Swimming Drills & Accessories??

Without seeing you swim it is impossible to recommend drills.  Drills in general are used FAR too often by triathletes, often in-lieu of simply putting in sufficient yardage during training.  Yes, it is true if you have a specific and identifiable problem/issue/shortcoming then there may be a drill that will help you improve that area of your technique.  However, to blindly prescribe a drill or set of drills may, indeed probably would, do more harm than good.  just because a drill helped another person does not mean it will help you in the same way.  The best thing you can do is spend time with a qualified coach/instructor who can identify the flaws in your technique then offer appropriate suggestions for improvement.  Absent a coach/instructor on deck, you might consider a remote video analysis.  While not as efficient as a coach on deck, it is a viable alternative.

Good luck.

Thank you, Scott!  I'm glad to see you chimed in here before people started sharing their "favorite" drills.

Scott gives excellent advice here.  Getting suggestions for drills from people who haven't seen you swim is like getting advice for good medications from people who don't know anything about your illness.  A diagnosis is necessary before a prescription can be made.

Hey Amy,

First off, before i say what i am about to say, i am not looking for a fight so please don't take anything I say personally - it isn't directed at you.  I want to highlight my earlier point for anyone that is interested  Sorry it will be at your "expense."  For the record, I didn't say that drills were bad.  I said, "if you have a specific and identifiable problem/issue/shortcoming then there may be a drill that will help you improve that area of your technique."

I also said, 'Drills in general are used FAR too often by triathletes, often in-lieu of simply putting in sufficient yardage during training."

It's great that you found a drill that helped you.  That does not, in and of itself, mean that same drill will help the OP.  Maybe it will be valuable, perhaps not.  Until someone qualified to assess his (?) stroke actually sees him swim, anyone offering drills is simply guessing.

I rarely have athletes I work with do a specific drill for more than 3-4 weeks.  That you did a single drill for 3-years highlights what I said about drills being used far to often by triathletes, often in-lieu of simply putting in sufficient yardage.  Back when we were in grade school; when we learned cursive writing, we were all given that special lined paper and we did writing drills.  But we don't do those anymore do we?  Why?  Because we acquired a basic skill and moved on.  In the same way, a drill will help you eliminate a flaw and acquire a basic skill.  However at some point, you must move on and swim.  

I began my competitive swimming career over 47 years ago.  I was very fortunate to have competed at a high level both Nationally and Internationally.  To this day, I still have a coach watch me swim a couple of times a year.  I still do a focused technique block every off-season and at the beginning of the summer.  Both of those technique blocks include some drill work.  However, after I have brushed up my technique, I put in the yards.  There is a dichotomy at work in swimming that is very difficult to overcome - you can't have good technique without good swim fitness and you can't have good swim fitness without good technique.  You can't have one without the other as they are two sides of the same coin - they must be built simultaneously.  If you spend all your time, or most of your time, doing drills, you will never build sufficient swim fitness to a) acquire truly good technique, and b) ever be fast.

One final point, if you have a qualified coach/instructor that has prescribed a specific drill and you are not making progress within a couple of weeks, either a) the drill is the wrong drill, b) you aren't doing the drill properly, or c) you need a coach or different coach.

As always, good stuff, Scott.  Thanks for sharing your experience.

The bolded part is particularly good.  How often do we see debates regarding whether technique or fitness is more important, or which one a particular athlete should work on?  The answer is always that they're both important, because they're intertwined to the point of being the same thing.  Instead of thinking of them as two different things, I encourage my athletes to view them as one thing:  technique-fitness.  Without adequate fitness, technique breaks down, and without adequate technique, you won't be applying the right stresses to achieve the desired fitness gains.  Always be working on both.

The other thing you can do is interval training.  The whole point of doing intervals is that you can swim further overall with proper technique.

Just coming back, you might start out with something like 2-3 x [10 x 50 @ [STP+3] w/15-20 seconds rest], 2 minutes between sets.  As you progress, drop the rest interval down to 10 seconds. (STP=Swim Threshold Pace).   As you continue to progress you can add an additional set or step up to 100's.

After you have regained your fitness, change your pace to STP and increase rest to 15 seconds.

Hope that helps.

Great posts by Scott.  I also liked Don's analogy about waiting for a medical diagnosis before getting a prescription.