Fitness Planner | Swimming: How to go from zero to 1km: Part 2

For the pull buoy drill, press the pull buoy between your thighs and use your arms to swim the desired or prescribed distance. Slowly add side breathing to the drill. (Representational image: Mark Williams via Unsplash)

The first two weeks in the pool would have made you fairly comfortable being in the water and if you had any fears, even they should have receded by now.

It was at this stage in her swimming journey that Anusha Ganesan, a 28-year-old consultant from Bengaluru, saw two people swimming nonstop for a whole kilometre. “As someone who was, till recently, scared of getting into water, I found it fascinating and at the same time mind-blowing. That’s when I made up my mind that I’d swim just like them one day,” recalls Ganesan.

The trick to be able to swim such formidable distances nonstop is to perform drills that improve your form, stroke and breathing technique as well as make you more efficient in the water, says Nisha Millet, former Olympian swimmer and founder of the Nisha Millet Swimming Academy.

Also read: Fitness Planner | Swimming: How to go from zero to 1km - Part 1, Part 3 and Part 4

The new drills you would be learning and performing over the next two weeks would not only help you swim better but improve your strength and efficiency in water.

Scissor kicks with one hand on the kick board requires you to grab the board with just one hand while you straighten your body and perform scissor kicks while keeping your legs as straight as possible and engaging your core. This builds strength in your legs and improves your kicking, which would make you faster in the water. The free hand is used to perform the rotation, which helps you with the rhythm as well as improve strength through the isolation movement.

The drill that helps you breathe more efficiently while swimming is walking with side breathing and arm action, which involves you walking in the pool with your head down and performing the arm action and breathing to the rhythm of 1, 2, 3, breathe.

After this, an advanced breathing drill called bilateral breathing is introduced to your training plan. In this you breathe on opposite sides alternating between left and right which swimming or walking to the rhythm of “1, 2, 3, left; 1, 2, 3, right.” This drill is extremely useful as it reduces the stress on your preferred shoulder by distributing the breathing rotations evenly, says Millet.

This is the time when you will be first introduced to the pull buoy, which is extremely useful training aid to improve your upper body strength as well as arm movement. For the pull buoy drill, you will need to place the pull buoy between your thighs and keep it there by pressing it with both legs while you use your arms to swim the desired or prescribed distance. When you add side breathing to this, it becomes a skill training for breathing.

Performing drills such as bilateral breathing, head-up kicks (performing kicks with your head above the water) and dog paddling in the early days helped Ganesan become a better and stronger swimmer. “I practiced a lot of breathing workouts, kick drills and dog paddling that made me stronger,” recalls Ganesan. “Dog paddles and treading, which is staying float upright in the deep end by moving your legs underneath you as if you are walking, helped me gain core strength. As for pull buoys, when I first used it, it was a bit strange because I had to hold it against my legs and not use my legs while swimming but you get used to it very quickly.”

Since you are performing a lot of drills and swimming more than you did in the first two weeks, you are likely to feel tired and sore. So, use your rest day well and recover before you hit the pool again. Perform the stretches and don’t skip your strength training as they would help you remain injury free. Also, if you already knew how to swim but are trying to improve your freestyle, this is the best time to unlearn your old bad habits and inculcate good technique and strong form. The drills are meant to do just that.

By the end of this fortnight you would have been in the pool for a month and are armed with all knowledge to do the freestyle. How efficiently and how strong you are would depend on how much time you spent on putting the foundation in place, which is practising all the drills, especially bilateral breathing.

Swimming fitness planner: Weeks 3 and 4

Graphics by Upnesh Raval/Moneycontrol