I have been coaching workouts for a while now, and it seems strange to me that people that do stroke drills to improve their strokes never put half of what they are working on into their full stroke and actually improve. Drills are meant to help you fix aspects of your stroke by slowing down and allowing you to concentrate on balance, timing, and proper movement through the water. However, if you don't take those aspects into your stroke when you actually start swimming, you can drill uselessly all day long.

"Catch-Up Drill" is the most useful drill that usually does absolutely no good to the people actually doing it.  By this I mean there are more people that do catch-up drill as their drill of choice and then continue to swim the same way when the drill is over. Because it is the most useful drill in swimming today, I am going to be doing a series on Catch Up stroke alone. For those that don't know, we are going to teach you how to do  "Catch-Up Drill" first.

"Catch-Up Drill" is basically swimming one arm at a time. Start out face down with your arms extended out in a streamline position in front of you. Keep one hand overlapping the other and add a strong kick to start you moving. Pull your right arm in a normal swimming pull, recover and place it on top of your other arm, which should still be extended in front. Kick for two full seconds and the repeat with your left arm. As you go, you can choose to reduce the amount of time spent kicking between strokes to one second and then half a second. No matter how much you reduce the time between strokes, always make sure your stroking hand "catches up" and touches your other hand before it begins to pull. This way you are only pulling and recovering one arm at a time.

The usefulness of this drill is beyond measure to a coach, as it functionally lets you concentrate on each arm separately and slowly.  This is beneficial in fixing any problem from improper recovery, to pull width, to balance. Start swimming "catch-up stroke" and before you pull each arm, concentrate on anything you want to fix during that arm stroke. Once you have all of the information processed, begin the arm stroke and focus on the problem you are changing. When you are finished with the stroke, kick and think about your other arm stroke before pulling again.

The great thing about "catch-up drill" is that you can take all the time in the world between strokes as you process what you are going to do next. As you figure it out you can take less and less times between strokes until you are eventually taking strokes one after another. As long as you are still stroking correctly, keep speeding up until the stroke flaw doesn't exist in your full stroke.  To make "catch-up drill" work for stroke correction it is very important not to speed up too quickly. Take your time and wait until your stroke is flawless at each speed before increasing it.

Too often people drill without any idea how useful those periods of the workout could be. They rush to finish the drill so they can get to the main part of their workouts.  When drilling, it is important to be slow and deliberate. Don't let anyone in your lane, your coach, or anything rush you through your drills and don't worry about intervals or speed and just concentrate on what you are doing with your stroke. With "catch-up drill" it is easy to fix even the smallest aspect of freestyle.

However, the ability to fix different aspects of freestyle isn't the best function of "catch-up drill'. In the next article of this series we will talk about the benefits of "catch-up drill" itself and what this drill teaches as far as proper stroke technique.