A drill is not training. Training creates adaptation by piling up load; a drill builds a movement pattern that later carries over to swimming at speed. The difference shows in how you do it: a drill is slow, deliberate and conscious. Turn it into a fast set and it stops existing.
A triathlete’s swim doesn’t need to be fast.
It needs to be efficient.
The swim is the smallest slice of race time and the biggest source of wasted energy. An inefficient swimmer doesn’t necessarily reach T1 later: they reach it more tired. The goal of drills isn’t to make you swim fast, it’s to make you swim while spending less. What you save in the water is what you have left for the rest of the race.
The four rules of execution
- 1Slow and right beats fast and wrong. Always. Speed in a drill hides the mistake.
- 2Every drill has a target feel. It is your measure of success, more reliable than any visual description. Look for it.
- 3If you finished the set without feeling anything different, you swam. You didn’t do the drill.
- 4A drill that hurts is not a drill. A complaining shoulder means stop and tell your coach, not push through.
Every drill exists to produce a specific feel that you can’t notice when swimming normally. The right execution isn’t the one that “looks pretty”, it’s the one that produces that feel. Once it shows up, the drill has done its job, and what’s left is enough repetition for the pattern to survive speed and fatigue.
The stroke in five phases
The whole freestyle technique fits into five phases. Each drill isolates one of them, so you can fix it without thinking about all of them at once.
| Phase | What happens | The typical mistake |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Entry | The hand enters the water in line with the shoulder, fingertips first, elbow still high. Only then does the arm extend forward, under the surface. | Entering in the middle, in front of the head, crossing the line of the nose. |
| 2 · Catch | The elbow rises and stays above the hand; the forearm goes vertical, fingers pointing to the bottom. | Keeping the arm straight and pushing water down instead of back. |
| 3 · Pull | Hand and forearm, working as a single paddle, push the water back, passing under the body. | Letting the elbow drop halfway through and losing half of the pulling surface. |
| 4 · Finish | The pull speeds up in the last third and ends at the hip, with the thumb brushing the thigh. | Ending the stroke at the waist and throwing away free propulsion. |
| 5 · Recovery | The arm comes back forward relaxed, elbow leading, hand hanging just below it. | Recovering with a low elbow and a high hand, which overloads the shoulder. |
Where propulsion comes from: the underwater pull accounts for more than 90% of freestyle propulsion. In the long-distance triathlete, the kick mainly stabilizes the torso and keeps the hips high; it isn’t there to push. If your pool time is short, the stroke is where it pays off most.
The two points that fix almost everything
The seesaw. Head and hips are linked: every inch the head rises is an inch the hips sink. Looking down and slightly forward, with the back of the neck in line with the spine, fixes most cases of “sinking legs” without any extra drill.
The early vertical forearm (EVF). Getting the forearm vertical as early as possible in the catch, with the elbow above the hand and the fingers pointing to the bottom. It turns hand and forearm into a single pulling surface instead of just the hand. It is the technical element with the biggest payoff for a triathlete, and also the hardest to feel on your own.
Three drills, exactly as they appear on the card
In the athletes’ full guide, every drill has the same card: how to do it, what you should feel, the mistake that cancels the exercise and the equipment. Here are three examples, one for each of the points that cost triathletes the most time.
What it’s for: forcing the forearm to become a pulling surface.
How to do it: swim freestyle with both hands closed into fists. Without the palm, the only surface left is the forearm, and to use it you are forced to raise the elbow. Alternate 25 m with closed fists and 25 m with open hands.
What you should feel: in the open-hand 25 m right after, the water feels much firmer and the stroke much more effective. That is the feel you chase for the rest of the session.
The mistake that cancels it: opening the fingers to “help” when the set gets hard. The fist stays closed: the difficulty is the exercise.
What it’s for: fixing the hand that crosses the body’s midline on entry.
How to do it: four kicks on your side, one stroke. On the stroke, the only thing that matters is where the hand goes in: in line with the shoulder, never crossing the line of the nose. Fingertips first, elbow still high, and only then does the arm extend forward under the water.
What you should feel: the hand entering “in your own lane”. If it crosses, the body answers with a sideways kick to compensate, and you will feel that kick.
The mistake that cancels it: entering with the hand in front of the head, in the middle. It is the most common triathlete mistake and the main reason for swimming extra meters in open water.
What it’s for: navigating in open water without losing body position.
How to do it: every 6 to 10 strokes, use the support of the stroke to lift only your eyes above the surface, chin close to the water, like a crocodile. Look, put your face back in the water and breathe to the side on the next stroke. Looking and breathing are two separate movements, never the same one.
What you should feel: the sighting happening inside the rhythm of the stroke, with no interruption. If your body slows down every time you sight, you lifted your head too much.
The mistake that cancels it: lifting the whole head. The hips sink and you pay twice: you lose speed right away and spend energy getting back into position.
Before you get in the water
Read the card for the drill that is on today’s plan. Thirty seconds of reading on the pool deck save a whole set done wrong. And if, after two or three sessions, the target feel still doesn’t show up, the problem probably isn’t a lack of repetition: it’s the execution. Talk to your coach before piling volume on top of a wrong pattern.
At CMTeam, the full guide has fifteen drills in four groups (position and rotation, stroke and catch, breathing, open water), an “if you feel this, start here” table and the eight mistakes that cost the most time in the swim. It is material for the team’s athletes: the coach picks the drill for your stroke, and the guide explains the movement.
Slow and right beats fast and wrong.
In drills, always.