Freestyle

Let’s talk about the fastest stroke of them all: freestyle (or front crawl for our international friends). Here is our breakdown of what makes good freestyle and optimizes its power to drag ratio:

• Head position (aka body position… aka floating properly)
• Streamlined swimming
• High elbow recovery
• Distance per stroke 

If you have to choose between improving your power output or decreasing your drag, always choose to decrease drag. Especially when teaching young swimmers who are just starting out, we want them to be set for life with an efficient stroke. They will grow and we will condition them to optimize power later in life. This is why the first three components are all based on reducing drag while the last component is for generating power but in an efficient method. 

We start with head/body position to help kids float properly. If you are swimming up-hill and exposing a lot of body surface area to the oncoming water, you will never generate enough power to overcome the drag. Our goal is to sit almost completely flat in the water to expose as little frontal surface area as possible. This helps reduce frontal, eddy and form drag. 

Every stroke returns to the streamlined state during the swimming cycle. Freestyle and backstroke do this one arm at a time while breaststroke and butterfly do it with both arms. While we never truly get back in a tight streamline, our goal should always be to swim in as streamlined a position as possible. When the arms enter and reach in front of us, we want them to be in as streamlined a position as possible to help us cut through the water. 

The high elbow recovery component is actually a little misleading. Nothing we do over the surface of the water will ever be directly more important than what happens under the water. The magic of swimming happens under the surface, so why is a high elbow recovery on our list of essential components? Many times, we have kids focus on one thing in order to force a change in the body somewhere else. By working a high elbow recovery, we prevent the arms from swinging around to the side and force everything to stay in alignment. This keeps the head from swinging side to side and keeps the body from snaking through the water. This results in another drag reducing swimming style. 

Lastly, we want every stroke to count for as much as possible to get us as much distance per stroke as possible. Swimming tempo can only go up so high and kids tend to supplement poor form and slow swimming with increasing tempo. And why shouldn’t they? In the short term this works, they go faster. And in all other land sports, increasing tempo creates better results. But we coaches know this does not work in swimming in the long term. You have to be efficient first before you increase tempo, at least in freestyle. 

Basic Drills

Streamline Kick- Head Position

When we swim freestyle, our head should be in the exact same position it was in during our streamline. When we transition from the streamline into the first stroke, the head should not move up, down or sideways at all! To teach this head position, simply kick in a streamline. Have the kids focus on where their eyes are looking during the drill. The head (and therefore the body) follows the eyes. For the breathing on this drill, simply have the kids look up, take a good breath and then go back to a streamline. You may think this will impart a bad breathing technique, but we don’t care right now. This drill has one and only one focus, just like all the other drills. 

Tangent: It is tempting to use a snorkel with this drill, but we recommend avoiding it in younger kids (less than 10 years old). The hassle of kids clumsily dealing with another piece of equipment and the added cost to parents just isn’t worth it.

One Arm Streamline Kick- Hold good head position after each breath

You can never work on head position too much in freestyle! Even with just one arm, we still want the head to be in the same streamlined position. By taking away one arm, we lose our ability to “lock” into a streamline and make it a little harder to keep everything in streamline. In addition, we can now have the kids breathe to the side and practice bringing their head back down into a streamline. Everyone will lose their streamline a bit with each breath, so helping maintain it and/or returning to it will be our goal with this drill. 

At the start of the season or with very young kids (8 and under) we have them do this drill flat on their stomach. This keeps the focus on head position and breathing. As the kids advance through the season or get older, you can alter the drill slightly and have kids kick on their side with the eyes still looking down. This helps work on being comfortable in a rotated position which helps us generate power later on.

Add fins and have kids racing the drill side by side so they start to learn that we want this head position and breathing low in the water all the time, especially in races! The fins also allow you to do distance kick sets. Ditch the kickboard and work on a drill while you work the legs.

6nRoll- Streamlined arms

6nRoll is the exact same as One-Arm Streamline Kicking except after about six kicks the kids will take a stroke and switch (or roll) to the other side. The head obviously should not move with all this new commotion. But the real focus of the drill is the arms. After each stroke, the new arm should attempt to return to that single arm streamlined position right up next to the head. The actual number of kicks between switching sides is not that important. The important part is that we get kids to slow down, control their bodies and develop a stroke that swims with the arms as streamlined as possible. 

This drill has come under some heat in recent years with experts citing it causes kids to pull their arms too far back towards the hips and they get stuck there. This brings up a good point relating to any drill. All drills will by definition exaggerate one component of the stroke in a good way, and exaggerate another component of the stroke in a bad way. If we came up with a drill that improved all components at the same time, it would look exactly like the normal stroke. So, it’s ok for drills to create “bad” habits, as long as the kids know which “good” habit they are supposed to be thinking about. 

Some kids struggle to time the breathing with the arm switch and they get all out of sorts and out of alignment. In these cases, have the kids separate everything out. Have them switch arms, get in a streamline, breathe and return to a single arm streamline before switching sides again. 

Triangle Hold and/or Drill = High elbow recovery

Otherwise known as the classic “shark fin” drill, triangle hold attempts to fix the problems 6nRoll caused as well as work on keeping the arms from swinging out to the side as we spoke of earlier. In triangle hold, we have the kids hold their arm in the air in a shark fin position with fingers pointed forward. You have to kick very hard and breathe very low in the water to maintain this body position, so with younger kids we tend to do this drill as another variant of kicking with fins on. 

Triangle drill on the other hand is similar to 6nRoll where the kids hold their shark fin for about six kicks and then take a stroke and switch to the other side. In this case, we just want the kids to hit pause with their arms in the air to give them an extra second or so to think about how their arm is positioned and recovering over the water. And as we spoke before, the high elbow component really isn’t the end result we care about, it just helps kids force their heads and bodies to stay in straight alignment and reduces drag as much as possible. 

An optional (and popular) variant of this drill is fingertip drag. In this case, the arms never pause. Instead, they recover over the water in slow motion with the elbows high and their fingertips dragging across the surface of the water. The focus of this drill in our book is arm entry. We want the kids to slow their recovery down and make sure their arms are following a straight line from back to front and enter the water gently and in a streamlined position. But, in order to limit the total number of drills we use, this is in the optional category.

Tangent: As the drills progress from heavy kicking to using the arms, avoid using fins. Fins mask poor form and kids won’t learn if they are not forced to struggle a bit.

Catch-Up- Distance per stroke

Our last basic freestyle drill finally focuses a bit on generating power, but this still is in the context of keeping drag low. Classic Catch-up is basically regular freestyle swimming, but the kids are required to touch their hands together out in front before the next one can take a stroke. Each hand has to “catch up” to the other. At this point we are essentially swimming normal, efficient, distance freestyle. 

We like to convince the kids that this is such an efficient way to swim that Olympians like Peter Vanderkaay and Katie Ledeky have won gold medals and set world records swimming this way. So, if they, the kids, can’t swim fast doing catch-up, they are doing something wrong. 

As the kids progress from each drill, the goal is to maintain what was learned and focused on in the previous drill. There is no point in having good high elbow recovery if our head position is too high. The goal with each drill is to target a component of freestyle. We will see in Part 4 how we use these drills as tools in our arsenal to train with and continually work on our stroke technique every day and throughout the season. 

Tangent: You can combine a set of drills into a standard format the kids know and can use in training. For instance, with our younger swimmers, we sometimes warmup with 75s of 6TC where each 25 is a drill: 6nRoll, Triangle drill, catch-up. Now, we can start every day with a basic freestyle drill progression.

Advanced Drills

Most of the time, we stick with the basic set of drills outlined above. But sometimes, we get bored and so do the kids! So, we have a set of advanced drills we bust out every once in a while to help the kids focus on certain aspects of freestyle that can be beneficial to think about as well. Remember, don’t do drills for the sake of doing drills. These should be deeply thought-out and engaging modes of training. Mindless swimming only leads to mindless swimmers. 

Another reason we don’t use these drills routinely is because they can be more damaging than they are helpful. They can over-exaggerate a certain motion or ruin good habits. For this reason, we tend to use them with older kids and on recovery days to give more rest time and allow better control over the body while doing the drills. Lastly, all these drills focus on generating more power. While an essential part of training a fast swimmer is about conditioning, drag reduction should be prioritized, especially early on in a swimmer’s career. 

Single Arm Freestyle- “S” pull

While it seems innocent enough, single arm freestyle is actually very difficult to perform properly. It is very tough to get enough rotation and to catch out far enough with the arm to mimic natural freestyle, but it has its benefits. Most swimmers naturally pull using an “S” pattern under the water. Their bodies grow up in the water and naturally learn that an “S” pattern helps them hold more water, extend the length of their pull and help time their kicking more properly. While you get less grip and power on the water by S-ing your arm through the water, the extended distance adds up to a bigger total energy gain as shown in the example. 

The problem is that exaggerating the “S” curvatures too much can lead to a swimmer going nowhere. We reserve this for older, seasonal only swimmers who are looking for a quick fix and a quick boost. This drill and technique also mostly benefit distance swimmers/races. The tempo required for sprints makes it difficult to get an efficient “S” pull in, so straight pulling is sometimes more beneficial, but this is very swimmer dependent. 

Fist Swim - Early vertical forearm

Early vertical forearm (EVF) is commonly cited as one of the most important aspects to creating a great freestyle. The concept of EVF is to start the catch as early as possible to anchor your arm in the water as far out in front of your body and get the most out of each stroke. So, why is this drill in the advanced, use rarely section? As we said before, the perfect power developing stroke means nothing in the face of high drag. Secondly, these drills are mostly for young/new swimmers who have bigger things to worry about than an early catch. Lastly, it is more important for young swimmers to focus on their stroke count per 25 or 50 rather than their actual body motions. Their bodies will subconsciously adapt to attain the goal stroke count. 

The trick with developing good EVF is to force the swimmer to use their forearm as much as possible. By closing your hand in a fist, the largest surface area usually used to generate power is taken away and the body needs to learn how to use its forearm to catch the water early and efficiently developing a good early vertical forearm stroke. Of course, having your hands closed in a fist too many times can also backfire and create a habit of curled fingers, so be cautious. 

Tarzan Swim- Arm entry

This drill is performed with the swimmers starting the 25 with their heads up and looking forward while they swim. This way, they can watch and feel their arms enter the water. As they pass the half-way mark, they put the heads down in a normal position while trying to maintain the excellent arm entry they were keenly observing. This drill helps with kids who swing their arms around so they can visually see their arms recover and force them to recover in a straighter pathway. The backside of this drill is developing bad head position from keeping your head up too much. The head of course should not sway side to side either during the drill.

Sprint Stroke- Straight arm recovery

Many swimmers tend to develop different stroke styles for different races. A 50 freestyle technique can be vastly different from a 500 freestyle technique, and it should be! These races are totally different, why not swim them differently? Why not train each with its own specific freestyle technique?  For instance, the arms during a sprint are no longer “catching up” to each other, rather they become more symmetric and windmill-like. 

For sprint freestyle races, some kids find it beneficial to have a straight arm recovery. But wait. We just said a few paragraphs ago what happens over the water doesn't matter, so what is straight arm recovery helping us do underwater? As the swimmer tries to increase tempo, their bodies may counterproductively shorten the stroke. By keeping the arms straight on recovery, we can force the arms to continue reaching out in front of us as much as possible, getting as much DPS (distance per stroke) as possible. 

In addition, the bigger power requirements for each stroke during a sprint can sometimes cause swimmers to drop their elbows and cause them to have poor early vertical forearm. By swimming with a straight arm, we can maintain a strong, deep catch to keep our grip on the water despite tempo increases.

Summary of Drills:

• Streamline Kick- Head Position
• One- Arm Streamline Kick- Hold good head position after each breath
• 6nRoll- Streamlined arms
• Triangle Hold and/or Drill - High elbow recovery
• Optional Finger Drag - Arm Entry
• Catch-Up- Distance per stroke

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• Single Arm Freestyle- “S” pull
• Fist Swim - Early vertical forearm
• Tarzan Swim- Arm entry
• Sprint Stroke- Straight arm recovery