- Let's face it, freestyle is the obvious stroke of choice
for virtually every triathlete when we enter a race,
and therefore it tends to also be
the obvious stroke of choice during our swim training too.
However, there are three other strokes available
to you as an alternative option
during your swimming training
with some great advantages to them,
so today I thought we'd discuss
why you should consider including them
into your triathlon training,
and how you go about doing that.
(digital swoosh)
Okay, so what are these other strokes
that I'm talking about.
Well in order of their relative usefulness
to us as triathletes, in my opinion we have,
backstroke, breaststroke and then butterfly.
However if you are still learning the ropes
with the freestyle technique and getting the hang of it,
I would suggest that you focus all your attention
and energy on mastering that technique first,
however if you are pretty happy with your technique
and feel for the water with the freestyle stroke,
then by all means feel free to mix things up,
start including these other strokes
to add a little bit more variety to your swimming
and enjoyment in the water.
(relaxed upbeat music)
Now you may have heard of the term individual medley
and this is when all four strokes
are swum in equal measures one after the other.
We start off with butterfly, then into backstroke,
breaststroke, and then finishing off with freestyle.
Now of all the four strokes,
it's probably that first one, butterfly,
that you can need to worry about the least.
I say that, I do include butterfly into my own training
'cause it can help to add some strength to your swimming,
but it is probably the stroke
that is the most technically demanding
in terms of trying to get to grips with,
and also can be quite physically demanding,
whereas backstroke and breaststroke
are far easier to get the hang of,
and very easy to start including
in your workouts and adding that variety,
amongst having loads of other benefits to them.
One of which is injury prevention,
see for a lot of triathletes,
swimming tends to be the discipline
they've come to later in life,
or maybe it's just their weaker discipline,
and therefore the possibility of getting
an overuse injury from diving in, quite literally,
to swimming too much, too soon, is much higher.
See, that repetitive movement
of spinning the arms over with freestyle
can exert quite a lot of pressure on the shoulders,
and obviously that is magnified
with a flawed or poor technique,
so this is where those alternative strokes come in
to save the day.
(upbeat music)
So backstroke is probably the obvious place to start,
I tend to refer to it as if you're unwinding your arms,
it's the opposite motion from the freestyle stroke,
so it really helps to relax those shoulders.
But the benefits don't stop there
because it is a fairly fast stroke to perform,
you're able to cover quite good distances with it,
so we can keep that aerobic fitness up
all whilst can be a bit of a break
from staring at the bottom of the pool
and maybe just from the freestyle stroke,
if you are having to focus on certain technical aspects
with your freestyle technique.
Breaststroke on the other hand
is really quite a different movement and motion,
so what what I normally suggest
is you really ease yourself into it,
try and keep the movements quite small,
try and keep the kick a little bit
more narrower than normal,
particularly if you're new to performing breaststroke
or you haven't performed it in quite a long time
because what you find is some muscles can be quite tight,
particularly the adductors, and you can strain them.
But on the other hand,
that can actually help
with just improving some flexibility
and actually getting that motion and range
in some of the joints which we don't normally move them in.
Then we have butterfly as I mentioned before,
it's probably not a stroke you're going to be jumping at doing,
but it is a stroke that I quite like doing,
just small bursts during the winter, the off season,
perhaps just half a length at a time,
and that can really help to add
a little bit more strength to your swimming.
(upbeat music)
Okay, so how can you start incorporating
these other strokes into your own training?
Well the obvious,
and probably the easiest place to start doing it,
is in your warm-ups, your warm-downs,
and your recovery reps,
now that's going to start adding
some really nice variety to the training.
As I mentioned before,
breaststroke is totally different
from freestyle in the movement,
so I actually really like to include it in the cool down,
just to give me a break from freestyle,
having done that for the whole session,
or most of the session,
and really start to stretch things out.
And if you are starting to do some longer reps,
300, 400, 500 meters and so on,
then actually why not think about doing 75 meters freestyle,
followed by 25 meters backstroke,
and keep repeating that over.
Again, that's just going to break things up
really nicely for you,
but if backstroke is fairly hard you,
you can always think of it as a fartlek effort,
so you're doing 75 meters front crawl, easy,
followed by 25 meters backstroke at quite a hard intensity.
Or if you like,
why not use breaststroke instead of backstroke,
or you can alternate between the two during the same rep.
Now, if you are feeling really cheeky,
you really want to tough workout here,
then why not include some individual medley,
or IM as I mentioned earlier.
I probably suggest doing some short reps here,
so you can do a little set of individual medley,
something like 4 x 100 IM,
take a nice recovery between each of those 100s,
and that can really start to add a bit of strength,
particularly over the off season.
All right, and to finish things off here,
we've got a rather fun one
because I'm going to amalgamate backstroke and breaststroke
into a stroke that we like to call Old English Backstroke
in the UK.
It's essentially a double-arm backstroke on our back,
but with a breaststroke leg kick.
I know, it sounds quite weird,
but it's something all three of us here on duty,
and quite like to include in our recovery reps
and our warm-downs,
because we're moving in a totally different way
and it's quite a nice peaceful stroke,
so just quite nice to stretch that body out,
having done freestyle for most of the session.
Now if you have enjoyed today's video,
do make sure you hit that thumbs up button,
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Let's not forget that we do love freestyle,
and we do love swimming,
but doing it lap after lap,
it can get a little bit monotonous and boring,
so we hope you are going to get involved
and start using some other strokes in your own training.
If you'd like some help with that,
we have got some upcoming videos,
we got, How To Swim Backstroke,
and, How To Swim Butterfly coming soon.
If you'd like to see our, How To Swim Breaststroke video,
and all the technique behind that,
you can see that video by clicking down here.
And if you'd like a little bit of a catch-up
on how to swim freestyle,
then you can see that by clicking down here.