10 freestyle drills for faster freestyle for swimming

Everybody wants to swim faster freestyle and to improve their freestyle stroke, but all too often we get hung up on particular technical and mechanical shortcomings. Our catch isn’t strong enough, we lack proper rotation or our feel for the water isn’t quite there yet.That’s where freestyle drills are designed to help, by getting you to focus on a particular segment of your stroke, and then transferring it to your regular swimming stroke with lifeguard recertification 

The following swimming drills for freestyle are designed to help you swim faster and to swim better.Drills shouldn’t just be done for the sake of doing them, but rather, to apply them to your swimming.Pick and choose a couple of the drills to incorporate at your next swim workout, and mix it with your swimming in order to reap the benefits of developing a more purposeful and faster freestyle.

In no particular order, here are 10 drills for freestylers:

5.Freestyle Drills for a Faster Freestyle

1. Closed-fist Freestyle.

One of my favorite freestyle drills, and about as simple as it gets. Closed fist freestyle.The drill is exactly as it sounds: You ball up your hands, removing the surface area that your out-stretched fingers would usually provide for your pull, and swim freestyle as you normally would.It reinforces the notion that when you are pulling that you should also be using your forearms and not just your hands! This added emphasis on the surface area of the forearm also pushes you towards a higher elbow recovery.

Your stroke count per length will go down a little bit, and once you unclench those hands you will get a little jolt of power, your hands now feeling like over-sized swim paddles.Best for: Increasing feel for the water with your forearm. Encouraging high elbow recovery.

2. Mini-Maxi

This isn’t technically a drill, but it requires your full attention and concentration. The goal is simple: to swim as fast as you can, taking as few strokes as possible. Add time and stroke count together, and you get a total number that you should strive to beat.This kind of swimming forces you to be efficient with every part of your stroke. You look for ways to take less stroke while maintaining speed, whether it’s keeping your hips raised, your head straight, nailing that high elbow recovery, and kicking without clanging your ankles together with american lifeguard.

3. Underwater Freestyle with Fins.

This is an advanced freestyle drill that helps you to really feel out every aspect of your stroke. In particular, the added resistance of the water to your recovery will help to strengthen and increase the arm speed on the recovery.A problem many competitive swimmers have once they get to a particular level of conditioning is that their turnover is too slow. They have the distance per stroke aspect nailed down, but need to crank up the RPM.

This drill creates resistance on the arm recovery, which will have your arms flying once you return to regular freestyle.

4. Head-up Freestyle.

Not my favorite, but it does a couple of things for your swimming. It puts you off-balance, forcing you to kick harder to maintain a somewhat straight body line. It removes any over-glide at the front of your stroke because gliding will sink your face into the water.I find that having your head up out of the water gives you another angle at your hand entry. The removal of the glide also forces you to maintain a continuous rhythm with your stroke, which will encourage a higher elbow recovery.Perform the drill with fins for added leg work.

5. Hand-drag Drill.

Another classic for hand speed and arm recovery speed for you freestylers with a classic, and one of my old stand-by drills– the hand-drag.How do you do it? Swim freestyle normally, but during the recovery phase drag your hand through the water. Keep your hand rigid for added resistance (i.e. don’t just drag your hand limply through the water).When you return to normal swimming your arm recovery will feel like it’s slashing through the air.

Take it to the next level by throwing on some paddles to make it even more challenging.

Learn more about it:7 Things Swimming Will Teach You About Life