Swimming with paddles is great. It is swimming's form of a Muscular Endurance Workout. Paddles will make you stronger. They also enable you to learn how to hold more water. Paddles also force you to keep you elbow above your hand the entire time your hand is underwater (from the initiation of the catch, through the entire pull and finish). If you have paddles, you should wear them with only one finger strapped to the paddle. Do not swim with the strap that goes over your wrist. By only having the one strap paddles force you to finish your stroke moving your hand backwards. If you attempt to start your recovery portion of your stroke too soon, then the paddle will catch water on its underside and fall off. When I competed as a swimmer, I used to love pulling (swimming with paddles and a buoy). Pull sets have a direct impact on your triathlon swim times, because your body position with a pull buoy should be similar to your body position when you put on a wetsuit. Further, the increased surface area of a wetsuit on your arm will let you catch more water, similar to a paddle. Although you still have to be able to swim well, I would suggest making swimming with paddles and pulling a regular aspect of your training. I use paddles for 30-40% of my pool time now as a triathlete. Be careful to ramp-up your volume, because you do not want to blow your shoulders out.

yes...help with form/technique. Helps you use your forearms & hands as paddles (when not using them). coaches talk about a "feel" for the water and paddles help develop this. I think they are are more beneficial to newbies until developed some proficiency in the water to develop technique. Once a baseline is established paddles are good to promote strength and shoulder integrity if done correctly. Meaning: stroke technique must be good before one uses paddles for specific strength work. Usually best to have a coach take a look from time to time.

I think paddles in swimming are to what riding/running hills are to land sports. They makes you stronger faster.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

I have the opposite opinion of the previous posters...I am a swimming coach and my belief is that for beginning/moderate swimmers, paddles are detrimental to good stroke technique far more often that they help it.

Everyone, good swimmers alike, tends to shorten their stroke as they tire...paddles exacerbate this and tend to force folks to either get really short, or to pitch their hand out to reduce the resistance (both habits that tend to stay with you when you take the paddles off). If you do use paddles I say do it for short durations and make sure that you're pressing water to your feet.

I would contend the opposite is true, at least for someone with a swimming background. Many distance swimmers have a longer stroke count when they use paddles. If someone is shortening their stroke, then they have a fundamental flaw in their stroke; they probably routinely drop their elbows when they become fatigued. Personally (and I know this to be true for many many many top level distance swimmers) it is much easier to hold form when fatigued with paddles than it is to hold form while fatigued without paddles. If your shoulders are strong enough, then you can still hold form with paddles while fatigued.

I do agree that paddles can be risky for a beginner. I would recommend beginners do a lot of drills which work on hip rotation.

By the way, I am not a swim coach, but does your being a swim coach somehow make your advise superior? Not, that you are one, but I have had/seen/interacted with way too many shitty swim coaches in my years of swimming.

What drills would you recommend for hip rotation?

One of the biggest drills is one we called the 3,3 or 6,6 drill. It basically incorporates kicking, hip rotation, and single arm swimming.

Here goes:

Kick on your side.

Keep your arm that is closest to the bottom of the pool extended out in front of you.

Keep your other arm down (near your hip)

Make sure your head remains still and looks forward.

Every 6 flutter kicks pull through with the arm on the bottom.

As you pull through, the other arm goes through the recovery. As you pull with the one arm and recover with the other, you want to rotate your torso and hips, so that you end up on the other side.

As you become more comfortable with this drill, then make the rotation after three kicks of holding this position.

Remember to always keep your elbow above your hand at all points in the stroke and to keep your head as still as possible (except when breathing). If you can do this drill with a snorkel, then that might even be better, since you would have one less thing (head rotation) to focus on.

I hope this makes sense.

I just googled swimming and hip rotation, and this reminded me of something else. Many people do not understand why hip rotation is so important in freestlye. Part of it has to do with the fact that you are engaging muslces of your core; however, the real answer lies in the physics of hip rotation.

To test this, stand up. Next to a wall that is on your right.

Bend over, 90 degrees so your torso is perpendicular to the ground.

Stick your right arm out. Notice where your hand is in relation to the wall.

Keep your feet planted firmly, but rotate your hips in a counterclockwise manner (similar to hip movement in golf--i think).

Look at how much further you were able to extend your arm! Now your arm is a much longer lever, and you are using entire body to pull that lever. That is why hip rotation is important.

[quote]By the way, I am not a swim coach, but does your being a swim coach somehow make your advise superior? Not, that you are one, but I have had/seen/interacted with way too many shitty swim coaches in my years of swimming.[/quote]

well, uh, making people better swimmers is all I really think about all day, so I certainly have more experience helping people in this arena...i ride a bike pretty well, but I wouldn't argue about a fit with someone who does it for a living...i'm not a summer league, just for the time being swim coach, this is what I do.

I'm sure if we polled all the swim coaches here we would get varying opinions on paddles vs. no paddles. You guys should put on boxing gloves for this one though........

Totally agree with you.

Having been a poor swimmer, and now just a weak one, one of the toughest things for me to learn was how to grab hold of the water before initiating the pull.

IMHO using pads actually prevents you from developing feel for the catch, since you can make good progress through the water without a decent catch with pads on. Sure, you can work your shoulders hard with pads, but what is the point of having strong shoulders if your hand and forearm aren't 'smart' enough to hold the water? For me, you are talking about a 210lb guy who could bench about 145kgs on a good day, but couldn't hold water for toffee. For me, was strength the issue? Not at all - it was stroke mechanics, pure and simple.

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kiwipat

per ardua ad astra

Just saying I completely disagree with you that good swimmers can't hold their stroke with paddles once they have tired without paddles. As far as your comment about not disagreeing with someone who specializes in bike fitting, it is ridiculous that you would not question somebody if you thought what they were doing or saying was wrong. Just because someone fits people on bikes for a living doesn't mean what they say is gospel. Likewise, would argue that a good distance swimmer should be able to hold his stroke with paddles after he has fatigued without paddles. This is a great way for someone to get another 10-15+ minutes at an elevated training level without reinforcing bad habits. One way to build this type of stamina is to have your athletes do sets of 1500-2000 in a lower aerobic zone with paddles following the main set. Eventually you will be able to make this second set challeging and you will improve the overall conditioning of your athletes. They will be able to train more yards/meters with sound mechanics.

i too have found that i can keep my stroke much longer for a longer amount of time using paddles. i have girls hands too. damn i wish my hands were bigger.

I've allways felt that paddles helped me with hand entry into the water. Too shallow and I smack the water and pull air bubbles, to steep and the paddle pulls away from my hand.

Would you agree that paddles could help a MOP swimmer is this respect?

I also like how my paddles remind me to keep my elbows bent and keep my elbow above my hand on the pull phase.

jaretj

When I swam competitively we trained with paddles a lot - my coach always told us they enforced proper technique. I hated swimming with them, but I think they helped my hand placement in the water.

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maybe she's born with it, maybe it's chlorine
If you're injured and need some sympathy, PM me and I'm very happy to write back.
disclaimer: PhD not MD

I use them with people i coach to magnify the feedback from their hands.

I see a lot of crooked hand entries, in my experience one of the most intractable problems. They really have no idea what theor hands are doing from the time their hand passes their head on the recovery to the catch. Basically the points at Which they can't see their hands. I suppose this is a lack os kinesthetic awareness.

In those cases paddles, the big ones, are used i nshort slower repeats to help tha person realize what the ri hands are doing. The large paddles magnify the sensations form theh water that the person feels as their hand enters the water.

incidentally this is the same reason that Doug Stern gave fro having his swimmers look up when they swim and watch their hands enter the water.

Han;s paddles- [url]http://mplx.com/hans/original.html[/url] are good for giving you the feel of the water while using them. If I'm going to use paddles, I go with them because I think they give me the best feedback.

But I generally skip them these days. I'm much more of a cadence swimmer than a strength swimmer, and the paddles screw up my cadence too much because I'm just not in the pool enough to build the kind of swim-specific strength I need to really get something out of paddle use.

Two replies then I'm done with this topic

First to Flannagan - I'm not sure why, but I sense a bit of aggression in your post...no need to go into attack mode brother. I do think that it's fair for me to state that I'm a coach because I have a different perspective from most because of my profession.

Note that I didn’t say that paddles are no good for anyone. I said that I don't believe they're beneficial enough to poor/moderate swimmers to compensate for what are usual consequences. Like another poster stated, gaining strength does you no good if you’re not using it to move water backwards. I never said that paddles aren't great tools for good swimmers. I think that they're a bad idea for poor/moderate swimmers. That said, EVERYONE does get short as they fatigue...for a beginner that may be after 25 or 50 yards, for a good swimmer it may be after 7-8-9000 yards. Personally back when I swam and was still doing tris I loved training with paddles and buoy...I was a solid 3 sec/100 faster...put a snorkel on me and watch out :)

jaretj...if you can use the paddles for the purpose that you state, sure they can be beneficial, but I wouldn't do long repeats with them.

So for the record, here's my belief on paddles. They are great strength tools for folks that are good enough swimmers that making strength gains are important to improving. I'd say that point is in the 21-23 min oly, 55-60 min IM swim. For those that are slower, focus on technique. If your technique is not good beware of bad habits that wearing paddles can reinforce.