I have been wondering how much time everyone devotes to drills or swimming?
I just read an article that says Swim 90% drill 10%.
Former Member
George,
I think you posted one of the most interesting threads in some time. Swimmers who are swimming for only swimming's sake (cardiovascular improvement, fun, and for mere enjoyment) aren't necessarily interested in decreasing their times but for everyone else, the question of how much drilling should a swimmer do during practice, is an important one. I want everyone to be clear, I admire people who are getting exercise for all the benefits it brings in and of itself but I want to delve into George's question.
I believe that yardage must coincide with technical proficiency. So, swimmers with terrible stroke mechanics, who want to improve, must begin spending 100% of their time refining their stroke. When indicators like distance per stroke (DPS) improves and time begins to drop, then the swimmer can begin putting in 10% of their training time increasing distance and 90% refining their stroke.
The learning curve for technical swimming proficiency varies tremedously so swimmers who don't get it will spend longer in the 100% drill mode than others. This brings up a sticky point for most swimmers, - When their stroke just doesn't seem to get better, can't they just start swimming sets like everyone else? The answer is yes but my point is, - focus on technical stroke improvement first and give what's left to a main set or two with the rest of the team.
Josh Davis was traveling to a clinic and he said that when he loses even a little bit of his feel for the water, he has to spend a great deal of time (sometimes many weeks) getting it back. When an Olympian starts saying that training smarter and not harder is sometimes a necessity, it carries a lot of weight.
Who can forget coaches challenging swimmer with 1000 yard fly's on a dare. The pride the swimmers must have felt for finishing overshadowed the harm they retained from reinforcing terrible stroke mechanics. That's it in a nutshell, don't be the kind of swimmer who wears yardage as a badge of courage only to show off the same stroke flaws.
You know that I'm an EVF guy but now I'm also an Isometric and Virtual swimming kind of guy too. Yardage is very important but must be put in it's place. Since the early 60's and to this day, some coaches and swimmers will use yardage as a foundation for success and that simply only applies to swimmers who have sound stroke mechanics. Unfortunately, most swimmers don't have sound stroke mechanics and they are the ones who need to shift their ratio toward the effective drill side of practices.
Good post George!
Can I be both EVF and I stroke? Of course you know my answer is yes. My brother Tom was a straight to the catch swimmer, I am a slow to the catch swimmer rather than going directly to the catch. I used to emphasize that little 8' outward sweep and I still teach it when teaching people who have very poor stroke technique, but as soon as they master the feel for the water I change the hang stretch and outsweep to a complete I stroke.
George,
I tend to swim a lot of warmup and warmdown as drill. For warmup, I do a lot of freestyle fingertip drag and Popov Drill freestyle. I will usually fit in a Drill IM in there, amount depending on what the warmup is. I swam 3500 combination yards/meters at a meet this weekend, and I'd say I swam at least 2k of it some sort of drill. A normal practice would probably be closer to 1-1.3k (of ~4500y)
Like Muppet, I usually incorporate a lot of drill into my warm-up. I like to do some feel-for-the-water drills during that time especially. We also almost always have a short drill set before we start our main set, and the drills go with the stroke or strokes we are about to swim. I think it's a good way to establish focus points and good habits before going into a challenging set. I would say that, on average, I probably drill about 25% of my total yardage (about 1000ish out of 4000ish).
I like to use a lot of drill when coaching my age groupers, too. It's not always easy to get young kids to think about their technique while they are swimming, but drills can sort of force them into feeling different things. Sometimes I invent drills on the fly for them if I see a stroke problem that needs fixing.
When I practice with my team (4x/wk), we do very little drilling. When I practice on my own (1-2x/wk), it varies depending on how my stroke feels, how tired I am, and whether I have a meet coming up, so it varies from almost no drilling to well over 50%.
My masters team does very little drill work. Coach throws it in as little parts of a set, but it's always something like 50 drill, 100 swim x 4, or the like. No definition of what stroke, what drill, etc., so you get people doing free & people doing different strokes tripping over one another, or skipping to keep up.
My kids team, on the other hand, does a tremendous amount of drill work. Serious drills done on inervals with assigned stroke & drill. For example, the other night we did 3300 yds and it was fly week. We only did 1000 yds total freestyle swim (200 warm-up and 4 x 200 as part of a fly drill set), the rest of the practice was fly--sets of kick drills & swim drills, with 4 x 100 IM swim thrown in one set, and a set of 8 x 25 fly swim at the end of practice.
Since, I've been working out with the kids more, my swim times have been imrpoving. Doing drills makes me take time to really think about stroke mechanics and then apply it to swim sets.
Drills work if they are done correctly and then applied. If one just "goes through the motions" they are only more "junk" yards.
I have been wondering how much time everyone devotes to drills or swimming?
I just read an article that says Swim 90% drill 10%.
I see a poll in here somewhere.
Right now, out of about 1700yds, I do 300yds dolphin kick (drill/kick set) on my back (so the answer is 17-18%, which kinda surprised me really). I’d probably do less kicking only if I could do more fly w/o risking shoulder discomfort, but alas....
I generally never do drills (like catch-up and one-armed), just swim (but without just going through the motions). I’m more of a “fitness” swimmer than a competitive swimmer. I rest frequently and focus constantly on my technique because if it breaks down I feel I’m wasting my time.
I feel and look great. And I always enjoy my swim time (unless I feel ill). So I’m really happy with how I swim.
My team regularly has at least one day a week with the chance to do more drills. Last Thursday we could concentrate on breaststroke drills, or do 3x400 free...over 1/2 went with the *** drills.
Currently 90% Drilling, 10% swimming (mostly backstroke.) I expect to swim more when I learn how to do so more correctly.
About.com has an interesting article entitled "Improving a Swimmer's 100 Freestyle--Swimming Lessons Learned from World Record and Olympic Swimmer Alexandre Popov" swimming.about.com/.../popov_swim_fast.htm which states he does most of his swimming relatively slowly and with a lot of attention to technique.
Could this kind of swimming be considered a cross between drilling and swimming?
