.

When I Do Drills (Early/Late)

I prefer to do drills just after warming up.  (I’ll write about warming up another time.)  I prefer drills at this time because I want to allow my body to be ready to move flexibly and I want to do drills that make me think about parts of my stroke that I’ll continue to focus on during the rest of the swim practice session.

I’ll tell you a secret.  Well, my interpretation of a secret.  Did you ever wonder why many coaches have you do drills later in the session, possibly after your hard set?  The thought is that swimmers may want to just get in the water and work.  If you do drills when all the swimmer wants to do is thrash, the drills at best will be worthless and at worst will cause injury.  So, they give the swimmer a chance to get burn off that energy first.  The downside here is, if the practice session is short, there is not much time after the drills to continue swimming.  So, any chance to apply what you have learned during drills is lost.

From coach Brian:

When coaching swimmers of a certain ability whose technique is good as doing drills when they are fresh offers little challenge or benefit, I like to tire them out before doing drills.  That is when mistakes or old bad habits appear, or when their bodies are tired, their minds are not and its then they need to be conditioned to think more about their technique.

From coach Seb:

Drills after a hard set are great to reset the mind and for focus purposes.

I do drills before hard sets more as reminders of good posture rather than pure drills.

When I Do Drills (Environment)

Drills are meant to help you focus on a part of your stroke.  So, the environment in which you complete drills should be such that it is not distracting or detracting from your ability to focus on the drill in mind.

Examples:

  • If you are trying to do a drill where you are decreasing how high your mouth is out of the water when breathing, you should not do this in an environment where there are 6 inch waves.
  • If you are trying to focus on a sculling (which is rather slow), you don’t want to do this in very cold water.

I would suggest that most drills are best done in a pool where others are also doing drills or the other swimmers in your late are slow enough that you don’t impede them.  (In some groups in the past, I’ve moved to much slower lanes when I want to do drills in order to not impede others.)

You can do all drills in the pool, you can do few, properly in the sea.

Drill Types

I would like to divide drills into a few types in order to allow me to alter how I focus on the drill.

  • Strength
    For the most part, gaining strength in the water is best done through dry-land workouts where you can challenge your muscle with more pressure than can be exerted within the water. However, there are a few drills that I use when I do want to add strength while also focusing on technique.
    Unlike technique drills, strength drills can be done in just about any swimming conditions.  In fact, if I’m feeling cold in the water, I may do a strength drill for a few seconds to warm up.
    There are also potentially better ways to work on your strength while not possibly negatively impacting your stroke.  Some examples:

    • Drag Shorts
      I always wear drag shorts when swimming. Drag shorts require no change to your swimming.  Usually, I will use a suit that will add about 8-10 seconds per 100 in Freestyle.  When I want to apply additional drag, I will wear a suit that will ad 15-20 seconds per 100.
    • Flexed Feet (advanced)
      You can add drag however you wish by altering your body position. For example, simply flexing your feet in the water will add an amazing amount of drag.
      Warning:  When doing this type of added drag as your are using poor technique for a specific purpose and should make sure you revert to good technique when you resume normal swimming.

Note: Single-arm swimming is not a strength drill.

  • Breath-Control
    I’ve talked about various options for breath-control drills in my last posting.
    As an asthmatic, breath-control drills help me in attempts to control my asthma and its impact on my swimming.
  • Technique
    Focusing on individual elements of swimming strokes in an effort to improve my own technique.
    This is the most common form of drill.

For this discussion, I’m going to focus on freestyle-related drills.  Some of these can also support other strokes, but I’m focusing on how they support swimming the front crawl.

Strength Drills

I only consider two drills as strength-related.  Other drills that focus on technique also can improve the strength for those areas, I don’t consider them solely valuable for strength.  The two common drills I use solely for strength are the dog paddle and Tarzan drills.  Both of these drills require some level of strength in the neck and upper back, so please be careful if you have any limitations in movement in these areas.

Continuing with drills, typically, I will do strength drills as a broken 200 made up of 50 dog paddle, 50 Tarzan, and then repeat that.  For both of these drills, you increase difficulty the slower you swim.  So, take your time.

Dog Paddle

Many people attempt the dog paddle but may fail in some areas in order to make it easier.  Dog paddle drills are meant not only to be hard but also slow, for reasons I’ll explain.

Now, let’s talk about what the dog paddle drill is for me.  An image can help, and here is a fun one:

https://tenor.com/view/sharkdog-shark-dog-swimming-pool-gif-9572465

Have you ever watched a dog swim?  That is what we are trying to emulate.  Specifically, we are completing full front crawl strokes while completing the full recovery under water.

The basics:

  • Full swim stroke under the water extending fully forward and back.
    • The swim stroke begins in front of the body with the arm extended as you would normally do with front crawl.
    • The arm action ends at full extension to your hips.
  • Recovery is completely under water with no part of the arm (hands, elbows or shoulders) breaking the surface.
  • Don’t exaggerate the body roll.
  • Use the arch of your back to lift your head up and avoid excessive downward force from your hands to hold the body position.
    As this is a strength drill, I minimize the kick by using a pull buoy. This can help decrease the amount of pressure on your lower back.

What you are focusing on:

  • A smooth swimming stroke where no body part except your head is breaking the surface.
  • Breathing should be relaxed with the head and mouth out of the water.
    In fact, to keep myself honest, I will often take off my goggles for this drill.
  • The face should be looking straight ahead.
  • Be sure that you continue to use your arms to propel you forward.
  • Going slower will not only allow you to focus on smoothing out rough parts of the stroke, but it will make the work harder. If you want to work in this drill, go slow.

In order to make this a little harder, you can either open or reverse your hands to push water in front of you.  (This will be hard.)

The Good:

  • Allows you to focus on pulling action in the absence of the need for arm recovery.
  • You can control how much or little pressure you will put on your body.
  • Allows you to possibly continue some level of swimming action (doctor allowed) if you experience shoulder issues that are exacerbated by over-arm recovery.
  • Can be done in any swimming conditions.

The Bad:

  • Be aware that body roll in this drill is less than the usual swimming action.
  • Be aware of any change you make in the catch to put downward pressure on the water.

A human example: https://www.velopress.com/swim-speed-workouts-dog-paddle-drill-video/

Tarzan (or Water Polo)

Perhaps you have seen the original Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller.  Wiessmuller was not only Tarzan in the 1930s but, before that, was an Olympic Gold Medalist.  The Tarzan drill attempts to emulate his distinctive stroke that could be seen in competition and in the movies.

The basics:

  • Full swim stroke under the water extending fully forward and back.
    • The swim stroke begins in front of the body with the arm extended as you would normally do with front crawl.
    • The arm action ends at full extension to your hips.
  • Recover your arm as normal. (Your body will have to naturally roll in order to allow your arm to recover above the water.)
  • Use the arch of your back to lift your head up and avoid excessive downward force from your hands to hold the body position.
    As this is a strength drill, I minimize the kick by using a pull buoy. This can help decrease the amount of pressure on your lower back.

What you are focusing on:

  • A smooth swimming stroke without splashing the water as you finish your recovery.
  • Breathing should be relaxed with the head and mouth out of the water.
    In fact, to keep myself honest, I will often take off my goggles for this drill.
  • The face should be looking straight ahead.
  • Be sure that you continue to use your arms to propel you forward.
    It will be tempting to push water down at the start of the stroke to make keeping the head up easier. Try to avoid this.
  • Going slower will not only allow you to focus on smoothing out rough parts of the stroke, but it will make the work harder. If you want to work in this drill, go slow.
  • Feel the amount of pressure that is on your body as you recover your arms. (You won’t usually notice this during normal swimming.)  Can you change your recover to be a little smoother and quicker to decrease that pressure?

Human example: https://www.velopress.com/swim-speed-workouts-tarzan-drill-with-peter-vanderkaay/

The Good:

  • Allows you to consider body roll and even exaggerate it to allow for recovery.
  • Allows you to consider how smoothy your hand entry is being completed.
  • Can be done in any swimming conditions.

The Bad:

  • May put too much pressure on shoulder at catch due to downward pressure making it easier to keep head above water.

Summary (so far)

Strength drills can be valuable to allow you to build strength in your stroke while still getting in the water.  They are not replacements for dry-land or other strength workouts, but can augment any swimming program.

Next time, I’ll write more about technique drills that I find helpful, what they are (and are not) used for, and what they are used to target.

As always, DM me if you have any comments or thoughts about what I’ve noted here.