By Andrew Sheaff

Published: Thursday, 04 January 2024 at 12:59 PM


Many triathletes diligently work on improving their skills by performing drills yet find that when they return to full stroke swimming, nothing has changed. It can be an extremely frustrating and mystifying experience. The drills are supposed to improve your skills, but they don’t! 

The issue isn’t necessarily that drills don’t work, it’s that they need to be used in the right way to be most effective. Let’s take a look at how to do that.

Drill then swim

To solve this problem, start combining your drilling and swimming into the same sets, rather than performing them separately. You’ll do some drilling, then you’ll do some drilling, then repeat. 

The reason this is so effective is that it gives you the opportunity to take what you learn in the drill and immediately apply it to your swimming. 

That’s the step most triathletes miss. They assume the drill will transfer to the swim, but you have to consistently practice both at the same time to make that happen.

This process is a lot more effective if you regularly alternate between drilling and swimming, as often as possible. Rather than performing all your drilling and then all your swimming, switch back and forth between the two. 

Doing so ensures that you get more practice taking what you’ve learned during the drill and executing great skills while swimming freestyle.

Here are two very simple examples to illustrate the difference between the two approaches. Both sets are focusing on improving head position and breathing.

Set #1

10 x 25m paddle cap freestyle
10 x 25m freestyle