Use This To Reduce Your Stroke Count

When you find yourself struggling to reduce your stroke count, this drill will help you fix an important part of your freestyle technique.

Get the 8 Week Faster Freestyle course here:

Chapters:
0:18 What's the problem?
0:35 The fastest point in your stroke
1:05 Slide and glide drill
1:30 The rubber band effect
2:10 How to do the drill
3:05 Add this to your warm up
3:54 What can go wrong
4:44 Lead arm
5:21 Shoulder and cheek
6:36 Elite swimmers examples

[damngrooveman]

When I started my first crawling at the end of 2018, I was so slow and without any technic and made all mistakes which are possible to do. Than I watched all your nice videos since more than a year and followed your advices. I needed once more than 2 minutes for 100m and have been nearly ready for emergency. Now I reach 1:08 and I'm still not out of breath. One of your best videos I find was about Katie Ledecky - because I am a 1-2 beat swimmer. Effortless swimming was my goal - I reached it now and can still improve further...(Y)
And - I'm 69 and never tired of learning by doing your stuff, taking your advices and training your technic tips...:-)

[timmackey]

Started swimming again after a 50 year hiatus. Found I was having to stop and rest every 50 meters. Watched your videos changed my stroke completely a few weeks ago and now doing 400-500 meters in sets with same amount of rest I had been taking every 50, or 100 meters prior. Thanks for your timely instruction.

[zinnia]

I've been doing this drill with snorkel and fins. It really helps to create muscle memory so I keep good form when swimming. Thanks for the video.

[jamiegutierrez]

Just this morning during my swim I realized I had gotten away from reaching out .Lately things have just seemed a bit off on my swim Perfect timing for the video

[dakzer]

After 2 years struggling with freestyle, experimenting with quicker stroke rate, I am starting to feel the glide now in my stroke. If I miss the glide it feels almost as if you are not propelling forward no matter how hard I pull or how fast my stroke rate is. Thank you for highlighting the importance of the glide in this video, and I am sure many of your other videos.

[jojijosette]

Thank you Brenton. Youre helping me a lot to keep improving my freestyle. Im an intermediate swimmer.

[Mrdibzahab]

I find in really helpful to swim behind someone to practise this. You feel like a pro when you are just as fast with half the stroke count :) Catch-up drills also give you the time to reach and glide.

[simonshusse]

I started training swimming as an adult. However I train with former competetive swimmers and they are 10-50% faster than me at any given time. I always search for stuff that they do that I can pick up and this is by far the most important part to pick up, second only to hours in the pool ^.^. I categorize it under "don't get in the way of the water", something that can be really challenging for non lifetime swimmers. Good stuff this.

[colinsimpson]

Great tip, and well presented in the video, this technique really does make a difference

[dominickdaalhuizen]

I had the reach tip from one of your other videos and after months of swimming with a coach for 2 times a week it finally clicked. From needing to rest every 100 meters to an easy 500 meter warm up in 10 minutes in one go. THANK YOU

[danielcercasgarcia]

Thanks so much for the explanation about this video greetings from Mexico

[scottreutter]

I need to try this drill! My extended arm seems to drop and pull too soon when I take a breathe.

[barwithm]

At what point do we start the pull? When the other hand enters the water?

[ShreksSpliff]

I'm gonna need bigger flippers for this. What beautiful technique and strength demonstrated.

[dianabenobo]

When the hand starts the leading edge vortex and the displacing stream tube of the arm generates the additive quanta of toroidal vortices, the stroke begins with a lateral stretching of the unified array of cycles to where the catch begins with the initiation of another leading edge upon the vortex shear and every finger dances out another vortex street ... or not.

[MrBraindead]

Thanks for this video. I breathe to the right and don't have a problem rotating and extending my left arm. I tend not to rotate and reach my right arm nearly as much. Amazingly (though not really to those who watch these videos) simply reaching more on the right took about 3 seconds off my 100m time in a set of 100m Intervals. Now the trick is to do this all the time...

[RickMartinYouTube]

I've been working on the glide and reach a lot lately while I've been working on my breathing using the catch-up drill ---it has been used exclusively lately as I work on adding distance for endurance

[natashajohnson]

Got back to the pool last week in Sydney Brenton. Long story short …. Not good . There is a good side tho, I hurt in all the right places, across the chest and top of the back . Not arms and legs . Disappointed in myself but work on it . This is a good drill to back to, doing it tomorrow morning. Hope everything goes well for you in Melbourne guys !!! You’ve had it worse than Sydney, enjoy your freedom from lockdown!

[SuperCuriouss]

i drop to 47spm (thanks form goggles), mainly because i don't have the strength to keep moving. first 100m im near 60spm with good form and can feel everything working well.... then suddenly the brakes come on for the rest of the swim. i've always been a bit of an overglider. didn't know anything about catch and pull.. thanks heaps for all you are teaching me!

[livinginitalyyears]

Hi from northern Italy 🇮🇹👍 aussie coach in Italy 17 years