by Terry Laughlin

DRILL FOR SUCCESS

Swimming should be practiced both as a skill sport, like golf or tennis, and as a strength and endurance activity, like running or biking. This will enable you to swim better, feel better about your swimming, and stay more motivated to continue.

If you're strictly interested in swimming to get fit, and not at all interested in swimming faster, better stroke mechan-ics are important. Good mechanics will allow you to swim further. The farther you go, the more calories you burn and the more aerobic benefits you gain.

The fastest way to improve stroke technique is to do more stroke drills, even if it means that you swim less yardage. Many swimmers have learned to do drills as an integral part of their practice.

Here's a guide to maximizing the benefits of stroke drills:

1 Every drill is a problem-solving exercise. Each is designed to teach your body how to solve a different problem. In going through the process of solving each of those problems, your muscles learn how to move your body through water more efficiently. As you imprint those solutions in your muscle memory, yourare teaching your body new and better movement qualities_those which you will later bring into your swim stroke.

Nothing beats the old-fashioned virtues of patience and persistence in ensuring the success of that process. With each new drill, and every time you return to practicing recently-learned drills, you have to allow your body to work through several stages. It should take a few repetitions just to identify the problem the drill is meant to solve. On the next several repetitions, you'll work out the solution. Finally, you need to spend several more repetitions "memorizing" that solution so you can do it more naturally.

2 Drills, when done properly, will also "enrich" the flow of sensation and information from your muscles to your brain. The first few times you work on any new drill, spend at least 10 to 15 minutes trying to firmly imprint the new sense into your muscle memory. Don't be rigid. Experiment with subtle adjustments to see how much control you really have over these new movements. Eventually, you want your body to take over for your mind, consistently doing on its own what initially required great concentration to accomplish.

3 Marathon drill sets are usually counterproductive. Fatigue and loss of concentration will hurt the quality of your drill practice. Instead, practice them in sets of 25-yard repeats, resting 10 to 15 seconds in between. Continued practice should make your drill execution a little smoother and more relaxed with every repetition. With each repetition, your movements should also become more precise and economical.

4 After allowing yourself 10 to 15 minutes to refine your execution of a new drill, begin alternating drill lengths with swim lengths. Try to swim each length a bit more efficiently (fewer strokes) and easily. Focus on the main objective of the drill and on whatever feels different and better in the drill than in your stroke. Then, try to increase that feeling in your stroke. It's always best to allow your stroke to be influenced by the movement quality gradually and naturally rather than trying to force dramatic and instantaneous change. After all, you've been swimming one way for years; your stroke will give up its old habits grudgingly.

5 If your kick is weak, don't keep struggling to get the right body positions. Instead, just slip on a pair of fins to increase your sense of control on all drills. The fins will free up physical and mental energy for mastering the fine points, greatly accelerating your progress.

6 Novice swimmers should spend more time practicing drills than whole-stroke swimming. If drills teach faster and better than anything else, then it stands to reason that more time spent practicing them will have you swimming smoothly, quicker. As your skills improve, gradually increase the amount of swimming you do. Even advanced swimmers should continue to do at least 10 to 20 percent of their yardage in drills.

Sure drills are practice, sort of like playing your scales on the piano when you'd rather be tackling the whole sonata. But remember: You're finally practicing your success, not your failures.

Coach Laughlin holds his Total Immersion Masters Swim Camps throughout the year.