Beginner Triathlete - Swim Drills articles

The three drills we will be focusing on today are a more “advanced” version of catch-up, which help you with distance per stroke AND keep you rotating from side to side (hip rotation).

Top swimmers rotate the core of the body from one side to the other while keeping the head fixed. When you rotate in this way, you move through the water more like a fish, maximizing your efficiency.

Now that you’ve mastered balancing on your side, it’s time to practice the foundation of the arm stroke.

Your kick is mainly for stability and body rotation. However, not having a kick or kicking improperly can lead to using twice as much energy to get through your swim!

Some anaerobic training is essential. You will need to have some speed to break out of the pack, turn a buoy at a proper angle, or to lose the annoying swimmer behind you that's grabbing your ankles.

The one-arm drill. This drill will help you with body rotation, breathing, and pull. It also isolates one arm so you can really concentrate on what that arm is doing through the whole stroke cycle.

You will need to practice a couple of things to get those hips to the surface of the water, where they should be. The two drills involve head position and balance.

At some point in your triathlon career you will need to master the art of the flip turn to continue your swimming progress.

We are now going to move into “practices” that have a specific technique focus or two, but will contain more physically demanding workouts.

Interval training is essential to improving your swim time. Here are a few examples of setting up your swim interval training.

Improving speed in swimming is more than just doing a few sprints at the beginning and end of your workouts. It takes a little more thinking, but I promise there is no high level math involved!

Here are the top 5 challenges in learning how to breathe in freestyle, along with the remedies on how to get over theme. Includes a 2250yard/meter workout.

Now we will add in the focus on how you will enter your hands in the water upon recovery, and how to rotate to the next side.

Focusing on the first part of the pull and avoiding the dreaded “dropped elbow” can help transform your stroke, and allow you to relax and let go of these common challenges.