Welcome to the “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 involved a jump rope with the option of adding a mid-pool wall. The essence of the drill is this: facing away from the pool, your athletes skip rope until you signal for them to stop, turn around, and dive into an all-out sprint. As you can see if the video below, this is very athletic exercise that can work on several aspects key to racing, particularly for sprinters:
The goal of this drill is to work on making the transition from movement to movement as seamless as possible. Once you signal go, athletes should move quickly and seamlessly into a run, dive, and all-out sprint. Obviously, this requires a fair bit of concentration on their part. They need to focus on skipping rope, reacting to your signal, turning around, and then executing a perfect run, dive, and breakout. Adding the mid-pool wall adds another element of complexity, as they have to add in a turn on top of everything else.
While the goal is to move seamlessly from movement to movement, don’t expect every athlete to master this right away. While perfection is the goal on each part of this drill, it is also an opportunity to teach the level of focus that is necessary when working on the technical aspects of sprint events. Challenge them to have perfect starts, breakouts, and turns, but also be sure to give feedback on how to continue to improve each aspect. Adding this drill as part of a sprint set or on a circuit day can be a great way to spice up your workouts. Happy swimming!