Partner Pulling

Swimming: Partner Pulling Drill & Relay

Dick Moss, Editor, PE Update.com

Partner Pulling will develop your swimmers' upper body strength in a way that's very specific to the front crawl. It also makes for some fun relays.

The Drill
Divide your swimmers into pairs, and have each swimmer place a pull buoy between their ankles. This keeps their feet up and prevents them from using their legs.

Have Swimmer #1 push off from the wall and begin to front crawl down the lane using only the arms. Swimmer #2 grabs the ankles of Swimmer #1 and just hangs on, providing resistance. Once they reach the opposite wall, the partners switch positions.

Relays
You can have some fun by making a relay out of this drill, with groups of two to four pulling each other for one length each, and the first team to complete four lengths winning the relay.

References:
1. Paul Hoblin, Girls Play to Win Swimming & Diving, Norwood House Press, 2011.
2. “Working out together: Drills for groups.” United States Masters Swimming Website. January 2000.

To download the pdf version of this
article, click here: Download Now