Articles and Videos
Butterfly One-Two-One Drill
Butterfly can be the most exhausting stroke to swim, and it takes many swimmers of lot of practice to learn the proper timing. Practicing it, however, can be exhausting. Once you’re worn out, your stroke will start to fall apart, at which point you’re practicing bad technique—that’s never a good thing.
Freestyle Evolution Drill Progression
Freestyle swimming technique can be difficult to master, and it takes a lot of practice to find the right body alignment, catch, and arm movements to swim fast. This drill progression can help. Work on these drills in progression regularly to solidify your muscle memory for faster freestyle.
Increase Your Push-off Power for Faster Turns
When you push off the wall, that’s the fastest you’ll ever move in swimming. Learning to capitalize on this for a strong push-off is a key way to post faster times in any event you’re racing.
In-Water Stretching Drills for Swimmers
Staying flexibile is a critical skill for swimmers because it improves streamlining, stroke mechanics, and resistance to injury. But staying flexible as we age isn’t always easy.
Improve Your Front Quadrant Swimming
If you watch an aerial view of elite swimmers, you’ll notice that they always have a hand or arm out in front of their heads. This is called front-quadrant swimming, and the best of the best use it because it lengthens your body and helps with stroke timing.
Improve Your Freestyle with the Hinge Drill
Do you feel as though your freestyle has stagnated, even though you’ve been getting stronger with dryland training? Are you putting forth a lot of effort but not getting very far?
How to Swim Freestyle Without Getting Tired
Have you ever wondered how some triathletes and open water swimmers seem to be able to just keep swimming forever? If you’ve wanted to learn how to duplicate their skills without getting tired, then this drill is for you.
Fun Drills to Swim Breaststroke Better
Drill progressions can help you master aspects of technique step by step. Each stage of a progression helps break down the stroke and gives you a cumulative understanding of how your body should be moving at a given point in the stroke cycle. Once you put it all together, your stroke will improve.
Freestyle Swimming Pro Tip
We can learn a lot from the drills that the pros use. The Popov drill is named after legendary Russian sprinter Alexander Popov and is perfect for developing your length, balance, control, and rotation.
Drill to Perfect Breaststroke Timing
Breaststroke is sometimes referred to as more art than science. As with dancers, breaststrokers are said to be “born not made.” Indeed, both breaststroke and dancing require a sense of timing that can be elusive for some.
Drill to Eliminate Mistakes in Your Backstroke
There are aspects of backstroke technique that, if performed poorly, affect your ability to swim the stroke efficiently. Poor alignment means you’ll wiggle down the lane, and a poor catch means that you won’t have good power for your propulsion.
USMS Elects Officers and Honors Members at 2025 Annual Meeting
U.S. Masters Swimming elected officers to its Board of Directors and honored many deserving volunteers and coaches with awards at its 2025 annual meeting.
Open Water Swimming: Buoy Turns
Tight buoy turns in open water races are critical to maintaining momentum around the course. But they can be challenging to master, as many of us slow down to find the buoy, get around it, and then get back up to racing speed.
Breaststroke and Butterfly Tips to Help You Swim Better
The butterfly–breaststroke combo drill might seem odd, but these two short-axis strokes have a history together; butterfly began evolving from breaststroke in the 1930s. Combining them in drill form leverages that shared origin story and can help you correct timing problems.
Backstroke Swimming Technique: Power Rotation
If you’re struggling with how to swim backstroke, this technique drill will help you. It focuses on stroke timing and will help fix common backstroke mistakes of shoulder and body rotation. Mix this into your swimming workout in the pool and see how your backstroke improves and becomes faster, as a quicker rotation leads to a more powerful stroke.
Dryland Exercises for Starts and Turns
These two exercises can help you get more power off your starts and walls.
The Skills and Drills Needed for Your Breaststroke Pullouts
Pullouts are a difference-maker. I’m sure you’ve seen a swimmer completely dominate their pullouts and beat another swimmer who was a superior breaststroker. The opposite can be true as well—great breaststrokers can lose races on inferior pullouts. Pullouts can be major advantage or disadvantage depending on your skills.
Should I Use Ice or Heat for Sore Swimming Muscles?
Here’s some of the research available on the topic, to find what works best and when.
Busting 3 Myths About Fast Swimmers (and Revealing the Truths Behind Them)
If you watched the 2024 Olympics—and what an event that was—you were likely wowed by the athletic prowess of all the athletes, especially the swimmers. Maybe you went back to your Masters practice and marveled with all the swim geeks at your favorite performances. And eventually the talk turned to, “Why are these athletes so fast?”
What Are the Markings on the Bottom of the Pool For?
Competition pools have markings on the bottom and walls and in the lane lines. Most competitive swimmers learn what and where these are, but if you’ve never competed or are new to swimming, you might not know how to make best use of these markings to produce your fastest swims.
