Hey guys, welcome to this week's video from Propulsion Swimming.
I'm Scott and in this week's video I'm going to be taking you through
the best drills you can do to improve your overall freestyle technique.
Okay so when it comes to looking at improving your overall freestyle technique, there are
five main elements that you need to look at. In the teaching and coaching world of swimming
this is known as BLABT and this is an acronym for each stage of the freestyle stroke.
So, the first B of BLABT is for your body position,
the L is for your legs, the A is for your arms, the second B is for your breathing,
and the final T is for the timing of your stroke. Now there's a huge amount of freestyle drills
that you can do which are going to improve your stroke technique. Whether it's on the YouTube
universe or from your coaches, you're going to be given a massive list that you can try.
But in this video we've narrowed it down to the four most important ones that are going to improve
every stage of the BLABT acronym. With the added bonus that all four of these are specifically
focused around body position and rotation of your stroke. So let's kick things off by looking at
that first B in the BLABT rule which is your body position. So when it comes to the position of your
body when you're swimming freestyle, you want to keep your body almost completely horizontal
and swim as high in the water as possible. And with freestyle being an alternating stroke,
this means that body rotation is going to happen and is actively encouraged. So what this means is
you're going to spend most of your time on your side rather than on your front. So with that in
mind the first drill that we recommend you trying is swordfish and this drill is solely focused
on improving your body position and giving you the best start in the freestyle stroke.
The main aim of swordfish is to get your hips as close to the water surface as possible whilst
maintaining a strong six feet leg kick. This position best replicates the position you'd be in
when at full extension after each arm stroke and is also the position you'll be in when you
want to start your breath in freestyle. So you need to be aware that there are
many faults that can happen with swordfish, especially if you are a beginner swimmer.
One of which is having a head position that's too high which therefore makes your hips sink.
Now you'll remember I said at the beginning of this section that you're going to want to
keep your body as horizontal as possible which means your hips need to stay high in the water.
Swordfish is also a great drill that can help you move on to the next letter of the BLABT acronym
and that's your legs. Now if you ask pretty much any swimmer how they train legs during
a swimming session they're going to go straight to their kick float and recommend that you use that.
However we believe that kick floats shouldn't be used. That's because it directly affects your body
position as your head is already really high out of the water which will cause your hips to sink
low which isn't a position you want to be in while swimming freestyle. So with that in mind,
we recommend staying in the swordfish position if you are trying to train your leg kick.
Seeing as though arms is the next letter of the BLABT acronym,
we'd recommend using a drill that progresses on from swordfish and that's called shark fin.
Shark Fin, which is also known as zipper, is a drill that introduces the first part of the
overarm recovery. Although most would see this as an arm improvement drill, which of course it is,
we see it more as a progression on from swordfish which develops your body position
and leg kick. It continues thinking about all the techniques of swordfish such as high hips,
strong kick, and having a high leading arm, as well as beginning the overarm recovery phase. And
even though you want to make sure you have a high elbow when doing this drill, you must still make
sure that your body position and leg kick are done correctly as previously practiced in swordfish.
So the third drill that we'd recommend you doing if you're looking to improve your
overall freestyle technique is another progression again,
and this time it combines all four of the first letters of BLABT. So your body position,
your legs and your arms, and more importantly your breathing really come into focus when
performing this drill. This is the part of the freestyle stroke that many people
struggle with. Some beginner swimmers may have issues with water going up their nose, swallowing
water or just not being able to get your mouth out of the water at the correct position. So to
help you train the correct freestyle breathing technique we recommend you using 6 kick switch.
Not only does six kick switch improve body position and leg kick,
it's a great way to improve body rotation and the timing of your breath as well as the underwater
phase of your arm pull. It really is one of the most dynamic drills that you can do. The main
aim is to improve your body rotation as you pull your arm through the water when you switch from
side to side. This movement should initiate from your hips and your arm pull should help complete
the movement by pushing your hand through to your hip. With good body rotation, breathing should
become a lot easier, especially if you maintain a strong leg kick. You also want to make sure that
you catch as much water as possible by having a high elbow on the underwater phase of your pull.
Now the final drill that we're going to give you in this video is extremely close to performing
full stroke freestyle and it can help greatly with every aspect of your freestyle stroke. Again,
repeating myself, it's going to complete the BLABT acronym. So it looks at your body position,
your leg kick, your arm pull, your breathing, and the timing of your stroke. And this drill
is called 6-3-6. It's an excellent drill that you can perform to help complete the progression of
drills you've seen throughout this video. It is effectively the same as six kick switch however,
once you've done six kicks on your side, instead of just doing the one freestyle stroke, you're
now doing three of them. As it is very similar to fullstroke freestyle, the timing is very important
here as you want to try and perform the catch phase of the stroke as you are rotating onto the
other side. This makes your drive phase stronger as you're not only using your arms to push the
water backwards, but you're also using your hips and your core to make the movement more powerful
If you'd like to go into more detail on all of the drills you've seen in this week's video,
we have broken each one of these drills down individually on our YouTube channel,
so why don't you go over there and check them out. If you've enjoyed this video don't forget
to give it a thumbs up, share it with your friends and comment below letting us know how you get on.
Please SUBSCRIBE to the Propulsion Swimming YouTube channel and I'll see you on the next one!