Having A Smooth Freestyle Entry

A smooth transition from your entry into your extension forward is critical in freestyle. Creating minimal drag so you’ve got that smooth transition that will get you in the correct catch position nice and early.

One of the mistakes that we quite often see here is swimmers will either enter too early or too late.

Entering too early means you go down at too much of an angle which creates a lot of drag at the top of your arm and your shoulder.

If you enter too late and you are fully extended before you enter into the water – it causes you to drop your elbow and enter with your elbow first. That means it’s very hard to get into the correct catch position after you’ve done that.

A couple of drills that we would like to use at Effortless Swimming to help correct this is are:

1. Fingertip Drag Freestyle – Drag your fingertips at the surface of the water then you enter at 80-90 percent of the way forward. This drill is really good for finding that correct length you should be entering at. If you enter too soon, you’ll find that you get a lot of drag on the top of your arm. If you enter too late, you feel your elbow dropping before you enter the water.
2. KOS Pause and Enter – This drill allows you to isolate the movement from your recovery into your entry and extension forward. You can feel that smooth transition into your extension as it allows you to make small refinements to point where where you’ve got low drag and you can set yourself up well for the catch.

These are just some of the drills that we do to improve freestyle. We have got a whole lot more in the Effortless Freestyle Program.

In the program we break it down into different sections of the stroke, so rather than having to think about a hundred different things at once, you can isolate each different part of your stroke. You can correct it and then move on to the next part.

If you’d like to swim faster freestyle that’s more efficient and uses less energy, go to EffortlessFreestyle.com and get the Effortless Freestyle Program!