Swim Drill Of The Week: Roll Kick

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 is Roll Kick, a balance drill to work on rotation and head position. While this drill may seem to have the most correlation with freestyle, it should help your swimmers develop better body awareness for all of their strokes. As with many drills focusing on body position, it may be helpful to use a snorkel when completing this drill.

The drill itself is very simple: pushing off the wall, swimmers drop their hands to their sides and rotate from side to side between a set number of kicks. A great way to start this drill is to work on 6 flutter kicks for each side between rotations. The focus of this drill is on rotating purely from the hips and keeping the head in line with the rest of the body. It will be common to see swimmers trying to rotate from their shoulders and/or move their head from side to side as they complete the drill, particularly with younger swimmers. Make you emphasis that the head should stay in line with the rest of the body and that swimmers need to concentrate on driving their rotation from their hips and core.

For more advanced swimmers, there are a lot of variations to this drill that will help your athletes develop a greater body awareness. A favorite is to create a progression of descending kick intervals between rotations. For example, you could start with 8 kicks per side and decrease by 1 each 25 until they are at 1 kick per side. The lower the kick count, the more challenging it is to maintain a steady rotation and to drive it from the hips.

During long course season, you can also create a progression within a 50, having your athletes decrease their number of kicks as they move down the length of the pool. Regardless of how you adjust the drill for your needs, the focus should always be on maintaining a hip-driven rotation and steady head position. 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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