CHAPTER 3
Swimming Equipment
There is a wide variety of swimming equipment and training aids available on the market, which are designed to target specific areas within the freestyle stroke. Whilst some swimmers prefer to train without the use of any pool equipment, at Swim Smooth we are very passionate about using the right tools for your stroke and incorporating them into your programme in the most effective way.
PAUL: There will be those swimmers who prefer to keep swimming as simple and pure as they can and will choose to swim with as little gadgetry as possible, but there are those who prefer to use all the latest gear and find this approach to be very enjoyable and in sync with their analytical personalities – each to their own we say! Personally, I’m a bit of a gadget guy but I also love swimming totally free, especially when in the open water.
In this review we have categorised a wide range of training aids into ‘essentials’, ‘highly recommended’, ‘not-essential but nice to have’ and ‘not recommended’ and we aim to show you how each might help you with your swimming. Whilst this is not an exhaustive list of all the pool toys you will find out there, it will give you a very good idea of what to look out for.
Californian swimming technology company Finis is one of the most innovative companies in this area and for this reason we have tried and tested all of its products, our favourite ones of which feature prominently below. Other manufacturers making good swim gear and training aids are Speedo, TYR, Aquasphere, and Arena. Depending upon your location, you may see that some of these brands are more prominent than others.
Essential Equipment
1. Bathers/Cossie/Costume/Trunks/Togs/Speedos/Budgie Smugglers – whatever you call them it’s essential to be suitably attired in the swimming pool and ocean! A well fitting swimming costume can make all the difference to how well you slip through the water. Of course you can wear whatever you like to protect your modesty but at Swim Smooth we have a preference towards brightly coloured bathers made by Funky Trunks, Aqua Diva and Speedo as they are a little bit fun and help to brighten up a cold winter’s morning!
2. Swimming Cap and Goggles – silicon swimming caps are our recommendation as they are very durable and don’t pull at your hair like the cheaper latex caps tend to. A good cap will also keep your head warm in the open water and help streamline your progress. Caps and goggles are made by a range of manufacturers but our favourite goggles are made by Canadian company ‘Sable’ (
www.sablewateroptics.com) as they provide a great fit, come with a variety of different nose bridges for custom modification and have excellent clarity and anti-fog properties. We recommend that female swimmers with small faces try out junior size goggles for a better fit.
3. Fins/Flippers – these are excellent tools to have in your swim kit bag as they help to develop good ankle flexibility and provide extra propulsion when performing technical drills. As long as fins are used correctly and with a purpose you should not consider them as ‘cheating’ but as an aid to assist you in your swim stroke development. Choose fins that are slightly longer than the shorter ‘zoomer’ style as they will be more comfortable and encourage a better kicking action for drill work.
Unfortunately due to health and safety regulations in some swimming pools (especially in the UK) fins are not allowed but it’s always worthwhile checking with your local pool to see if they will let you use them. Fins are so beneficial for helping you develop your stroke technique that if it were a choice between two pools with one allowing the use and the other not, always go to the one that does. If you’re not fortunate enough to have more than one pool in your local vicinity, enquire with your pool as to whether they might allow fins in a session one night per week.
4. Pull Buoys – for those with ‘Sinky Leg Syndrome’ pull buoys can become a bit of a crux and should not be used to simply mask a low body position or a scissor leg kick. It is generally less challenging aerobically to swim with a pull-buoy and this can lead to de-training if they are overused. On the flip side, they allow you to specifically focus your attention on the catch phase of the stroke. In our programmes we use pull buoys regularly during sculling drills to build up your ‘feel for the water’ but you should always remember to emphasise good rotation as everyone has a bit of a tendency to flatten off in their stroke when using one.
Highly Recommended
5. Finis Freestyler Paddles – if you only purchase one pair of paddles, our recommendation is for the ‘Freestylers’ by Finis. These paddles work to improve your hand entry and alignment in the water and are designed to fall off your hand if used incorrectly giving you immediate feedback about your stroke.
6. Finis Tempo Trainer Pro and Wetronome – being able to accurately control your stroke rate in the pool and pace yourself well are two key swimming skills that do not come naturally to many swimmers. You programme these small ‘beepers’ and then put them under your swim cap when you swim; they then beep a target pace per 100 m to you (a beep for every time that you should be at each 25 m marker) or in stroke rate mode, a beep for every single stroke. This sounds very basic but the power of these devices cannot be over-estimated. Firstly, they help to motivate you through training sets and also let you focus on the swimming rather than watching the clock all the time. At the same time they develop your pacing skills, which is a huge advantage in races as nearly every swimmer starts too fast and then slows down – by pacing things correctly you will perform much better overall. In fact you may set some PBs the very first time you swim with one in lap-interval mode for just that reason! In stroke rate mode they give you subtle control over your swimming, allowing you to lift or lower your stroke rate to find the efficiency sweet spots in your stroke. For more information see
www.swimsmooth.com/wetronome and
www.swimsmooth.com/tempotrainer.
Not-Essential but Nice to Have
7. Finis PT Paddles or Palm Paddles – conventional paddles work on the assumption that if you create a larger surface area for the hand to work against it will help you develop a greater catch and feel for the water. However, overuse of large paddles with poor technique can be very troublesome for your shoulders. They might also slow your stroke rate down to an unrealistically low rate and with swimming being limited more by technique than brute strength, the notion that you need to become stronger to swim faster is normally misguided. PT and Palm Paddles work as a direct opposite to a normal paddle in that their convex shape removes the sensation of a good catch and thus encourages you to bend your elbow more under the water to gain a better catch with the forearm. When used for the first time they really feel like your hands are slipping through the water but that is precisely the point – remove the paddle after 50 m to 100 m and your sense of ‘feel for the water’ is greatly heightened.
8. Other Conventional Paddles – there is a huge range of the more conventional style of paddle available on the market, with new designs being created all the time. Conventional paddles still have a place in the kit bag of more advanced swimmers with good stroke technique and certainly the smaller ‘finger paddles’ (not shown) are great for developing a better initial catch. Avoid overuse of any paddle and be wary of the desire to become stronger by using them – it’s usually the stronger athletes, who need a little more finesse in their stroke, who tend to reach for the big dinner-plate paddles before anyone else in the squad.
9. Finis Snorkel – snorkels are a good way of taking the breathing action out of the freestyle stroke giving you uninterrupted time to focus on other aspects of your stroke like rotation and your catch. Many swimmers find that they feel quite claustrophobic when using a snorkel because they subtly reduce the air flow and make the process more hypoxic than normal swimming. For this reason it is well worth trying one before investing to see how you get on with them.
10. Finis Tech Toc – developing your body rotation can feel like quite an alien concept for those who have swum completely flat for years but the Tech Toc helps you to tune into the rhythm and timing of this essential part of your stroke. The Tech Toc is a hollow cylinder containing a large ball bearing, which sits on your lower back held in place by a waist strap. As you swim it provides an audible click and kinaesthetic sensation as to how well you are rotating. Its name comes from the fact that if you are rotating efficiently you will hear and feel the ball bearing roll to one end of the tube and make a ‘toc’ sound and then with the next stroke it should roll to the other end and make a ‘toc’ sound. If you are not rotating well enough it will remain silent!
11. Swimming watches by Finis, Garmin and Swimovate – great for gadget lovers everywhere! These sophisticated devices use accelerometers to be able to tell each time you take a stroke, when you reach the end of the pool and when you turn to come back. By recording this data for subsequent review, the swimmer is able to build up a very clear picture of how well they are pacing themselves. All watches contain an algorithm to calculate a ‘SWOLF score’ which is based on the ‘swim golf’ idea that if you add the number of strokes taken in a given length to the time in seconds to complete that length, you will have an index of ‘efficiency’ with the theory being that the lower the score, the more efficient the swimmer.
As you will read in the rest of this book, SWOLF scores are not always a true indication of actual swimming efficiency and for this reason Swim Smooth tend not to use this measure as it can predispose people to overly lengthening their strokes. The Garmin 910 XT watch also contains a GPS receiver, which allows you to use the watch in the open water and check how far and how straight you have swum.
Not Recommended
12. Board Shorts – many novice male swimmers think that figure hugging bathers should only be worn by more serious ‘professional’ swimmers but nothing could be further from the truth! Baggy shorts add a huge amount of drag and pull your body position down low in the water – this is the last thing you need when working on your swimming. Switch to some proper swimming bathers and give your stroke an instant lift – literally!
13. Kick Boards – we find that kick boards are not effective training aids for most adult swimmers. If you suffer from poor body position and a weak kick, using a buoyant kick board at the front of the stroke is only going to exacerbate this and place you in a very uneconomical position with your front end lifted. We prefer to practise kicking sets without the use of a float and with or without fins in a more specific torpedo or side-lying position in the water.
The training sessions in Appendix C show you examples of how to introduce many of these tools into your training sessions.
