636 drill isn't too far away from being full
stroke freestyle. Looking at it from face value it's normal freestyle
just like you're breathing for a little longer than normal. In this tutorial
we'll take a look at why it's a good drill to do when swimming freestyle and
how it can help your stroke.
Although 636 is a progressive drill it
can be done by all types of swimmers. It's a simple drill to understand and
can be very effective if done correctly.
It can help greatly with every aspect of freestyle - Body Position,
Leg kick, Arm Pull, Breathing and Timing of the Stroke.
You start off by doing six kicks on your side in a swordfish position,
making sure you look directly down to the pool floor and maintaining a high
leading arm.
Once you've done six kicks, do three freestyle arm strokes as you would
normally do in full stroke, but then on the last stroke extend your
arm out in front of you and return back into swordfish.
For beginner swimmers you should try to breathe during the three arm strokes and
not during the six kicks. This is so you focus fully on a 6-kick
segment as that would be the most important thing to concentrate on for
improving the basics of body position and leg kick.
For more competent swimmers you can work on breathing to the size during the six
kicks. Make sure to do it swiftly as six kicks
doesn't take that long to complete and you need your head back into a
neutral position ready for the three arm strokes.
A common fault with this drill is rushing it too much.
This should be done at a steady rate to ensure that you've got your body in the
correct position to make sure it's a worthwhile practice.
Rushing it loses your body control and alignment.
Try to keep your body outstretched for the duration of this drill.
Slipping water is known to happen with freestyle drills which is another fault.
Slipping water is where you don't catch enough water with your hand or forearm
on the underwater pull phase of your arm stroke. If this
happens you lose a lot of momentum through the water.
To combat this, you can use paddles to help catch as much water as possible.
If you don't have paddles just try to concentrate on relaxing your hand
and focus on a strong arm pull drive to your hip.
A last common fault, which occurs during the swordfish part of this drill,
is the hand that's by your side starts to move or wave. Doing this puts you out
of streamline and shows that the swimmer isn't balanced enough on their side
so they'll need more practice in a swordfish position. Your hands should be
fixed by your side with just your legs kicking when in swordfish.
Make sure you've mastered swordfish before progressing onto this drill.
If you like this most recent progressive freestyle drill, which gets you focusing
on all aspects of the stroke, make sure you check out our other
tutorials which we upload every week here
on the Propulsion Swimming YouTube channel. Please SUBSCRIBE, leave a comment
and we'll catch you next week.
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