Ok, during one of my easy swims last week I decided to try swimming with my ankles banded together. HOW THE HELL DO PEOPLE MAKE IT TO THE OTHER END? I was pathetic! My legs instantly sank and I couldn’t do anything to bring them back up. I swam one lap with a pull bouy and it helped, but I think this just defeats the purpose. Please give me some advice on how to swim with bands. I’d also be interested in hearing about the progression you’ve made if you are successful at swimming with banded ankles. thanks.
Try squeezing your butt cheeks together and swimming “downhill”.
This is one of the BEST drills out there, imo.
It takes practice, but actually isn’t too hard and doesn’t take a ton of practice - maybe 4-5 sessions if you keep at it and don’t have dropping legs to begin with.
It’s all about finding the balance between the chest-down to keep legs up. It’s however, not as simple as just driving your chest into the water - what’ll happen with the ankle band is that with no kick to compensate, once you drive down the chest forcefully, your chest will bounce back up in the next second, so you’ll be back where you started. It’s all about developing a feel for that fine balance point where the chest stays fairly low in the water.
If you can’t do it at all, start with the band+buoy, but try and ditch the buoy ASAP. Also swim very short lengths - I was doing like 8-10 yards at a time for the first day, and doubled the distance every day until I could do laps.
Ideally, you won’t kick at all, but when starting, don’t be afraid to do tiny dolphin kicks to keep the legs up. (I still have to do tiny occasional dolphins.)
I’m a near-zero kicker at baseline, so the band gave me minimal time decreases - probably about 1-2 sec/100. However, I’ve definitely seen other swimmers similarly to me who kick madly to hold pace (and I’m not even fast), and I suspect the band would hugely improve their form. The biggest thing the ankle band does, which is not really intuitive, I’ve found, is SMOOTHEN your stroke and motions. I haven’t found any other tool that smoothens the stroke motion like the ankle band. That smoothening will give you speed if you’re jerky or save you energy. Not a massive increase, but every bit counts.
Last point - my ankle band pace is +25sec slower than my unbanded pace, despite the fact that I do a minimal, if zero kick without the band. Not sure why, but seems to happen to most ankle band users. That difference mostly goes away if I add a pull buoy, but without it, I’m a lot slower with the band (I use it if I’m swimming with slower swimmers). Also, you do NOT have to be swimming fast to use the band alone. I learned to use the band while doing super slow swims at about 2:20/100 pace (I normaly swim 1:30pace.)
A couple guys I know have been using a drill called “mono-legged pull” that I think mimics some of the proposed benefits of the band, while minimizing some of the negatives. In essence, the mono-leg pull just asks the swimmer to hold their legs together while pulling, as if they had only a single leg (hence, “mono-leg”). Whereas the band forces the legs together, the mono-leg pull asks the athletes to truly become aware of where and when the legs are kicking to counterbalance, and allows a small amount of wiggle if the counter-balance is actually a HELP, rather than a hinderance. In this way a benefit is still gained by longer legged athletes, or those whose center of mass makes the optimal body position impossible without a kick. The athlete can also feel how a slim leg profile can help their legs “slip through the hole” opened by the upper body.
**More on this here: **http://www.findingfreestyle.com/?q=noropes
I agree that when proficient, the mono-leg drill is probably even better than the ankle band, but I’d say that anyone who can’t already swim reasonable proficiently with the ankle band is fooling themselves if they think they’re doing the mono-leg drill right.
Until you know for sure that you’re not splay kicking at all (thanks to the ankle band), you will ALWAYS cheat when attempting to mono-leg drill. Always. If it were so easy to mono-leg drill just by thinking about it, the ankle band wouldn’t be difficult.
Master the ankle band first, or you’ll be cheating like crazy every time you try and do the mono kick drill. You gotta learn without cheating first.
I agree^^
Could even practice pull buoy with band to get used to the feeling of swimming with your legs stuck together, then throw the buoy on deck and try just band.
Also, you can still do minikicks even with one leg depending on how tight you cinch your ankle band. IF you make it out of a bike tire, you’ll find that the first workout you use it a lot that you’ll get pain around where the band sits on your ankles because you’ll keep trying to kick past the band. Once you get it down though, that pain goes away since you no longer fight the band. The bike tire is perfect - you can still force a small kick if you’re really struggling, but you’ll be aware that you’re cheating a bit.
I wonder if my (lacking) core strength is what is making this so hard? I really tried to dive my chest and head in, engage my core etc. to bring my legs up but nothing seemed to work. I like the idea of swimming in very small chunks. I think I could make it maybe 12m before the legs just completely sank and were unrecoverable. Thanks for your tips.
I think it’s muscular control rather than actual strength. IT helps to tighten your glutes and low back muscles. Right now your hips are hinging down. You need to activate the proper muscles to keep that from happening.
I have people stand up nice and tall, tighten butt cheeks and low back muscles lean forward from your ankles and go, holding those muscles tight.
That’s an oversimplification of course, you aren’t going to swim with your butt cheeks tightly locked for the rest of your life, but it should help to learn to activate those muscles. Once you have that you should be OK.
As noted, there are things that make this worse.
- Nice low head position and leaning on your chest helps a lot
- Pushing down towards the bottom when you breathe will KILL you with this drill. OK maybe you won’t die but it makes it much harder.
- Having a nice smooth pull with decent catch helps too, if you overglide or have a dropped elbow it will make things worse as well.
But mostly if you are like the one guy in my classes CAN’T get this, you need to activate the right muscles and once you do you’ll be off and swimming.
I wonder if my (lacking) core strength is what is making this so hard? I really tried to dive my chest and head in, engage my core etc. to bring my legs up but nothing seemed to work. I like the idea of swimming in very small chunks. I think I could make it maybe 12m before the legs just completely sank and were unrecoverable. Thanks for your tips.
No, it’s not core strength. I can do it totally relaxed. Your progression actually sounds pretyt normal - I could go 10 feet maybe when I started.
Again, diving the chest will NOT help. You have to focus on a steady, low torso, but the moment you try to dive your chest, you’ll “bob”, and you’ll bounce back into a standing position on the next stroke. It’s more of like finding the balance point on a seesaw that oterhwise has really senseitive springs on each end - if you push down too hard on teh front or back, it’ll bounce to the upright position. Being SMOOTH avoids the bobbing effect, and thus allows you to glide without sinking.
It’s really more of a smoothness issue than anything else, imo - it’s tough to keep that smoothness while holding the chest at appropriate depth without any bounce. Keep at it - it’ll improve quickly.
Timely thread. I just started using a band two weeks ago. The first time I tried it I could barely do a 50. I’m up to 200 now and now I find that my “normal” freestyle has improved immensely in just two weeks. I believe a “band” set will be in my routine from now on. And yes, it’s all about the butt 
I’ll do 300-400 yards a set with a band and find it helps a lot. A couple suggestions- engage your lower back muscles and glutes. Lie on your stomach on the floor and lift your legs off the ground. You should feel your lower back working. I notice the same kind of thin when using a band.
You could also lie halfway on the bed, stomach down again. Your hips should go over the edge. Practice raising your legs and feeling the glutes and back muscles engaged.
That being said, I’m not a coach nor a real fish, so take this with a grain of salt.
You have to have decent body position, head looking down but not buried…which is what I see probably over-half the time I do a one on one session with an athlete. Head down has been translated into tucking the chin…which is like walking looking at your feet.
You also have to have a good turnover rate and need to have very little if any pause in your stroke/pull. Focus on keeping a strong wrist, fingertips pointing at the bottom of the pool as you pull with your forearm and hand forming a line. And, finishing your stroke helps too.
You have to have decent body position, head looking down but not buried…which is what I see probably over-half the time I do a one on one session with an athlete. Head down has been translated into tucking the chin…which is like walking looking at your feet.
You also have to have a good turnover rate and need to have very little if any pause in your stroke/pull. Focus on keeping a strong wrist, fingertips pointing at the bottom of the pool as you pull with your forearm and hand forming a line. And, finishing your stroke helps too.
This plus…
Kicking maintains balance and assists rotation. With legs tied most will stop body rotation to maintain their balance. You have to continue to rotate and learn to maintain balance by body position, which is more an art than a science.
Using bands is helping me fix a fatal flaw in my stroke. I’m not there yet, but…a few things about this I can’t figure out: 1st, I can tighten the lower back muscles to get my hips to raise but I can’t seem to tighten my glutes at the same time. Using the band with the back tightening has helped get my butt up 3/4 of the way, but, the glutes might get me the last 1/4 of the way up. How? 2nd, as soon as I rotate it all goes to hell and I sink. Does the shark drill help? It is intended to help you stay balanced in the water. I learned about it here on ST just the other day. I see how just raising the elbow up makes me sink. Great, I sink. Now what? What do I do to help me from sinking in that shark drill.
Using bands is helping me fix a fatal flaw in my stroke. I’m not there yet, but…a few things about this I can’t figure out: 1st, I can tighten the lower back muscles to get my hips to raise but I can’t seem to tighten my glutes at the same time. Using the band with the back tightening has helped get my butt up 3/4 of the way, but, the glutes might get me the last 1/4 of the way up. How? 2nd, as soon as I rotate it all goes to hell and I sink. Does the shark drill help? It is intended to help you stay balanced in the water. I learned about it here on ST just the other day. I see how just raising the elbow up makes me sink. Great, I sink. Now what? What do I do to help me from sinking in that shark drill.
Honestly, it’s a lot less about tightening any one part that trying to maintain your entire body as flat as possible and as smoothly as possible.
Sounds like you’re losing it on the stroke, which happened to me for awhile. It means that you’re not balancing the effect of the lifted arm correctly, and as a result, your legs are bobbing (without the kick, it doesn’t get corrected.) Focus on swimming with as little perturbance as possible to your horizontal plane - it may take some practice with short 10yard or so swims repeatedly until you start getting a stroke that doesn’t sink your legs immediately. No drills really help this - you just gotta accept the fact you’re going to look ridiculous and just do it.
On the bright side - you should LOVE the fact this drill is so tortuous for you. It means you’re making real, rapid improvements on a sharply angled learning curve, and you’ll get a speed and efficiency bump for sure once you get it down. Once the drills seems easy, the gains aren’t really coming. Embrace the suckdom!
This is one of the BEST drills out there, imo.
It takes practice, but actually isn’t too hard and doesn’t take a ton of practice - maybe 4-5 sessions if you keep at it and don’t have dropping legs to begin with.
It’s all about finding the balance between the chest-down to keep legs up. It’s however, not as simple as just driving your chest into the water - what’ll happen with the ankle band is that with no kick to compensate, once you drive down the chest forcefully, your chest will bounce back up in the next second, so you’ll be back where you started. It’s all about developing a feel for that fine balance point where the chest stays fairly low in the water.
If you can’t do it at all, start with the band+buoy, but try and ditch the buoy ASAP. Also swim very short lengths - I was doing like 8-10 yards at a time for the first day, and doubled the distance every day until I could do laps.
Ideally, you won’t kick at all, but when starting, don’t be afraid to do tiny dolphin kicks to keep the legs up. (I still have to do tiny occasional dolphins.)
I’m a near-zero kicker at baseline, so the band gave me minimal time decreases - probably about 1-2 sec/100. However, I’ve definitely seen other swimmers similarly to me who kick madly to hold pace (and I’m not even fast), and I suspect the band would hugely improve their form. The biggest thing the ankle band does, which is not really intuitive, I’ve found, is SMOOTHEN your stroke and motions. I haven’t found any other tool that smoothens the stroke motion like the ankle band. That smoothening will give you speed if you’re jerky or save you energy. Not a massive increase, but every bit counts.
Last point - my ankle band pace is +25sec slower than my unbanded pace, despite the fact that I do a minimal, if zero kick without the band. Not sure why, but seems to happen to most ankle band users. That difference mostly goes away if I add a pull buoy, but without it, I’m a lot slower with the band (I use it if I’m swimming with slower swimmers). Also, you do NOT have to be swimming fast to use the band alone. I learned to use the band while doing super slow swims at about 2:20/100 pace (I normaly swim 1:30pace.)
X2
Bands suck. I swam in college and feel like I’ll drown with bands on.
I agree that when proficient, the mono-leg drill is probably even better than the ankle band, but I’d say that anyone who can’t already swim reasonable proficiently with the ankle band is fooling themselves if they think they’re doing the mono-leg drill right.
Until you know for sure that you’re not splay kicking at all (thanks to the ankle band), you will ALWAYS cheat when attempting to mono-leg drill. Always. If it were so easy to mono-leg drill just by thinking about it, the ankle band wouldn’t be difficult.
Master the ankle band first, or you’ll be cheating like crazy every time you try and do the mono kick drill. You gotta learn without cheating first.
That’s a fair enough assessment of what introducing swimmers to the mono leg drill is like. I differ however in finding those points you make a negative. I do not think that the point of most drills is to do them perfectly or not do them at all. In fact, I find that approach counter-productive. The initial struggle, gradual awareness building, and long term development are some of the steps I see swimmers going through with the mono-leg and other challenging drills. Single arm freestyle being another classic example. Beginner swimmers never get these drills “right” when they first start out. It is through the process of learning how to do them better, that the benefit of the drills become apparent.
Further, it is that very ability to “cheat” the mono-leg pull a little that is one if its primary advantages over the band. Finally, I have seen and used both the band and the mono-leg extensively, and have has far better success without the band.
So much to be gained from growing our awareness of what we do not do well, both in the pool and in life.
I agree that when proficient, the mono-leg drill is probably even better than the ankle band, but I’d say that anyone who can’t already swim reasonable proficiently with the ankle band is fooling themselves if they think they’re doing the mono-leg drill right.
Until you know for sure that you’re not splay kicking at all (thanks to the ankle band), you will ALWAYS cheat when attempting to mono-leg drill. Always. If it were so easy to mono-leg drill just by thinking about it, the ankle band wouldn’t be difficult.
Master the ankle band first, or you’ll be cheating like crazy every time you try and do the mono kick drill. You gotta learn without cheating first.
That’s a fair enough assessment of what introducing swimmers to the mono leg drill is like. I differ however in finding those points you make a negative. I do not think that the point of most drills is to do them perfectly or not do them at all. In fact, I find that approach counter-productive. The initial struggle, gradual awareness building, and long term development are some of the steps I see swimmers going through with the mono-leg and other challenging drills. Single arm freestyle being another classic example. Beginner swimmers never get these drills “right” when they first start out. It is through the process of learning how to do them better, that the benefit of the drills become apparent.
Further, it is that very ability to “cheat” the mono-leg pull a little that is one if its primary advantages over the band. Finally, I have seen and used both the band and the mono-leg extensively, and have has far better success without the band.
So much to be gained from growing our awareness of what we do not do well, both in the pool and in life.
See what you’re saying, but this is one point I’ll def have to respectfully disagree with.
Having seen people do the monodrill without having used the ankle band in masters though (we actually do this), I can say from what I’ve seen, the people who have never used an ankle band don’t even come close to doing the monoleg drill correctly. It’s nearly impossible to learn to swim with the style of the ankle band of true zero splay kicking unless you use the band. Even with the band, you naturally keep wanting to splay kick some until you really get good at it. We do the monoleg sans band drill in our masters group, and nobody who isn’t already proficient with the band even comes close to being able to approximate the motion done correctly, which isn’t all too surprising since if you immediately sink with the band, you’ve got a lot of work to do with your balance. Even WITH the ability to swim with a band, it’s challenging to keep the heels completely locked sans band - the urge to cheat is too big, and I don’t see any advantages in doing this drill if you just intend to cheat on it.
I like a lot of what that website you posted says, but the part on skipping the band and just trying to lock ankles is one area I definitely disagree with, because it’s just TOO difficult to do this correctly without the band to show you you’re still cheating. This is one of those motor motions that unless you have the device to really keep you honest while learning, you will always cheat to stay up. I also totally disagree with the concept that the band makes you less aware of your motor motion like the article suggests - it INCREASES your awareness because you absolutely can’t cheat and thus really pay attention to your balance and legs.
My answer to folks who claim that the heels-locked sans band (even during learning) is better: you better be pretty good at band swimming before I start listening
http://www.findingfreestyle.com/?q=noropes
As an aside, one of the big advocates of that exact website on beginnertriathlete (I searched that forum too about everything about bands before I even started using them) almost certainly can’t even do the band drill well herself, and always refers to that website as an excuse that she’s actually justifying her inability to train/use the band, which I find pretty weak.