I now spend three hours a day life guarding at the local YMCA. Three hour shift with no one but me and no rotation is a long shift. I have plenty of people to scan over as there are water aerobics classes, and there are some lap swimmers who do come. I have noticed how much some these people enjoy the pull buoy.
The pull buoy is a good tool for certain skill development and can help with some drills. There is a big problem though to over using the pull buoy. Yes, many of them enjoy swimming more with the pull buoy, but that makes perfect sense. The biggest problem that people have with swimming is understanding that you do not balance in the water on your center of gravity, but your center of buoyancy. The artificial floating of the legs allows swimmers to balance on their center of gravity and swim much better. This is not like how you will actually swim though. If you swim with balancing on your center of gravity you will end up swimming freestyle in a "uphill" position.
With my swimmers this something that I work on almost every late August and Early September when we first get back into the water. I talk about how it is going to feel awkward to press the lungs downward and try to lean your weight on to them, but this balances the body out better to balance on the center of buoyancy which is in the lungs as it has the largest mass of gases that float.
Lap Swimmers, I know you enjoy those pull buoys, but you need to begin to develop balance on your center of buoyancy and not your center of gravity. Your body doesn't want to do this as all other time you balance on your center of gravity, but that is why swimming does take a long time to adapt to. Adaption is important, and done earlier the better. Breaking old habits isn't easy.
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