Swim Drill Of The Week: DPS Free Progression For Sprinters

Welcome to the “Swim Drill of the Week”. 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 progression is a short series of drills meant to work on setting up maximum distance per stroke for your sprint freestyles. Take a look at the drill progression below and the description that follows:

2 x 25 hand lead kick

2 x 25 front scull

2 x 25 straight arm free

2 x 25 finish drill

The progression starts with hand lead kick drill, with your swimmers simply kicking on their stomachs with their arms extended, working on engaging their core to keep a long and stable body position while kicking. Next, swimmers will keep that same length and core engagement while transitioning to front position sculling, finding good contact with their hands in the same position where they will be entering the water on their freestyle stroke.

The last two 25’s are straight arm free and finish drill, both of which are meant to exaggerate either end of the stroke to lengthen out your athletes’ freestyle. On straight arm free, make sure your swimmers are entering at the maximum distance in front of them, entering the water far in front of their shoulders and making instant contact with the water. On finish drill, make sure they aren’t dropping the elbow in the second half of their stroke and are really accelerating into their recovery. This progression will help your athletes cue into all of the details that are essential to maintaining length in their freestyle when sprinting and make it easier to transition into high quality sprint work. 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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