Inspired by some of the discussion in the fly thread , I was wondering how you all feel about drills.
Personally, they drive me nuts, yet everywhere people rave about TI and boy do my coaches like 'em. I find that generally drills just make me feel as though I'm learning to swim a way I will never actually swim, as opposed to helping me focus on one aspect of the stroke. For instance, last night, we were doing breaststroke drills and I spent the entire time trying to learn the drill as opposed to focusing on what we were meant to learn.
Also, I tend to learn technique by figuring out what feels right, but with drills, it feels different because you aren't doing the full stroke.
What about you?
I just did some searching and found Phelps and Coughlin do quite a bit of kicking drills, among others. Not an overwhelming amount of time seemed to be spent on drills, but at least some time, and enough for them to be mentioned in articles.
I would imagine that by the time you're training for the olympics, you've pretty much broken your bad habits (at least the major ones), and are working to improve and focus on certain aspects of a stroke.
That being said, I'm sure people react to drills in different ways. Everyone learns differently, so some people may not get the benefit from drills that others do, but I can't see why it would hurt to try them once in awhile.
just a thought. :)
I just did some searching and found Phelps and Coughlin do quite a bit of kicking drills, among others. Not an overwhelming amount of time seemed to be spent on drills, but at least some time, and enough for them to be mentioned in articles.
I would imagine that by the time you're training for the olympics, you've pretty much broken your bad habits (at least the major ones), and are working to improve and focus on certain aspects of a stroke.
That being said, I'm sure people react to drills in different ways. Everyone learns differently, so some people may not get the benefit from drills that others do, but I can't see why it would hurt to try them once in awhile.
just a thought. :)
