Set Of The Week: Breaststroke Drill Progression

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Welcome to Swimming World’s Set Of The Week! This week’s set is a breaststroke set designed to find the timing and rhythm of your athletes’ breaststroke. This is a great secondary set to introduce before a larger IM or stroke-focused set to set up proper stroke technique. Take a look below and see the set and read how to incorporate it with your team:

12 x 25 breaststroke drill on :40

#1: front scull

#2: middle scull

#3: front to middle scull transition

#4: breaststroke pull with flutter kick

8 x 50 breaststroke drill on 1:00

NO PULL OUTS (except for 4th 50)

#1: pull w/ body dolphin

#2: separation drill

#3: 2 kicks, 1 pull,

#4: Swim focus on timing

This set starts off with a drill progression through 25’s that focus on the breaststroke pull. Front scull should focus on the outsweep at the beginning of the pull, while the middle scull works on the insweep in the middle of the pull. Front to middle transition is a progressive scull through the 25, where your swimmers work their way from the front position to the middle position by the end of the 25. The fourth 50 of breaststroke with flutter kick has your athletes putting everything together on the front end of their stroke, using the flutter kick to provide constant forward momentum to spot any “dead spots” in their stroke.

The next set of 50’s is a drill progression that focuses on adding in correct kick timing into the stroke. Other than the fourth 50 of swimming, have your athletes push off the wall without a pull-out to maximize the time spent doing the drill. In the first 50, use a breaststroke pull with a “body dolphin” motion to engage the core and focus on driving forward at the end of each stroke. Emphasize this is a dolphin motion from the whole body, not just from the legs. The second 50 is separation drill, which is one full breaststroke pull followed by one full breaststroke kick that disrupts timing and shows resistance at different parts of the stroke. The third 50 of 2 kicks, 1 pull helps establish the correct timing, and the fourth 50 in the series finally gets them to full stroke breaststroke where they should have a great awareness of all parts of their stroke.

While there are a lot of drills and focus areas through this breaststroke set, it should take less than 20 minutes and will get your athletes in tune with every part of their stroke. Happy swimming!

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