Learning to tread water will teach you the art of sculling.  We’ll start with our swimmer using a combination of sculling and egg beater kick.

Sculling can teach you how to interact with the water better, it’s a great way to develop what swimmers call, a FEEL for the water.  Sculling uses the hands to push the water like a propeller, only the pitch of the hand will change depending on the direction it’s going.

During the insweep of the hands, the thumbs will be pointed slightly UP.
During the outsweep of the hands, the thumbs will be pointed slightly DOWN.

Depending on what feels easiest to you, the hands can mirror each other, or they can alternate.

With your legs, you can use an alternating eggbeater kick, or a breaststroke kick.

Some swimmers feel it’s a bit easier if they lean back a bit while learning this skill.

An advanced exercise for learning the scull and treading water is vertical sculling with straight legs.

This specific exercise requires the hands to produce downward force by changing the pitch of the hands on the outsweep and in sweep.

With the legs held straight, they will produce no leveraging action which will require the sculling action to be more precise, and the rate increased.


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Scull and Tread