The GMAN wrote:
Let me sum up Tim's advice in my less than subtle way...
Just fucking swim.
Personally, as a late adult onset swimmer, I think this is dangerous advice. I don't doubt that most of the time that people spend doing drills is wasted, but saying "just f'ing swim" could be bad advice as well. In my case, that's pretty much what I've done for the last couple of years. My main focus during this time has been regular attendance at master's swim sessions. The coach is great for giving us good workouts and pushing us hard, but there are too many people for him to really spend time giving any individual technique advice and I'm not sure that's his strength anyway. Unfortunately, my swim has stagnated during this time.
So I'd been feeling that something wasn't right with my technique but couldn't seem to figure it out on my own. So recently I did a 2 hour clinic with a swim smooth coach (Peter Russo in Rhode Island), and it was humbling to actually see the video and realize the basic mistakes I'd been making over and over again. He did give me some drills, but it was the simple advice about what I was doing wrong that proved key. In short order I almost instantly improved a good 5 seconds per 100 across the board. That's as much as I've improved in the last 3 years of swimming hard. In my case, I already had a good fitness base to build on and I'm sure not everyone will see improvement so quickly.
The interesting thing is that I've kept track of the technique advice I've gotten over the years, and a lot of it echoed what this guy said, but some of the feedback was wrong and that contradictory advice negated the advice that was good and held me back.
I think anyone that's stagnating in their swim improvement should seek feedback from a qualified technique coach and then hopefully be able to have actionable improvements to make on an ongoing basis. That may involve adding some targeted drills to focus on your particular weakness but those drills shouldn't be at the cost of fitness. And likely, periodically go back and repeat as it's a long term process to becoming a better swimmer for those of us that didn't learn as kids.
Just my $.02.