has coached National Age Group record holders and Olympic Trials finalists
Today's athletes will thrive on the challenges that Coley Stickels' Mega Drills for Freestyle provides. These drills will not only teach your swimmers the most up to date freestyle techniques, but they will also engage your swimmers by making them think and feel at the same time.
Providing a "solve the puzzle" challenge, these drills will develop a consistent feel for the critical aspects of the stroke, including:
- High elbow catch with an early vertical forearm, forward elbow and a hollowed arm pit
- Thumb in towards belly button in the pull phase of the stroke
- Rhythm of the stroke and timing of the breath
- Long, high neck extending the spine to create a flat back
- Flutter kick
Throughout the instruction, Stickels' shows you how to train the most advantageous catch position. He incorporates small sculling to train the initial catch phase and progressive longer sculling movements that eventually transition into the full arm pull.
Stickels emphasizes a "thumb towards belly" movement pattern under the body in his pull phase of the stroke. Many of his drills include snorkel work, as well as underwater recovery that allows the swimmer to watch and see for themselves where the hand travels on the pull portion of the stroke.
You will see several drills that train timing for both the stroke itself along with teaching the timing of the breath. For stroke timing, Stickels' drills isolate the hand and hip connection that leads to proper body hand/body timing for the stroke. For breathing timing, you will learn how to teach your swimmers to minimally turn the head for a breath and quickly get the head back to midline with eyes to the bottom of the pool. These drills are excellent to assist swimmers that have a late breathing habit or swimmers that stop their kick during the breath.
In his Turn Approach Drill, Stickels teaches how to coordinate the last arm pull into the wall with the flip turn. The result of this drill is a fast, tight turn with the feet quickly getting to the wall without excessive leg movement.
Breakout drills are also included to help you teach your swimmers both the timing of the breakout stroke and proper alignment to minimize drag in the kick-to-stroke transition.
Stickels' drill innovations allow the swimmer to feel the most important stroke components and to train skill essentials such as the turn and breakout. Stickels reinforces that drill work is a perfect way to reinforce stroke positives and also isolate and solve problem areas of the stroke to create more engaged, purpose-oriented swimmers.
42 minutes (plus 17 minutes of Individual Medley technique). 2013.
