Discovery Bay is a community surrounded by water. Many young and old residents take swimming lessons at Club Siena or train hard for their next open water or triathlon swim.
Because swimming occurs in an unstable environment, many variables, such as resistance and drag, can affect your efficiency and speed through the water.
Here are some technique tips that will help you improve your stroke technique and efficiency in the water
When swimming through the water, you aim to move as smoothly as possible through the water, with the least amount of resistance. To do this, it's essential to maintain a proper BODY POSITION.
Body Position is the foundation of everything in swimming. Your head, hips, and heel must be in a perfect line, allowing you to be in the most streamlined position possible.
Great Body Position starts with your head position. You should ensure that your eyes are looking down and slightly forward as if you were standing and looking straight ahead.
You may have seen YOUTUBE clips or listened to coaches speak about having a HIGH ELBOW catch when swimming freestyle.
A High Elbow catch takes place at the beginning of the pull, puts you in a position of power, gives your stroke a slimmer profile, and limits the amount of resistance when swimming.
A High Elbow catch consists of pressing your fingers down at the beginning of your stroke to allow your elbow to bend so your forearm can move vertically through the water; you can push the water back with maximum efficiency.
Just as your Arm Stroke forms an essential part of your freestyle, your KICK helps to stabilize your body and allow you to propel forward.
Your Kick should be narrow and steady, allowing you to swim with a balanced stroke. Initiate your Kick from your core and your hips, with a slight bend in your knee, and let your ankles relax.
Once you have worked on each stroke component and put it all together, one of the best ways to test your efficiency is to STROKE COUNT.
Stroke Count encourages better efficiency in the water. With each lap you swim, you are mindful of how many strokes you are taking per lap, and you are working on being as efficient as possible, which allows you to focus on your technique.
One set you could try and do is SWIM GOLF.
Swim Golf is a drill where you count your strokes over a prescribed distance and add your swim time for the space.
The emphasis is to increase your Distance per Stroke.
For example, if you swim 50m, your Stroke Count is 55, and your swim time is 50 sec, your score is 105.
The objective is to either:
Decrease your Stroke Count and maintain your swim time.
Maintain your Stroke Count and decrease your swim time or
Decrease your Stroke Count and decrease your swim time.
Here is a training set you could do to help build your stroke:
Body Position
4 x 25 Head Lead Kick @ 20 sec rest
4 x 25 11 Freestyle Kick @ 20 sec rest
4 x 25 Side Kick @ 20 sec rest
High Elow Catch
8 x 25 Catch-up Drill @ 20 sec rest
Stroke Count
4 x 50 Swim Golf @ 30 sec rest
A swimmer's snorkel is one piece of training equipment I recommend you use while doing your training set. The swimmer's snorkel lets you focus on keeping your head fixed, helps you balance your stroke, focuses on your technique, and encourages good body position.
When you go to the pool next time, let me know about the above set, and I hope these tips will help you improve your freestyle technique.
Comments