How to pick the best swim drills for you

If you want to improve the swim leg of your triathlon, you’ll almost certainly need to improve your skills. And if you want to improve your skills, you’ll likely be performing some sort of drill work to accelerate your skill development. The challenge becomes deciding exactly which drills you should be using. 
 
Unfortunately, not all drills are created equal and certain drills are going to result in faster and more significant progress than others. Thus, selecting the right drills becomes a critical aspect of improving your swimming. 

Let’s take a look at three important characteristics of effective drills.

Clear feedback

It’s important for drills to have great feedback. A great example is Paddle Cap Freestyle. With each and every breath, you’re going to get perfectly clear feedback about the execution of your breathing. If the paddle stays on your head, you know that you’re breathing effectively. If the paddle comes off, you know you have some more work to do.   
 
Clear feedback is so important because it guides the learning process. While a great coach can provide great feedback, if you don’t have a coach with you, your drills are going to need to step in and provide the necessary feedback. Better drills provide better feedback, and that means faster progress.

• How to use video feedback to improve your swimming

Clear sensation

Learning is a sensory experience. If you want to learn better ways to move through the water, you’re going to have to be able to feel better ways of moving through the water. Great drills do just that, and they do so in ways that are difficult to achieve with regular swimming.
 
Closed-Fist Swimming is a great example because it helps you feel how to use the forearm with each stroke, making each pull more effective. And when you open the hands back up afterwards, it’s a lot easier to feel the water, further enhancing your pull. 

Another is Ball Float. This exercise helps you feel how your lungs support you in the water, creating clear sensation that’s difficult to become aware of while swimming normally.

Trainability

Lastly, good drills should be trainable. Two keys aspect of learning are variation and challenge. To get the most out of a given drill, you want to be able to challenge it in many different ways. 

Doing the same thing over and over again isn’t going to continue to facilitate learning. A great drill should be able to be performed at different speeds, with different training aids, or with different stroke counts.

You also want to be able to execute your skills when you fatigue, just like you’ll experience in a race. A great way to develop this ability it to perform drills at higher effort levels and with some fatigue. 

Certain drills are much more conducive to hard work. You can push pretty hard with Underwater Recovery, but you’ll likely struggle to do the same with one-arm freestyle.