Effective Drill Practice

How to make a fishlike stroke permanent

By Terry Laughlin

We like to believe that practice makes perfect but, in reality, it only makes permanent whatever you happen to be practicing. And, whether you realize it or not, practicing technique is just what you’re doing on every length of your workout, because each stroke you take helps to build a habit. The fastest way to become a more efficient swimmer and make that efficiency permanent is through stroke drills, not by trying to tweak your whole stroke.

Total Immersion’s Swiminar Workbook, Fishlike Freestyle Video, and workshops are the world’s leading source of cutting-edge stroke drills. We will continue to work on developing ever simpler and more effective skill improvement drill sequences. You could certainly improve your swimming simply by thoughtful, tuned-in practice of any of the drills, but with a real plan for improvement you can make your progress both quicker and more certain. So here’s a guide for doing drills with knowledge and purpose.

Why Drills Teach Better than Anything Else

I’ve noticed a marked reluctance among many devoted swimmers to spend precious pool time on stroke drills. Drills take more time, they reason, and that means fewer yards per hour of pool time, perhaps costing you some workout value. But fitness benefits are measured not in yards completed, but in time spent with your heart in the aerobic training zone. If you complete 2500 yards of swimming in 45 minutes or 2000 yards of drilling in the same time, your cardiovascular system will receive the same training effect so long as your drill practice produces a similar average heart rate. But the improvement effect could be far greater with drill practice, since swimming performance is at least 70 percent stroke efficiency and no more than 30 percent fitness. Here are the ways in which stroke drills perfect your stroke better than anything else you can do in the pool.

Your muscles need a dose of amnesia. Muscle memory is a wonderful thing…unless what your muscles have memorized is inefficient form. In my case, I began to work on stroke efficiency in my late 30s, when I had already been practicing a less-efficient stroke for more than 20 years. My uneconomical stroke was a deeply ingrained habit. As long as I continued swimming, muscle memory would reinforce the old style. But drills are sufficiently different from your normal stroke that your nervous system doesn’t interpret them as “swimming.” That gives you a blank slate on which to practice changes. This allows for dramatic improvements, often made nearly overnight, rather than incremental and reluctant changes, which are the norm.

Small pieces are easier to swallow. We pick up skills easier by breaking a complex movement into manageable segments for practice. Because your stroke is made up of so many finely coordinated parts, it’s virtually impossible to digest the whole thing. Stroke drills are “bite-size,” reducing the whole stroke into a series of mini-skills, each of which can be quickly mastered, each of which gives you the key to solving the next. Then you simply reassemble these building blocks into a new, more efficient stroke.

Instead of trial and error, it’s trial and success. Because mini-skills can be mastered so quickly and easily, you begin practicing smooth moves right away. The more you practice each, the more it becomes your new habit and crowds out the sloppy old one. And the less time you spend swimming with your sloppy old habits, the faster you learn to swim better. Your string of successes boosts your motivation and self-confidence and you learn faster.

It’s language the body understands. Conventional stroke instruction tries to get to your muscles through your mind. First you have to read or hear a description of what you’ll attempt, then you try to figure out what the movement will feel like, all the while wondering if you got it right. Drills bypass all those vague translations. They simplify and accelerate the learning process by teaching your body how it should feel when you swim well. And because drills heighten and focus your kinesthetic awareness, it becomes easier to fine-tune your form than when swimming whole-stroke.

How To Make Drills Work Better and Faster for You

The more you have to learn, the more you should drill--up to four times as much drilling as normal swimming for novices. Think of it this way: Every lap of drilling, which you can learn to do well quickly, is positive reinforcement for your swimming. Every lap of swimming may pull you back toward old habits. So you might ask yourself, “How much swimming can I tolerate as I try to teach my body new skills?” Though every swimmer is different, drills work for most with incredible speed. Everyone I’ve taught them to has improved. I can’t think of any other swim instruction method that can claim that. And drills will work even faster if you:

Think before you swim. When teaching at Total Immersion workshops or coaching at West Point, one of my favorite sayings is: “A drill done 99 percent right is 100 percent wrong!” Drills will teach you what you’re hoping to learn only if you do them correctly. If you do them carelessly or hurriedly, they won’t work their magic. Yes, they do take more time than swimming, but they also pay far greater dividends. Study our drill photos and text carefully, then practice with understanding, attention and a clear sense of purpose to get the greatest benefit.

Do it with feeling. Drills create the most direct mind-muscle connection. If you’re really tuned in, you’ll soon know what the skill you’re practicing feels like when you’re doing it right. If it feels right, it is right, and the mind-muscle connection begins to work more smoothly. The first few sessions with a new drill, stick with it for at least 10 to 15 minutes to firmly imprint the new sense into your muscle memory so you can eventually work by sensation rather than intellect. Experiment with subtle adjustments. As you practice, the main qualities you should be developing in your drills are economy, smoothness, and ease. As these become habits in your drilling, your entire interaction with the water, even while swimming, will be transformed as well.

Don’t drill yourself into a hole. Marathon drill sets bring rapidly diminishing returns. Particularly in the first few weeks of familiarizing yourself with new drills, short repeats and short sets will bring the greatest benefit. Repeats of 25 to 50 yards, with 15 to 30 seconds between for rest, reflection and adjustment will make it much more likely that your drill practice will be effective. Sets that last no longer than 10 to 15 minutes will ensure that your attention remains acute. Every rep should feel a bit smoother and more relaxed, a bit more precise and economical. If not, check the pictures and instructions again (or have a friend watch as you practice), or go back to the previous drill and polish that one before returning to the drill that’s giving you trouble.

Take your drills out for a test swim. After you’ve been practicing a drill long enough to make it second nature, begin alternating drill and swim lengths, trying to make each swim length feel a bit more like what felt different and better in the drill. When pressing your buoy, for instance, your hips and legs should feel lighter as they skim the surface. You should focus on the same feeling when swimming. The main benefit of the drills is that they give you heightened insight into how to make your swimming feel more efficient. Swimming with the same feeling is when the lessons are learned.

If the fin fits… Here’s a paradox. Many of our drills are designed to get your body so well balanced that you won’t need much of a kick to swim well. But, because the drills have built-in pauses in propulsion, you need a reasonably good kick to maintain momentum and keep your drills smooth. If your kick is weak, you’ll waste so much energy struggling that you won’t have any left to drill with. Practice with fins on and you’ll be able to pay attention to the fine points. My favorites for drill practice are Slim Fins.

The best aspect of drills is that they’re self-adjusting. The drills I teach to unskilled adults at weekend workshops are the same ones I use with the highly accomplished swimmers I coach during the week at West Point. Each group gets exactly what it needs from the drills. The inexperienced swimmers learn basic skills. The more advanced swimmers acquire subtle polish in their stokes. So as you improve, you won’t have to learn new drills. You’ll simply do the ones you’re learning now with more refinement.

Happy laps!