Enhance your swimming skills with these 5 exercises
What's the story
Swim fins are powerful training tools for swimmers. They enhance your underwater propulsion and make you a more efficient swimmer.
By focusing on specific drills with swim fins, you can refine your technique, build strength and power in your muscles, and improve your speed.
This article provides five swim fin drills for better underwater propulsion.
Kick drill
Flutter kick focus
The flutter kick drill with swim fins focuses on building leg strength and endurance.
Swimmers should aim for a steady, fast-paced flutter kick, keeping their legs straight and close together.
This drill enhances the efficiency of the flutter kick and also promotes ankle flexibility, a key factor for generating powerful propulsion.
Dolphin drill
Dolphin kick development
Adding the dolphin kick drill to your regimen will greatly improve your underwater phase, particularly for butterfly and freestyle swimmers.
Push off the wall with fins on and perform a sequence of dolphin kicks underwater before surfacing.
The fins' resistance will build leg strength and assist in learning the rhythm of this powerful kick.
Speed drill
Speed play with fins
Speed play, or fartlek training with swim fins, involves alternating between sprinting and easy swimming intervals.
This improves cardiovascular fitness and helps swimmers learn to modulate their speed with different efforts.
It's perfect for replicating race conditions where speed changes are necessary.
Swimmers learn to pace themselves during races, enhancing performance.
Endurance drill
Endurance building sets
Long-distance swims with swim fins are an excellent drill for building endurance and strengthening leg muscles.
Swimmers should focus on keeping a steady pace throughout these sets, making sure their technique doesn't break down.
This drill not only increases endurance but also greatly strengthens the leg muscles, which is key to efficiently managing long swimming practices or competitions.
Technique drill
Technique refinement sessions
Wearing swim fins during technique drills enables swimmers to focus on perfecting their stroke mechanics. They won't sink or slow down due to exhaustion, and they can maintain a streamlined position in the water.
Drills like catch-up freestyle or single-arm backstroke are more beneficial. Swimmers can experience each movement more intensely due to the increased resistance provided by the fins.