Swim Drill Of The Week: Underwater Freestyle

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 Underwater Freestyle. This a is a drill for more advanced swimmers to work on driving up the tempo of their stroke. The drill is pretty much self-explanatory: diving underwater, swimmers will swim as far as they can underwater, mimicking freestyle as best they can. The end goal of this drill is to get your swimmers more aware of how to increase their tempo.

Now, being underwater obviously presents some unique challenges for freestyle, particularly with the recovery of the stroke. There is going to be much more resistance than usual on the recovery, and that is the point. The resistance will give them a heightened sense of when they are moving forward and when they are not.

While the goal is to move as close to possible as the normal stroke, it may look more like doggy-paddle than freestyle on some of your athletes. This is fine — the biggest take-away should be the heightened sense of awareness your swimmers will have once they go back to their normal strokes. Once you switch back to normal swimming on top of the water, the recovery of the stroke should be naturally faster as your athletes adjust to having significantly less resistance and a better sense of what is actually driving them forward.

Use this drill in conjunction with bursts of speed (fast breakouts or fast finishes) to help your athletes see the connection the drill has to their swimming. Adding fins can also help them drive through the resistance underwater and also help them get up to speed when playing with fast breakouts or finishes. 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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