How to improve your swim pull without working on your pull

If you want to move forward in the water, you need to pull back. Simple in concept, sometimes difficult in practice. Even if you understand what you’re supposed to do it, your arms can seem like they have a mind of their own, moving back and forth. 

It’s not necessarily because you’re doing anything wrong with the pull itself. It’s often that other aspects of your stroke are having a negative impact on the pull.

If your head is moving side to side, a common mistake, your shoulders are moving side to side and that means your arms are going to be moving side to side. All the focus in the world isn’t going to allow you to pull straight. 

Just as importantly, if your arm recoveries aren’t forward and direct, and instead they’re moving side to side, it’s going to lead to sideways pulls as well. However, if we can improve these skills, it’s going to be a lot easier to pull straight and swim fast.

Keep the head still

Objective number one is to keep the head still. If your head isn’t stable, no matter how hard you try, it will be hard to pull straight. But if you can get the head sorted out, it will make that task a lot simpler. 

For some, they’ll only be moving the head a lot when they breathe. For others, they’re moving the head all the time. Let’s address both problems.

One of the most effective strategies is paddle cap freestyle. By placing the paddle on the head, you’re forced to keep the head relatively still or the paddle is coming off.  Instant feedback! 

You may need to start off with really short repetitions where you don’t even breathe. If you’re really struggling, just kicking with fins while the head is down may be all the challenge you need. Once you get the hang of that, add the arms. 

Once you can swim with the paddle, add the breath. Go slow take your time and consider it an investment in your swimming. Stable head, faster swimming.
 
For this to work well, you’ll want to use a paddle that is flat. If you’re using a curved paddle, it’s going to be unnecessarily difficult to keep the paddle on your head. Fortunately, these flat paddles are inexpensive and they’re great for pulling!

Clean up the recoveries

Once the head is locked in, it’s timing to make sure you can work on the recoveries and the pull. Here, I like working on recovering the arms under the water. 

Just focus on recovering straight forward and straight back. It’s the same timing and rhythm as freestyle, just simpler.  With a stable head and simpler recoveries, it should be easier to pull straight. 

Once you’ve made some progress, start recovering one arm over the water with the same skill. Then transition to regular freestyle.