Sensory Skill Practice

Another way to improve your stroke is by lengthening your arm pull. When young swimmers first start out in the water, the most common thing for them to do is to pull with short choppy arms. It is much easier than stretching out to make your stoke longer. But they don’t know that making your stroke longer is something that can make you swim much faster. In the book it talks about this and it states that the best way to improve you stroke is by doing drills at a slow enough pace for you to focus on really reaching as far as you can out of the water and then pulling through the water (Laughlin 99). I still struggle with this when I swim because it is not an easy habit to break.

               When I was at the pool I decided to try the drill that the book gave me. It says, “Go slowly. Your body is more sensitive to new sensations when moving gently through the water. You’ll have plenty of chance to pile on speed later” (Laughlin 99).  When I was doing this is didn’t worry about the clock or the time it was taking me. I just focused on what the drill was telling me to do and why it would help me in the long run.

          Have you ever done drills in your sport that have noticeably helped you?

Laughlin, Terry, and John Delves. "Come to Your Senses. Swim by Feel." Total Immersion: The Revolutionary Way to Swim Better, Faster, and Easier. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004. 99-100. Print.