Hi I’m Becky Adlington and I’ve got some great tips for anyone taking part in the British Gas SwimBritain challenge.
Hi everyone, my name is David McNulty, I’m Head Coach of this British Swimming ITC based at the University of Bath and today I’m just going to give you a few tips to help with your swimming.
Tip 1) Technique comes first
If you’re starting your training, I would definitely try to focus more on technique, and then you can build in speed, endurance, power and everything later on, once you’ve nailed your technique
Tip 2) Body position
Body position in swimming is very very important, it is probably one of the key elements of all four strokes. If the body position or body alignment is slightly off, it means that you could have your head in one position, your hips low, and your feet would drag nearly on the bottom, so it’s very very important to keep a nice, streamlined position in all of your swimming.
Tip 3) Breathing
Breathing in swimming is very important. You know freestyle is a great training stroke to train on. I like to adopt breathing on every three strokes, bi-laterally, so what I mean by that is just head still, and you just breathe with the roll of your shoulder to the side, three strokes and breathe nicely to the other side, just in line with the moving of the shoulder.
And obviously with breaststroke, you just breathe with the stroke, and breathe every stroke.
Tip 4) Kicking technique
A lot of people who come in for public swims always make the mistake of not kicking hard enough, and their feet are maybe two foot under the surface of the water, again just have a nice, strong leg kick which keeps the feet and legs in line with the body. This is very very important in swimming.
Tip 5) Head position
What you don’t want to be is a swimmer who comes in for a swim and just learns the stroke with keeping that head up all the time. If you wear a swimming cap, a lot of where the swimming cap goes, there is normally a line where you might break the surface of the water.
Somewhere halfway up the forehead, just nice and relaxed, in line with the shoulders, so you’re not looking too far up or too far down, just in line with the body.
Tip 6) Hand position
You know, some people say ‘where do you put your fingers on freestyle’, I like them closed, but not fully closed, because you form a little web effect so you can probably have them open very slightly but not too wide because the water can slip through.
And I like to enter (the water with my hand) thumb and finger first, nice, clean entry, but then you’ve got to get all of the water, which is called ‘the catch’, and that’s when you get all of the water, start to bring it back so you move forward.
Tip 7) Build up slowly
It is very very important to build up gradually, which will give you a lot more fitness but will also help you feel better within swimming, you’ll improve, you’ll get faster, you’ll get quicker, and you’ll feel yourself getting a lot stronger the more gradually you go.
Most pools have a pace clock so you can time yourself over 200 metres or 4 or 5 lengths to see how fast you go, and then try and build on that. And it’s just about taking each session as it comes, don’t get too ahead of yourself by setting a crazy goal, it’s not about making the Olympic team but just about improving to your own progression and enjoying it at the same time.
Tip 8) Breaststroke technique
What we say as coaches is, if you say to yourself ‘kick, glide, pull’, that’ll help with your timing. So what I mean by that is, you’ll kick, glide, and then you’ll do your pull. Kick, glide, and then do your pull. Now that’s breaststroke timing.
Tip 9) Kick board drills
If you’re coming in three or four times a week, you don’t just want to do freestyle all the time, you just need to add different elements into your programme. And to add kick in to your programme will help the legs, tone up the legs, strengthen the legs but put variey into your programme.
OK guys, so when I do freestyle kick, I like to get the swimmer to have their goggles on and actually have their head in the pool, rather than kicking with their head up. There are three ways of holding your kick board, you can hold it at the top, you can hold it in the middle, or more advanced, you can hold it at the end.
Tip 10) Training cards
There are also training cards which are absolutely brilliant and I’d definitely definitely recommend, it makes your training interesting, it gives you a goal as well, and once you’ve got that technique sorted, you can build on it and this is what the training sessions will aid you and help you to do. It’ll give you that target and that marker, and instead of just plodding up and down, it’s a bit more interesting if you’ve got an actual goal. You can work on the technique points that you’ve just done in those sessions as well.
Alright guys so all the very best for your British Gas SwimBritain challenge!
Motivate yourself, get healthy along the way, get toned up and enjoy yourselves.
I want to wish everyone a huge good luck that are taking part in the British Gas SwimBritain challenge, have fun, enjoy it and keep swimming!
