Now, if you’re like me and you’re not a very good dancer because you lack rhythm on the dance floor, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a good swimmer. In swimming, you need to have a good rhythm because it reduces the amount of dead spots in your stroke and it means that you can keep your stroke right up and you can keep your momentum going forward. Just like a car that will go at a 100 kph, it’s gonna use less fuel than a car that goes up to 100 kph and then stops and has to get back up to speed. It’s all about trying to keep it at constant speed to conserve your energy and to keep your speed at a constant pace.
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In the next few minutes, I’m going to show you one of my three favorite ways to improve your rhythm with your freestyle. Let’s take a look at this swimmer who’s currently got a bit of a dead spot in that stroke so that rhythm isn’t as good as it could be. So we’re going to look at a few things that will help this swimmer improve that rhythm.
If you take a look at the swimmer in this video here, you will notice that after each stroke and after he extends forward, he’s pausing for just a moment before going into the pull or into the catch and then the pull. That isn’t the ideal thing to do is because it’s like a car speeding up and slowing back down and speeding up, and slowing back down.
Instead, what we’re looking to do is to keep the stroke moving. So, you should always be doing something in your stroke. You should never be extending and gliding and stopping. Instead, what we’ve got to do is rather than pausing here, we would want to bring the hand down so cock the wrist going to the catch and then into the pull. You do want slow down at the front of your stroke because you don’t want to enter and pull through straight away.
It’s ideal to slow down at the front part of your stroke (the extension) and then going into the pull where you’ll speed up a bit because that way you can get more distance from your stroke but you never want to completely stop moving. Make sure it’s just moving forward slightly and cock your wrist slightly and you never completely stop moving.
One of my three favorite ways to improve your rhythm is with a drill called – long dog paddle. I spoke about it a couple of weeks ago on the weekly video. It’s in the Mastering Freestyle Program as well. It’s called, “Kick on your side if you switch” and it’s also in our online coaching program.
The drill basically involves continuous pull reaching from the top of your stroke all the way through but you’re recovering underneath the water so you’re not doing the recovery of your stroke. So it’s reaching from the top of your stroke, pulling all the way back and continuing that motion. And that’s going to help you extend forward and move straight back into your catch because if you stop and you pause at the front and have a dead spot in your stroke, you’ll just sink down and you’ll really feel that you’re not going anywhere. So this is a good drill to work on that continuous movement.
There you go. That’s one of my three favorite ways to improve your rhythm in your freestyle so that you can use less energy and you can keep yourself at a constant speed throughout a race or in training.
I talk about the other two in this weeks video in online coaching program. Head on over to Effortless Swimming Membership Program and get the other 2 ways to improve your rhythm.
Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next week with another weekly video update. Happy swimming for this week. Train hard.
