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!
