1. Swimming Balance Drills
Learning to stand up and to be balanced is a prerequisite to learning to walk. Similarly, learning to stay balanced while simply kicking is a prerequisite to highly effective swimming.

Back-kick
Lie on your back, with your shoulders down and your hips lifted. This will place your head mostly underwater, with only your nose and mouth exposed. This means you’re balanced. Back-kick on your back and then rotate onto your side for twist-down a few kicks, then rotate your chin so you are looking down at bottom of pool for a few kicks. Rotate your chin back to the side-facing position. Then return your body to the original position on your back. Repeat for the other side.

Vertical Kick
Most swimmers waste a lot of energy on kicking with incorrect leg motions, kicking mainly from the knees. Vertical kicking will assist you with effective kicking motions while conditioning the right muscles. Simply place one hand on the top of the other on your chest and start kicking in a deep area of the pool. As you are learning this drill, use full-size training fins.

Sidekick
With your arms down, kick with your arms at the sides for one length. Rotate your head and spinal alignment and alter the firmness. Good balance requires less breathing, only an occasional chin rotation.

2. Arm Stroke Swimming Drills

Catch Up
This drill helps swimmers focus on stroking correctly while using Just one arm at a time. It starts with swimmers in a prone position with both arms extended, begin the freestyle stroke with one arm while leaving the other extended. Complete the one-arm stroke and after fully extending the stroke arm, begin the alternate sidestroke. Emphasizes glide, full extension, and the correct catch, pull, and recovery. Begin this drill slowly, and after experience, you can speed up to normal stroke pace.

Single Arm
Single Arm is probably the most popular of all freestyle drills. The main point is to examine on each part of the arm stoke. As with the catch-up drill, start with both arms extended, perform one-arm stroke, and repeat with same arm for entire length. Switch arms for consecutive lengths. This drill can be combined with fins to work on fast hand-entry, but can also be done without them after proper experience.

Fist
The purpose of the fist drill is to teach you how to use the arms for propulsion.
Clinch your fingers and thumb in a moderately tight fist. Perform freestyle stroke by reaching over a barrel during hand-entry and catch. Using your feet, forearm and fist as a single unit for propulsion. This can be accomplished by holding a tennis ball instead of clinching your fist. This drill is useful as an active recovery lap between interval sets.

Back sculling
This drill improves motion in water and your balance. While on your back look beyond your feet, keep your arms at your sides while sculling with your hands, with your hands moving your body backward.

Stroke count
With a steady, premeditated stroke, count the strokes for one length of a pool. Attempt to reduce strokes on consecutive lengths by streamlining and extending stroke. Maintain new stroke-count numbers on full-speed interval sets. Excellent for testing and as active recovery between interval sets.

3. Breathing Drills

Offside
Repeat breathing on your opposite side on consecutive strokes. The left side is weaker for about 90 percent of swimmers. Breathe at least one length on the offside and then alternate. Practice breathing off sets in the middle of longer intervals or open water swims.

Buoy sighting
For pool practices, set a block, or chair on the middle of the lane wall and practice slightly lifting your head for sightings every 5-10 strokes. Find the idyllic number of strokes between sightings. Only lift your goggles slightly above waterline, preferably on a breath stroke. This works well with bilateral breathing.

Drafting
Practice breathing and stroke pacing directly behind a leading swimmer’s feet. Maintain focus on feet and avoid anything more than occasional light touching, yet keep head down for most strokes.

4. Speed Swimming & Interval drills
Once you are past the beginner’s stage, you should be doing intervals in almost every workout. You cannot really swim faster unless you train faster and work harder in your interval sets. It is very difficult to uphold or enhance speed by swimming continuously so long swims should be limited to 1500m

The best advice for novice swimmers is to keep your drills simple and consistent. Try to do no more than three simple drills each week that target the common limiters of balance, head-body position, and breathing. Beginners should plan to do drills in every swim workout, if possible it is recommended to do them at least twice a week. Keep in mind that it is easier to train the inexperienced then it is to change the bad habits of the experienced.
Usually, as the season progresses the amount of time spent on swimming drills will decrease, but it is important to do some drills in order to remind your body about better technique.

Swimming with a group can be an excellent way for beginners to be subject to a wide range of drills. The down side of joining to a group is they may not target your specific needs so If you join, speak with your instructor about creating a personalized drill set to make the most of your limiters. A coach will often be thankful for your dedicated effort and give you advice on your drills.

For most swimmers practicing three or four times a week, one of the workouts should contain long intervals to endorse endurance and another should use medium-distance intervals to build muscular endurance. The remaining practices can be dedicated to recovery and skills building.

Swimming drills Tips

- The most important thing to keep in mind is the purpose of the drill while performing it. Performing the drills with you mind wondering off some place else will not be as effective. You must have the need and desire to improve and blend the motions into your actual freestyle stroke and intervals.

- Balance your drills on both sides. Severe differences in right-left body strength can be corrected by intermittently doubling the drills for the weaker side, excellence and healing outweigh speed and intensity, and even more so for drills.

Remember to incorporate drills with your regular freestyle sets. It is better to do the majority of drills during the early swim warm-lap is a successful use of time. Since the drills are best done at a lower heart rate before exhaustion sets in. Find the keys that concentrate on your limiters and construct faster interval splits in training and testing. Pick one or two keys to use during racing. The fewer keys you need, the better you are.

The fun part of racing in open water is you will not have to worry about land dividers or challenging flip turns. During open water racing your stroke technique, strategy, and muscular ability play a big role in your speed.

Wet Suits
When at all possible use a wet suit for open water swims. The wet suit promotes bouncy and body position so for novice swimmers, wet suits can gain around 10 percent faster then without. In most triathlon events there is a requirement for use of wet suits above specific temperature so make sure to bring it along just in case.
When shopping for wet suits there are various types of wet suits to choose from, you have sleeves or no sleeves or even full body Lycra suits. The full body Lycra suits are more expensive and may not last as long as others may. It depends on personal preference, whatever style is most comfortable for you, make sure you practice in it and get used to the difference before race day.
Learn to don your wet suit and swim in it before your race day. cooking-oil spray can help in donning and removing the suit quickly. The zipper is in the back and they fit very snugly until you get into the water and loosen them up.

Race Tips

Position: Don’t start at the front or middle of your wave if you are not a strong swimmer. t can be quite rough in the front or middle of the pack if you don’t have much experience with open water swimming .The best advice for beginners would be to start at the end of the pack and off to the side, this prevents you from getting in the way and being trampled.

Know the course: Look at the map of the swim and figure out which direction you will need to swim and when. Also if possible, Talk to people who have previously done the race. It might be a good idea to take another racer with you and swim the course in advance.

Sighting practice: Hopefully, you have practiced sighting buoys in the pool and worked on balancing your stroke. You may need to stress one arm stroke or another to compensate for currents or weaknesses in your own technique.

Stay Relaxed: If the water is cold and this happens, relax, your body is adjusting to the water temperature. Concrete on breathing deeply and think about your technique while swimming.

Drafting: Once the swimmers break up, many of the experienced swimmers will follow behind another to take advantage of drafting; Just make sure you stick behind a swimmer slightly faster then yourself. The best place to be is usually behind the swimmer’s feet, also 45 degrees on either side of their feet also works well.
It is common for swimmers to go all out hard and fast in the beginning of a competitive swim. If the swimmer is falling behind, pull backward or move to the side and out of the way. At this stage, it may be best to manoeuvre your way around this swimmer and find another drafting target. When you have a drafting target in your sights before you follow behind make sure they are navigating the buoys correctly. Any lead you may have gained will all be lost and not make a difference if your lead person has no idea where the buoys are located.

Kick Fins
Kick fins are good if you are going to use them for balance drills. But be careful not to rely on them and make sure you’re as balanced and in the same position when you’re not wearing them.

A solid, continuous kick takes a backseat in the importance in any competition however; they should be included in your training schedule because it encourages higher body position and allows you to manoeuvre in a straight line.

Kick fin that is widely recommended by swimmers is the shorter style, they help with proper body position, they do not conflict with flip turns, and they have a very low probability of causing knee and ankle stress.
Common drills for beginners using short fins include back and side kicks drills. They may be used for arm side drills during training, however, when you become familiar with the drill do not continue to use them. Also keep in mind when using a pull buoy or paddles do not use fins in conjunction.

Kick Board
Kickboard is another popular training device. Like floats, they allow the swimmer to develop his or her kicking action. Although kick boards help improve your power and strength in your legs, it does very little to your augment balance.

Goggles
Goggles serve two major purposes – protecting the swimmer’s eyes from chemicals, harmful rays and damaging lights, and allowing the swimmer to better see underwater. We recommend wearing watertight goggles that also offer wide-angle vision and a low drag profle
Pull Buoy
One of the most popular aid is the pull buoy which is popular in training drills because it allows you to work on your arm stroke and breathing at a lower heart rate while continuing to focus on your kick. However, there are downsides to everything and when using pull buoys they tend to cover up your balance and stroke limiters. Swimmers who tend to go faster using a pull buoy then without, may have a problem with their body position and kick technique. It is recommended to limit the use of the pull buoy during warm-ups, drills that use paddles, and recovery training.

Paddles
Using paddle increase the risk of injury due to over use or using them wrong to begin with. They are known for actually increasing stroke mistakes by developing the strength without the balance. Therefore, it is important to know the proper technique in order to get the best optimal performance. If you have a solid arm stroke paddles can encourage a stronger catch and greater propulsion for the push and pull. These days there are numerous types of paddles all claiming to help some specific stroke quality. The one most highly recommended would be a small to medium sized paddle.

For people who have shoulder problems, or if you struggle with technique limiters, it is not recommended to use a paddle. If you are a beginner, it is not recommended due to the high risk of injuries due to inexperience. The use of a paddle takes only ten minutes of paddle strokes in one session a week to improve your strength. Once you have a strong stroke and the closer you get to racing season you can use the paddles to add force and to build muscular strength, however keep in mind you need to continue with the correct form.

Stretch Cords
In order to get the most out of land exercises to improver your swimming techniques it is best to use stretch cords. Stretch cords are a great way to simulate swimming motions without ever getting in the water. You use different muscles in the water then you do on the land with exercises such as bicycling weight lifting. The direction of the force of stretch cords is the closest to that of the actual swimming stroke. Once you have the basic freestyle stroke down you can begin to use stretch cords to strengthen your push-pull and full stroke.