Swim Sets are designed to target specific parts of your stroke and mixing in focused freestyle drills to your swim workout will help improve technique. The right freestyle drills encourage you to be more efficient in the water, help you break bad swim habits, and encourage better body positioning.
CLOSED FIST FREESTYLE DRILL
Doing it is fairly straightforward: Ball your hands up in a fist and off you go.
The smaller “paddle” that your hand creates when in a fist will encourage you to be more aware of the placement of your forearm, remind you to hit that early vertical forearm, and increase your stroke tempo.
SUPER SLOW SWIMMING
The drill’s name should give it all away: Fight against the natural urge to swim fast and swim with super slow, deliberate technique. The drill will encourage you to maintain an even stroke tempo (otherwise your body will sink between strokes), kick consistently to keep your hips up, nail your hand entry, and focus on a clean and powerful pulling motion. Toss a pull-buoy between your legs if you want to specifically target the pulling motion. Do the drill with fins and paddles to over-emphasize the kick and pull.
OVERKICK FREESTYLE DRILL
Over kick free drill is all about kicking with extra intensity while maintain a chill arm tempo. Aim for kicking with 2x tempo while pulling with 1x tempo. Over-emphasizing the kick helps you solidify the connection between the kick and pulling motion and encourages a straighter, fuller kick, which will help cut down on those crisscross ankles.
THE SINGAPORE FREESTYLE DRILL
Swim freestyle with one arm normal, the other as dog paddle. The drill is designed to help emphasize a strong early vertical forearm, encourage swimmers to really focus on proper body positioning (“Coordination, recovering with one arm underwater can feel strange but it makes the athlete really think about what they are doing and how their body is moving”), and hit proper hand position.
SINGLE-ARM FREESTYLE
Unfortunately, for most swimmers, the drill is done sloppily, with their hips fish-tailing and hand entry landing all over the place. But when done slowly and properly, single-arm freestyle is a killer freestyle drill that can be done to attack just about every part of your freestyle stroke.
FINGER DRAG FREESTYLE DRILL
Done properly, the drill emphasizes a high-elbow recovery, relaxes the shoulders, and keeps your hand from sinking too much on the catch. Finger Drag is great for swimmers who want to learn to relax unnecessary muscles during the recovery, a higher elbow recovery, and want to start the pulling motion with a higher hand entry.