How To Improve Your Swimming

Host: How can a swimmer improve in the water?

Jay Discharry: Improving our performance in the water involves two key components. First, we want to increase our leg repulsion and second, we want to work on where our hands enter the water. To increase our leg drive, it's important to think about the fact that kicking is two parts; kicking forward and kicking back. A lot of us tend to have strong quad muscles, but we have deficient or weak hamstring and gluteus.

Kicking on your back is a great drill that allows you to work on the second part of the kick stroke. Kicking through to help increase our height in the water and maximize our body position. Second thing to pay attention to is where our arms enter the water in freestyle. A lot of individuals have a habit of crossing over mid line which results in compression of the shoulder, which can be frequently result in overuse injury to the tissue of the shoulder.

One of the things you want to try and do is constantly entering the water with your ring finger, this will allow your shoulder to enter the water in a proper state of rotation and decrease compressive force in the shoulder.


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