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Welcome to the “FINIS Tip of the Week.” Swimming World will be bringing you a topic that we’ll explore with drills and concepts for you to implement with your team on a regular basis. While certain weeks may be more appropriate for specific levels of swimming (club, high school, college, or masters), each tip is meant to be flexible for your needs and inclusive for all levels of swimming.

This week’s tip looks at the underwater recovery drill. This is a great drill to work on the high elbow catch position that is crucial in freestyle.

The drill is done exclusively under the water, sliding the arm back to the front under the water after each freestyle pull. This purposely slows down their tempo, creating a heightened awareness of their high elbow position and providing coaches on deck to more easily see where they may be dropping their elbow or slipping through their pull.

It also has the somewhat unintentional benefit of creating awareness in how they are using their core and hips to drive their rotation, since eliminating the above water recovery limits how much rotation they can drive from their shoulders. A good cue is to think of rolling each arm forward over the side of a barrel and then pressing that barrel behind them as they initiate their pull.

But identifying a flaw in their stroke is only one part of any drill work. Underwater recovery is also useful since there are a lot of modifications you can make to this drill to give your athletes a better “feel” for their catch.

Adding a snorkel eliminates any disruptions to body position from breathing and direct focus only on their pull, while adding paddles can help swimmers grab more water with each pull. You can also grab a tempo trainer and play around with the speed of each pull, starting slow and gradually speeding up with each repeat to play around with the feel of the pull. Happy swimming!

All swimming and dryland training and instruction should be performed under the supervision of a qualified coach or instructor, and in circumstances that ensure the safety of participants.