Timing Focused Swim: (1300Yds)

The goal here is to discover that the hips are the primary driver of the swim and how to time them with the entry arm and the pulling arm to find the greatest power.

4x25s “Reach and Roll” with complete recovery between each length.

• Push off and swim an easy length.
• As the arm finishes recovery, enters the water and extends forward; reach out to your greatest length and roll slightly to extend that length.
• Wait for the other arm to come forward and when it enters reach maximally and roll slightly onto that side.

1x25 “Catch Up Drill”.

• Full disclosure, I hate this drill. It causes as many problems as it solves so I’m asking you to do one length only as a means to an end and if you can execute this one length perfectly I’ll never ask you to do it again.
• Catch Up means that you will not pull the lead arm back until arm has gone through its entire cycle, entered, extended and physically touched the lead arm.
• Then the new arm out front waits there ‘til that hand gets touch by the other hand. I hate it, you’ll hate it. But do it once.

17x25s of Three Quarter Catch Up.
Okay, now we’ve arrived!

• This time leave the lead arm out front a moment longer than normal and as your other arm comes up through recovery…you think you’re gonna touch, you expect to touch, you nearly touch but just as the recovery arm passes your ear you pull the forward arm back then so that there is more of an overlap than normal but certainly not the full “catch up” from the previous drill.
• Your goal is to feel for the “sweet spot” where the hip rotation is driving both the entry arm forward and the pulling arm back – but now the hip power is attached to that pulling arm much earlier in its pull.

8x100s easy with complete rest.

• When you are going one direction focus on reach and roll, when you are coming back focus on ¾ catch up and playing with the timing of the arm switch to feel for the sweet spot.