Fitter And Faster Swim Drill Of The Week: Breaststroke Kick Hands In Back

breaststroke-kick-hands-in-back-drill-of-the-week

Welcome to the “Swim Drill of the Week” sponsored by The Fitter and Faster Swim Tour presented by Swimoutlet.com. Swimming World will be bringing you a drill, concept, or tip that you can implement with your team on a regular basis. While certain weeks may be more appropriate for specific levels of swimming (club, high school, college, or masters), Drill Of The Week excerpts are meant to be flexible for your needs and inclusive for all levels of swimming.

This week’s drill is Breaststroke Kick Hands In Back, which in laymans terms means breaststroke kick with your hands on your butt. While just a slightly different way of doing breaststroke kick, the idea is that this drill will help your swimmers find better body position in their stroke and more consistently engage their core and chest to “fall forward” at the end of each stroke.

The drill itself is fairly simple: pushing off the wall, place your hands on your butt and start kicking breaststroke. It is important to have your hands within your body line, not just by your sides. This will help minimize resistance but will also force your body position to drop. While this may initially seem like a bad thing (why would you want to practice bad body position on a drill?), you want the hips to sink a little in this drill so you can practice rolling the hips forward at the end of each kick.

This is the real purpose of the drill. At the end of each kick, swimmers should be focused on driving forward with the chest, getting the head back in line with the rest of the body, and rolling the hips forward. Think of the body undulation in butterfly. While we don’t want to see that level of undulation through the entire body, that idea of driving forward through the chest and core is what your swimmers should be trying to imitate with each kick. This is a great drill to use at the beginning of a drill progression set that would focus on timing, tempo, and drive from the kick, and should help your swimmers carry their momentum better from stroke to stroke by maximizing their kick. Happy swimming!

All swimming and dryland training and instruction should be performed under the supervision of a qualified coach or instructor, and in circumstances that ensure the safety of participants.

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Robert Lucas

7 years ago

Suze Williams add this one !

Maliha Hashmi

7 years ago

Ahmed Farooq try and tell!!! 🙂