Swimming Plus: Freestyle

Description

SWIMMING PLUS: FREESTYLE

Swimming Plus is designed for those swimmers who want to improve their freestyle swimming technique.

• Regardless of your level of competence or experience, Swimming Plus provides you with a structured swimming training programme to help you become a better, stronger and faster freestyle swimmer.
• Swimming Plus provides you with a series of structured and progressive session training plans, plus detailed drill descriptions and expert coaching tips.
• With Swimming Plus you can progress at your own pace when it’s convenient for you.

Detailed overviews and drill descriptions

Each session focuses on a particular aspect of the freestyle stroke.

• At the beginning of each of these sessions, we provide you with an overview of the skills to be learned.
• Here we also provide you with detailed descriptions of any new swimming drills to be learned and mastered in order to develop your freestyle technique.

Session training plans

Our session training plans, listed below, provide you with a structured and progressive swimming training programme devised to help you develop your freestyle technique at your own pace.

Session 1: Freestyle: Preparation

Session 2: The Freestyle Leg Kick: Preliminary

Session 3: Freestyle Breathing & Single-Arm Pulling: Preliminary

Session 4: Freestyle Pulling: Preliminary

Session 5: Freestyle Stroke Counting: Preliminary

Session 6: Freestyle Starts & Turns: Preliminary

Session 7: Freestyle Stroke Improvement

Session 8: The Freestyle Leg Kick: Development

Session 9: Freestyle Breathing: Development

Session 10: Freestyle Pulling: Development

Session 11: Freestyle Stroke Counting: Development

Session 12: Freestyle Turns & Finishes: Development

Session 13: The Freestyle Leg Kick: Advanced

Session 14: Freestyle Breathing: Advanced

Session 15: Freestyle Pulling: Advanced

Session 16: Freestyle Stroke Counting: Advanced

Session 17: Freestyle Turns & Finishes: Advanced

Session 18: Building That Engine: An Introduction

Session 19: Building That Engine: Development

Session 20: Building That Engine: Advanced

Session 21: Freestyle Test sets

Each session training plan is divided into the following parts

A pool warm-up

A set of easy drills or swims to warm your muscles, to enhance your range of movement, and reduce the chance of stiffness, soreness or injury.

An introductory activity

A set of drills or swims, which could be a continuation of the pool warm-up, or to introduce you to a new drill or allow you to revise and practice an existing drill.

The main activity

A set of drills or swims focusing on the session’s main objective.

A contrasting activity

A set of drills or swims, which could be a recovery set, or to introduce you to a new drill or to allow you to revise and practice an existing drill.

A pool cool-down

A set of easy drills or swims to disperse any lactic acid which may have built up in your muscles during the training session, which can result in stiffness and/or soreness.

Each part of a session training plan is further divided into a set of drills with repetitions

Swimming Plus works by teaching you to perform a series of repetitive technical and physical exercises. These help you to correctly master a set of key freestyle swimming skills. These are known as swimming drills.

A series of similar swimming drills grouped together is referred to as a set. These sets are often performed a number of times, which are referred to as reps (repetitions).

For example, Session 1a: 4 x 25m freestyle swim

• In this set, the number 4 refers to the number of repetitions
• 25m refers to the distance of the drill, in this case, 25 metres (one length/lap of a short-course pool)
• Freestyle swim refers to the drill description, in this case, a full stroke freestyle swim.

There are usually further instructions regarding the tempo and the length of each rest interval.

For example, An easy swim with a 20-second rest interval after each length/lap.

 

Sometimes a drill may have additional instructions attached.

For example, ‘We recommend that you use fins when first performing these drills’.

Expert coaching tips from Coach Arthur

We also provide expert coaching tips from our experienced and qualified coach, Arthur. He’ll provide you with on-going advice and tips to help you develop your freestyle technique correctly.