• Strength training – A powerful kick requires strong legs. Squats are the best gym excercise you can do for breaststroke kick.
• Stretching – Improve flexibility in the hamstrings, gluts and hip flexors by stretching for 5 minutes a day.
• Drills – My favourite way to work on kick in the pool is to perform different kicking drills. They in include breaststroke kick on the back and hand to heel kick. Another good one is vertical kick.

In the Effortless Breaststroke program you’ll discover the exercises and drills that elite swimmers do in training to perfect their technique and increase their speed.

The solution comes down to two things.

Your stroke (swimming technique) and your breathing technique (ability to control your breathing). The breathing technique is rarely spoken about, so I thought I’d shed some light on it. Here’s a video which explains the correct way to breath in freestyle.

Increasing your lung capacity isn't just about holding your breath

Imagine swimming at a faster pace for longer because you learned a simple exercise you could easily practice as you trained. This is my goal with this article.

There are three things in swimming which affect your oxygen levels. They are:

1. Technique
2. Lung capacity
3. Mindset

They may not sound like your usual factors. Let’s take a look at them.

Technique

In swimming, it’s important you have your swimming technique right. If you’re inefficient, you make a lot of splash and have an untidy technique you’ll lose breath quickly. On the hand, if your technique is smooth, balanced and controlled you’ll be able to manage your oxygen levels easily. Here’s an example:

Last week I challenged my swimmers to swim as far as they could without taking a breath. You’ll never believe what happened next.

Of the 18 swimmers who tried, only 3 made it the entire 50 meters. The other 15 didn’t make it past 30 meters. How could there be such a drop off?

The difference was their technique.

The swimmers who made it 50 meters were able to minimise their kick (which uses most of your oxygen), stay balanced in the water and sit themselves high in the water. The others were doing the opposite of these things.

Lung Capacity

To suck in more oxygen with each breath, it stands to reason that the bigger your lung capacity, the more oxygen you can get.

My favorite exercise to increase lung capacity is to do breath control swimming. This is when you breath every X strokes per lap. Stay with me on this because it can have a big impact on your swimming.

For example, if you are swimming 200 meters in a 50 meter pool, try breath every 3 strokes on the first lap, every 5 strokes the second lap, every 3 stroke the third and every 7 strokes the final lap. If you’re new to this it may be difficult to get to 7 strokes, so some practice will be needed.

The most my swimmers can do is breathing every 11 or 12 strokes if they only swim 50 meters of it. Start of with breathing every 5 strokes to push yourself, and build up as you get more comfortable. Some of the swimming workouts I’ve included in Effortless Swimming workouts use this type of breath control.

Mindset

Mindset plays a big role in swimming, even though it’s rarely spoken about. It’s even more true when it’s comes to breath control. Because it’s such a mental battle when you run out of oxygen, your lungs are screaming for a breath and any second you feel you could black out. In reality, we give up much earlier than we need to. We tell ourselves we must breath or won’t be able to continue. That’s crap.

I’ve come to realise we can usually push ourselves much more than we let on. The human body is an amazing thing. It’s not going to let anything happen to you when it comes to holding your breath.

Focus your mind on other things, ‘switch it off’ so to speak. Go inside your mind and relax as you go through the breath control exercises.

*******************

To increase your lung capacity it comes down to improving your technique, working on the drills to expand your lungs and being able to control your mental state. Practice these things and you should find yourself swimming longer distances with less effort. It’s an important part of swimming which I heard Australia’s head coach Leigh Nugent speak highly about. Try the exercises in your next session.

Here’s the first three steps you need to take to swim better freestyle.

1. Constant Kick – You don’t need to have a super kick to be a fast freestyler. In fact, the fastest freestyle girl I coach barely kicks at all. Kick is used for body position and balance more than propulsion in triathlons. Your kicks should be small and continuous. To improve your kick you can:

• Practice vertical kick – Kick in an upright position in deep water, arms crossed at the chest.
• Use fins – Wearing fins for kick is a great way to get better if you feel you’re not getting any power from your legs.
• Stretch your ankles – 3 sets of ankle stretches for 20-30 seconds before you train or race will do wonders for your kick.

2. Shark fin drill – A great drill for practising body position and arm recovery. Kick on your side, one arm out in front with your head facing the down. Bring your opposite arm along your side keeping the arm relaxed and bent. Once you reach the point just before you’d normally enter, draw the hand back alongside the body.

3. Stroke and rotation drill (a.k.a 6 kicks / 1 stroke changeover drill) – Similar to shark fin drill except this time instead of drawing the arm back to the body, you’ll follow through and complete a stroke. After the stroke, perform 6 kicks then take another stroke. Continue until you reach the end of the pool.

Kevin covers all these steps in more detail in his new membership program. It’s only only open for a few more hours as of writing this until he shuts down registration because he has a whole new bunch of people who he’s working with. Check it out if you like through the link below.

Grab Tri Swim Secrets here (closes midnight, May 20th)

Claim your bonus here.

Limited time only: Get 2 months FREE swim workouts

The most popular course is the Mastering Freestyle program. If you are sick of hearing the same old tricks and you’re ready to completely revamp your freestyle so it’s easy to swim and you glide through the water like a hot knife through butter, this is for you.

New Drills
In the program I introduce a series of drills which will radically transform your technique, even if you really struggle in the water. The program runs through 4 separate modules; balance and body position, rotation, arms and pull, the whole stroke. These step-by-step lessons are the ultimate technique development program.

Complex concepts made simple
Freestyle technique is a combination of many different elements. The catch, body rotation, kick, breathing and recovery (just to name a few). Often this is overwhelming when learning to swim freestyle. Many coaches and instructors will teach you the separate elements, but fail to put them all together. The Mastering Freestyle program teaches ‘feeling’ the water and automatically linking each part of the stroke together (you won’t even know it’s happening).

Proven system
Learning to swim smooth freestyle shouldn’t be an ongoing struggle. Most swimmers and triathletes will persist with the same technique for years. Training harder isn’t the most effective way. Improve technique. Improve speed. Improve times. Mastering Freestyle is an easy to follow system which rapidly changed even the ugliest of freestyle into a long and relaxed stroke.

This stuff works
After putting hundreds of people through the program, I know the program works. The three recurring themes I commonly hear about the program are; swimming becomes easier which has increased my endurance, my speed has increased in both short and longer swims, I’m get much further each stroke which has reduced my stroke count. From novices to experienced swimmers, huge improvements in freestyle have been made.

Limited time only: Get 2 months FREE workouts

If there was one thing which if you could get right, you know your swimming would improve dramatically, what would it be? Leave a comment below and let me know!

I know when I was  first starting out I always had trouble finding a rhythm in freestyle. My stroke would constantly feel messy and I could never swim long distance events because I had no momentum. After much experimenting, I discovered the way to find a rhythm in freestyle is to choose a breathing pattern and stick to it. That doesn’t mean you MUST breath every 3rd stroke or every 4th stroke, it means whatever pattern you choose for one lap, you stick to it. For example in a 25 meter pool my breathing pattern is now 2/3/3/2 for one lap. I have found this to be the best rhythm for me.

So if there was one thing which if you could learn, you believe your swimming would improve dramatically, what would it be?

Leave your answer by leaving a comment below and I’ll do my best to get back to you

Happy swimming, Brent

When I was a little kid, sculling was one of the the first things I was taught after I’d learnt the basics of floating, kicking and breathing. At the time, it felt like sculling wasn’t a beneficial exercise and I was never told why we did it. After 12 years, I finally discovered why it’s such an important drill to do, especially in the week leading up to a race.

Before an important race or competition, swimmers will taper for 5-10 days. Tapering means to reduce the volume of training so the body can rest and recover in order to perform at it’s peak. When swimmers taper they become prone to losing the ‘feel’ of the water because they have gotten so used to swimmer regularly. As they taper they swim less and their body can find it difficult to ‘remember’ the correct technique. Sculling is the solution to this.

‘Front scull’ is the most common sculling technique. It is performed on the front with the swimmer facing the bottom of the pool. The swimmer should put their arms in front of their head and scull in and out with their hand and forearm in a sweeping motion. The hands should be bent downwards slightly at the wrist in order for the swimmer to move forward. The upper arm should remain still while the forearm is moving side to side. During the out sweep the thumbs should be facing down and during the in sweep the thumbs should be facing up. Depending on a swimmers ability, they may want to do this drill with fins if they are a beginner. Amateurs should do the drill without fins and more advanced swimmers should use a pull buoy to isolate the arms.

Sculling is important because allows the swimmer to become familiar with the initial catch position of the stroke they are practising for. In ‘front scull’, the sculling is performed at the initial ‘catch’ position of the freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke strokes. By getting the initial catch correct in these strokes, it sets up the swimmer for a powerful pull through and helps overall with their stroke.

Practising sculling in training and leading up to a competition can help a swimmer maintain the all important ‘feel’ for the water. ‘Front scull’ helps a swimmer practice the correct position for the initial catch in freestyle, butterfly and breaststroke. This is vitally important so the swimmer can develop power in their stroke. Sculling is a simple drill to perform which if practiced for a few minutes each training session, can greatly improve a swimmers ‘feel’ for the water.

There are two keys to correct kicking technique in swimming. Swimmers must point their feet down (pointing in the opposite direction to where they want to go) and they must turn their feet and big toe inwards. Most swimmers will get the first point correct without being shown because it happens naturally during the kick, however the second point is something which needs to be learned.

By pointing the feet and big toes inwards (towards the centre line of the body) it increases the area of the feet which is used to generate propulsion and it increases the ankle flex of swimmer during the kicking motion (without needing to increase your ankle flexibility!). The feet and legs should remain ‘relaxed’ throughout the kick as this helps with leg flexibility.

Swimmers who are able to understand and apply the principle of turning the feet inwards will experience a much more powerful kick in each of the four competitive strokes. It may appear too simple an answer to the kicking problems which so many swimmers experience, but it is the first step to correcting kicking in swimming.