Propulsion / Drag

How do we create speed in our swimmers? It is the combination of Propulsion (positive force) and Drag (Negative Force). What is really going to propel you forward though? It is Propulsion. It is what a swimmer does under the water that creates propulsion. Drag is a negative aspect. It is improving the part of the stroke that reducing the amount of water that is going to slow you down. If you don't know how to push water well, there isn't as much water to slow you down, so decreasing drag isn't going to make you any faster.

So developing a swimmer, where do we begin? Well, through swim lessons, hopefully they picked up the basic ideas of pushing water, or creating propulsion. I like to begin with developing strokes reducing the amount of drag. Here you will create good muscle memory of what most people recognize as stroke technique. A swimmer doesn't get really fast by doing this, but swimming can become much easier for the swimmer (a big goal of all swimmers; make it easy). During this time, you'll always talk about catching and pushing water back, but the emphasis remains reduing drag. This phase though, you emphasize the main aspect of propulsion all the time; the Kick.

As the swimmer has made swimming easier, then you will begin to develop better propulsion in the arm pull (for breaststroke: the scull). Here is where you will see the swimmer get faster. As they get faster, now the move through more water, and drag becomes important to take more effeciency in the stroke. So, cleaning up technique is always good to do, even when you get to the point where creating propulsion becomes the emphasis.

Basically, what goes on under the water is more about creating the speed than what goes on above the water. I learned this early on, as I began coaching only fixing the stroke technique, and less on the propulsion aspect. My talented swimmers still got fast, and swimming became easier for all of my swimmers, but to get those hard workers fast I had trouble. I figured this out a couple years into coaching and it changed the level of my swimmers.