Hey guys, welcome to this week's video from Propulsion Swimming.
I'm Dan and this week we're going to be returning to our summer reacts videos.
We enjoyed it so much last time that we had to come back to it. So Scott has been scrolling
through Instagram like he normally does, looking at drills that would be good for me to react to.
I want to see if these drills are any good so we could recommend them for you to do
when you next go to the pool or if they're bad drills for you to avoid and we'll critique them
and where we could make them better. Alright headphones in, and let's get cracking shall we.
Alright first drill.
Oh wow backstroke starts, literally on the block
Now this would be a bit of fun for juniors to do but at the same time could be a bit of a health
and safety hazard. But it's actually quite a good idea. It emphasizes getting your hips out
in the air and then forces you to enter basically doing a backwards dive, that's what a backstroke
start is all about. Pretty good, I like this one actually. Again you just got to be quite careful
of the safety aspect of it but obviously the guys doing it here are senior swimmers,
there wouldn't be any issue here. But you can see they're both trying to force their hips up.
At the same time as they enter, they're almost going in vertically so it's almost like they're
too high but I understand what the drill's all about - getting their hips up. So I like it.
Entering streamline. I think that's a pretty good drill actually. Next drill, next drill.
Oh I think I have actually seen this one. This is actually quite a nice one. This is Hosszu I think.
I think Ledecky's done a similar one with freestyle, with the milkshake on her head.
This is perfect. I mean I do this in my lessons with like a rubber duck balancing on the forehead
of the of the kids doing backstroke. Obviously you look at the best backstrokers in the world
and their head is completely still as a statue. I've always explained it in my lessons if your
head's going side to side you're going to end up snaking down the pool and of
course if you're snaking down the pool you're going to end up doing extra meters that will
ultimately slow you down. If you're doing 100 meter race you're gonna end up doing 102 meters
in that race so yeah this is perfect. Basically it's just full stroke,
you've got a resistance band as well so it's a bit resistance in the water too. It's all
focused on the head position and good body roll. I mean Katinka Hosszu is one of the best
ever at backstroke so yeah absolutely recommend doing this drill that's perfect.
Next one. Oh no
No, this is this is a no-go. This is bad for back, if you want a bad lower back or sore lower back
after doing this session this is the way to go. No butterfly is all about undulation. In fact
you might say that it's armed dominated but it's not, actually the drive and the momentum comes
all from the legs, it's the hip undulation and you need your legs to do good butterfly.
I don't like this one because as you can see as when she breathes her hips drop that's natural but
then they don't recover back up because they don't she doesn't use the kick. You might say that's
because she's got the float in between her feet that her feet stay up. That's all well and good
but it's the arch in the back that's not going to be good for her if she carries on doing it. So
yeah I wouldn't recommend this one at all. It's all about undulation like I was saying.
It's almost like your body needs to be in a wave movement and that's not here,
her body is basically flat on top of the water. Yeah I wouldn't recommend it doing this drill.
Yeah let's move on to the next one. Ha! Is that a Nutella jar? Interesting.
Interesting. Okay so I'm trying to think of what the purpose is here. So the purpose is trying to
extend his arms on the overarm recovery by look at things by trying to reach out
and grab a Nutella jar. I don't know why his Nutella jar, he must love Nutella. I mean
if it was me doing that it would be like marmite, I like Marmite. But yeah interesting choice.
Maybe it's a drill to try and emphasize him getting out of the water. Like you look at Adam
Peaty now or most breaststrokers actually, they're trying to get themselves out of the water as much
as possible. The higher you are in the water, like I've always said, the higher you are in the water,
the faster you're going to be. But at the same time the stroke is actually quite slow and because
it's quite slow the hips don't actually come up. He's almost forcing his hands too high and it's
counterbalancing himself or counteracting himself. (Focusing on the fun)
Yeah I think so yeah. It's a different dimension of training I suppose isn't
it. That's another side of it because if you're just doing breaststroke all day long
it does get a little bit tedious. So it does spice up a little bit I like the idea of it.
Yeah the idea of it is pretty good but it's almost the hands are coming too high.
Oh what's this one?
Oh jumping over the lane rope. That's some serious strength. Jeez I'd love to be able to do that.
Yeah wow he doesn't even like brush it either. I don't know who this guy is actually. No I
don't know. Oh he just brushes the lane rope. So it's almost like an explosive squat basically.
I'm gonna assume that he's a breaststroker because the way he jumps up and he gets his knees out
and you can see his feet as well, he brings his toes up. Oh no not really okay yeah. So
it's just a super power squat. I like the idea of it. Again very similar to the last one actually
where it spices up the training a little bit. Good again for the dive and the push-offs.
That lane rope there gives you a target so if he was just doing that in the water by
himself he'd probably get bored quite quickly. But because there's a lane rope to jump over
it's a bit of a target for him and so a bit of a challenge. A lot of swimmers, they want to
have a challenge in front of them. Yeah would you call that a drill? Not sure that's a drill,
it's just...(impressive) Yeah it's just impressive yeah, it's just impressive yeah. Oh wow,
oh that's it, there's six. Well there's some pretty interesting drills actually there.
I think my favourite one out of those ones, it's got to be Katinka Hosszu.
The cup balancing. I want to do that as a drill actually on our YouTube channel. I don't think
I'll be able to do as good as that but I want to do it because it's perfect. It keeps body
alignment perfect and the body rotation, the head still everything. Yeah I actually like that. Some
of those drills were good, some of them weren't weren't so good. We had a bit of a mixture there.
So there's a couple that I would recommend. The Katinka Hosszu one definitely is the number one
drill out of those ones. So some of those drills were quite interesting, I think most of those
drills that Scott found were introducing the fun element into swimming and I think that's what the
main thing is all about. You've got to enjoy the sport to progress like I was saying and yeah some
of those drills are probably necessary actually, especially the cup balance like I've said. I would
never recommend putting a float in between your feet for doing butterfly. Same with breaststroke
you never do that, you need the undulation of the body movement going. So yeah pretty interesting
drills. If you find any other drills that you'd like us to have a look at, whether they're good
or bad or need critiquing, send them in because we absolutely love doing them. If you haven't
already, please SUBSCRIBE to the Propulsion Swimming YouTube channel where we've got
great swimming content coming your way every week. I've been Dan and I'll catch you on the next one!