Swim Paddles

So I have always had my swimmers using swim paddles. My younger ones I stayed away from paddles, but the old school square black ones worked great for the young ones who were just trying out paddles.

At first glance, what does swim paddles provide to the swimmer? Resistance. It is easy for people to see that the added surface area that the water makes contact with is going to create more resistance for the swimmer. Senior swimmers use paddles a lot for this purpose as they are in the development phase where resistance creates more power and helps build muscles.

My age-group swimmers though the point is not resistance. This is why small paddles is fine for them. Even if the paddles seems to small, as long as they don't grip the paddle with their fingers it is fine. I like to use paddles to teach how to feel the water. How to move the hand through the water and keep water pressing against the hand.

There are a lot of paddles out there, but I prefer the Strokemaker paddle. I like this paddle because if you remove the wrist strap from the paddle, the paddle will begin to slip off the hand at the point when the swimmer slips through the water. I tell my swimmers that they need to listen to their paddle. If a paddle slips off or moves on a swimmers hand I ask them where in the stroke does the paddle come off. With that information you are not just assuming with visual analysis, but actually information to tell you where the correction is needed.

Play with a paddle. Put one on and move your hand through the water. move the hand at different angles and watch how the paddles moves when water is pushing on the paddle a certain way. After enough times you can figure out how to analyze in incorrect pull by how the paddle comes off or turns on the hand.

There are a lot of fancy paddles out there. they have curves and holes to probably help for resistance purposes, but the simple strokemaker paddle is still the one I know best on how to correct an imperfect catch and pull phase by how the paddle falls off or moves on the hand.

Not trying to develop super strong arms on these age-groupers, it is about figuring out where they are going wrong on their hand motion in the water.