It makes no difference whether you breathe every other stroke, every third stroke, or if you are a sprinter and you breathe less frequently. If you swim you must breathe. Popeye Breathing, a drill sent to us by David Kaufman, teaches you to breathe seamlessly and to minimize drag. David swims with the Aquafit Masters of Long Island, at the Nassau County Aquatic Center in East Meadow, NY.

Whenever I work with someone, I pick up something new. When you work with someone like Dave Durden of the University of Maryland, you pick up a LOT of stuff.

In many years of coaching and teaching, one of the things I've learned is that MOST people can swim pretty good freestyle... until it's time to take a breath.

Last week's DOTW featured a sculling drill in which the hands were held behind the swimmer. In reviewing the video file, the crack staff at Go Swim (OK... both of us), disagreed as to what the proper way to scull really is.

Sculling is a great skill to acquire for all swimmers, and specific sculling drills begins to build an awareness of how to use the hands at various places in each stroke.

Young swimmers have a HUGE tendency to pull with a very straight arm in backstroke. A great drill for correcting this is the old pull-on-the-lane-line drill, but that creates its own problems. Here's a fun way to correct a straight-arm pull that pretty much goes against EVERYTHING we know about teaching backstroke.

Finding "fun" and interesting ways to keep practices intriguing for swimmers is partly what drills are all about. It's even better when these drills tax the swimmers' bodies so that physical conditioning is also impacted.

One of the most common stroke problems in freestyle is falling out of balance -- or out of the extended glide position -- during the breath. Here's a drill that will help you maintain balance and forward momentum during the breath.

Two of the most common problems for young swimmers are dropping the elbow in freestyle and initiating the pull with the arm positioned too straight.

Here's a simple balance drill that helps to stabilize your head for backstroke. You could use a half-filled water bottle or cup, but since it's St. Patrick's Day, green is the way to go.

In an effort to keep practices varied, and the sport fun, coaches are constantly trying to think up drills. Here's one that combines new and different with demanding and 'educational.' Heads-Up Sculling develops your sculling ability and 'feel' for the water. It teaches you how to make your hands work in combination with the rest of your arms. And oh, yeah. Wait till you feel it in your abs.

For years coaches have punished swimmers with 'no breathers', repeat 25's without taking a breath. These lengths have been slow, fast, butterfly, freestyle, underwater...

The use of our hands in swimming is something people may overlook just a bit. While everyone thinks about them, holding on to the water as far out front as possible, we tend to allow them to do whatever they want to, trusting they're leading us in the right direction.

Just as streamline is the most important POSITION in swimming, the dolphin motion has become the most important MOVEMENT in our sport.

Why Do It:
Single-Arm Freestyle helps you work on several aspects of a powerful freestyle: great ROTATION; maintaining a balanced body position with EYES DOWN; REACHING FULL EXTENSION on every stroke; and keeping elbows high and wrists straight during the pull.