Myth #8: All swimming drills are good for you.
I am a great believer in doing drills. In fact, if most swimmers would spend a little more time doing drills and not worry so much about getting their hour or so of aerobic fitness in, they might come out ahead. The biggest problem with drills is that too often, they are being done without any real understanding of what they are supposedly teaching you. Unless you are planning to enter a drill race, there is not much point in doing a drill unless you understand what it is for. Coaches often go to great lengths to explain how to do a drill properly, but then forget to mention what the drill is for.
And sometimes the drills that are being recommended actually teach you the wrong thing. For example, if you have no kick and you are trying to get faster by learning how to increase your stroke rate, then a catch-up drill may be doing you a big disservice. Or if I ever see anyone who has been told to flick water with their hand/wrist out the back end of their stroke, I kindly ask them to hit the delete button. Or what does sliding your finger tips across the surface of the water (finger tip drill) teach you that helps you swim faster?
So all I ask is that you do drills nearly every time you jump in the water, even if for warmup. But that you understand what the drill is trying to teach you AND that the drill is designed for the technique you are trying to learn.
Gary Sr.
The Race Club
Former Member
I have quite recently found hypoxic drills useful - they make me mindful of unnecessary energy expenditure - whether because I need to relax everything that doesn't need to be engaged (relaxed arm recovery, for example), or find a better streamline body position (trying to find path of least resistance). I feel things like head position making a big difference in hypoxic.
(and yes, if my stroke starts to degrade, then I consider it a failure/I'm not ready, and go to a lower stoke number).
High elbows on recovery?
I naturally swing my arms wide (butterflyer), but this tends to cause my hips to swing a bit too. I do fingertip drill, but revert back to more straight arm recovery when I am tired on a hard set.
Suggestions? Continue a habit I've had for years or a different drill?
Gary's point: If a particular drill corrects a defect in your technique, do it.
I have quite recently found hypoxic drills useful - they make me mindful of unnecessary energy expenditure - whether because I need to relax everything that doesn't need to be engaged (relaxed arm recovery, for example), or find a better streamline body position (trying to find path of least resistance). I feel things like head position making a big difference in hypoxic.
(and yes, if my stroke starts to degrade, then I consider it a failure/I'm not ready, and go to a lower stoke number).
Exactly right. Hypoxic work should be done relaxed.
I read a paper (can't recall where) that studied the effect of hypoxic work on masters swimmers. Essentially, you can improve your ability to hold your breath, but as we get older we will lose this capacity and no matter how hard we try we will not reverse the process. Don't force it.
No-arm-fly is like aspirin.Thanks for the morphine SolarE, I'll do the NAD kick drill next time in the pool. Before, I was doing a similar drill but with the arms/hands dragging at the sides. It forced me to look fwd too much and I developed a wrong fly breath. With arms fwd it mimics position more. this will definitely be worth a shot
Would you be willing to share this list? The only drills that my various coaches have offered consistently are 2 kick 1 pull (which doesn't really have a focus point, it's just slow breaststroke) and breaststroke with a body dolphin instead of whip kick.
I have written them on the Breaststroke Lane thread.Peter McCoy was kind enough to compile them as a list forums.usms.org/showthread.php post # 405.If you need a better description let me know.
Hey, I was away when you posted this and just saw it now. It's interesting to me because I've made a very similar discovery about my swimming.
In attempt to get more comfortable under water coming off turns, as part my wu, (typically 1000 yds these days) I started taking more strokes off every wall before breathing. (In free of course, not ***, that would be practicing to DQ.) First I incresed from 2 to 3 strokes, and later to 4 strokes. Then something interesting happened: My SPL went up! I was just stroking quicker to get to the breath. I realized that is stupid, so I dropped it back down. Very recently I found out something even more interesting. If I breathe on strokes 3,6,9,12,15,18, I take 19 SPL, but if I breathe on strokes 2,5,8,11,14,17, I take only 18 SPL, and I am just as fast if not faster with no increse in effort. That's the same number of breaths per length, so presumably I have the same oxygen availability, but my stroke count drops.
Based on this data I agree that hypoxic work is only valuable as long as you don't deterioriate your stroke to accomplish it.
:applaud: I breathe every 2 strokes in freestyle. I typically breathe right off the turn, and sometimes I take an extra breath before a turn if my last stroke is to my weak side. I remember all the time that my coaches spent preaching against this back around 1982, but I can't recall any actual reason that this makes a swimmer slower. The only time I'll consciously restrict my breathing is when I'm swimming a 50 and/or taking the last few strokes before a finish.
Thanks Allen! Much appreciated. I plan to read that thread carefully, will let you know how I do with the drills.
In regards to breathing and butterfly... I got this interesting passage from the ASCA World Clinic notes compiled by Scottish Swimming. It's from Bob Bowman's speech.
Michael breaths every stroke on b/f because he finds this most comfortable and it is the most efficient way in which he can do butterfly. This is due to his long torso and that he cannot get a 90 degree knee bend for his downward kick (most effective angle) if he breaths every 2nd or 3rd stroke.
Beware justifying doing something like breathing off the walls or breathing every stroke in butterfly...
The reason why people are usually told to hold their breath in/out of the walls is because many people slow down significantly when they breath. They take their head out of the body line, whether that entails lifting the head , over rotating (whole face vs half face out of water), etc... and then they lose the momentum the had from the underwater pushoff. Breathing right before the turn tends to lead to flipping too close to the wall, so you pushoff at a lousy angle.
Sun Yang can breath right out of his turns partly because it's a long race, he needs all the oxygen he can get because the slight momentum trade (he's losing a lot less momentum that the average swimmer when he turns his head) is better than building up that extra lactic acid/ rushing those first 2 arms just to get a breath. And Michael Phelps (at least according to Bowman) has a biomechanical reason to breath every stroke.
(the above is mostly based on personal experience, particularly discussions with my coach. Please feel free to ask for clarification/disagree.)
On that note, I am having trouble understanding the concept of not breathing in breaststroke races, as advocated by fellow breaststroker Wayne McCauley (breastroker) on these forums... I'm familiar with his website but not with these forums, so I guess I"ll have to do some poking around to see if he's answered this already... if anyone knows where he (or anyone) went over this already I would be most appreciative if you could share the link here.
But basically every time I do a breaststroke insweep my torso rises out of the water anyways, which has my head attached to the end of it... and this angle is always steeper than what the body would look like midway through a butterfly pull. So how is that a person could have their head come out of the water and not breath during a breaststroke arm cycle? It might be helpful to find a video of someone swimming a lap of fast breaststroke who isn't breathing.
(I am asking this question as a person who has gone 29 seconds in the 50 yd breaststroke for 2 years straight and I'm trying every trick possible to get down to 28 or 27.)
Anyways, hope I didn't get too off topic/break forum rules. Thanks in advance for anything you guys find.
(because only the mediocre are always at their best- jean giraudoux)
I guess it's a question of how much trade off there is between any inefficency caused by breathing and the benefits of getting oxygen in ... If your stroke efficiency is not adversely affected by breathing more often it makes perfect sense to do it ... On fly, though, I know that I'm inefficient when I breath, so am trying to do at least 2 strokes per breath ...
Can anyone name the last Olympic gold medalist in the men's 100 fly who did not breath every stroke? (I can't, but I'm guessing it was more than four Olympics ago).
If your stoke isn't efficient enough to breath a lot, then it might make sense to work a bit on stroke technique and core strength (and that might help address other underlying problems at the same time).
My vote: air is good ...
In support of off-topicness regarding breathing/fly/efficiency. As beginner testimony I'm an extreme example: able to push 25M of fly below 16 sec yet cannot complete an entire 50M (I can do just 2 meters shy of a 50). I blame this on not knowing how to breath with fly yet. I do 25 without a breath, but if I do breath it's like slamming on the brakes.
To bring this on topic, is there any drill I can do to assist efficient fly breathing? I would like to swim the fly someday in a race.
