Alright fishies, let’s hear all of the benefits sculling. It’s my “Technique Season” right now and I’ve dropped my volume, spending time on technique. Should I incorporate sculling, or focus on other technique drills?
There are constant small adjustments in angles of attack relative to the water and even moreso relative to your body that good swimmers make naturally as they swim. Bad swimmers don’t.
While you might not do much sculling during the normal stroke, you do need that sometimes elusive feel for the water - the ability to find the hard water to push on. Sculling helps some people acheive that.
For swimmers who are even worse, like the over 2 minutes per 100 crowd, sculling serves a purpose as a general sensitization training to what your hands actually do and how to make them do other things. My worst swimmers first can’t figure out how sculling would make you move, can’t really blame a person for a lack of understanding of fluid flow, but more concerning is when the person understands the concept but can’t make their hands perform the skill, I see this OFTEN.
The type of swimmer who I’d be most likely to suggest sculling to is a person whose stroke count is 21ish or more, swims slower than say 1:50/100 for critical pace and whose time trial times deteriorate by 4% or less when the time trial distance doubles. This is typically a woman butn ot always so.
As for what drills or other technique things you should work on, that’s a rather personal question and the answer really starts with what your specific deficiencies are.
So, if swim an IM in the 57:XX range, would sculling be at or near the bottom of the drill priority list? Truth be told, I’ll often pick drills to break up the routine (both mentally and physically).
Big caveat, I’ve never seen you swim; so I could easily be proven wrong.
While I think everyone should have some familiarity with sculling and a little here and there for variety is good, I doubt that what you need to move from 57 to 54 lies in replacing your swim time with sculling.
Yeah sculling is a good drill if you want to work you high elbow technique. Without seeing your stroke I couldn’t tell you if you need it. If you want to scull though just go for it you can scull in a bunch of different positions; arms straight up, with high elbow, down at your sides etc. Have fun!!
Good stuff! Thanks. I’ll do a little here and there to mix things up, but won’t get too carried away with it.
Crafty: If you are doing 95% crawl (freestyle), then the sculling will balance out some of the shoulder muscle groups to minimize risk of injury due to weakness in neighboring muscles. Swimmers doing medleys of stokes would get this balance during their normal workouts. 50-100Meters of sculling in warm down is sufficient per my former master swim coach who coached at Uni and Olympics levels. Thanks, Doug
Might be a good way to ease back into your swim if you’ve spent significant time away from swimming. I swim 57 in IM as well, and after a month off in November, I didn’t need it when I started back in December, but that might not fall under the category of significant time off.
I’m in the crowd of understanding it but can’t move with it. I actually swim decently (1:20 swim time per hundred SCY if going hard, can hold 1:40 100s all day long with a swim time of 1:30) but sculling leaves me lost at sea.
Thanks for the input. I cosider myself a good swimmer, but am looking for small tweaks to find speed I’m leaving in the water. I know that when I went from a 1:04 to a 57 I was actually swimming less volume but more focus on technique and body position. As an adult onset swimmer, focussing on technique has helped me make the most of my 2-3 hours of pool time each week.
I’d say mix it up as much as possible.
The goal of drills is to promote proper technique and help reduce flaws when you fatigue. Sculling drills done properly will blast your forearms and help develop a feel for pressure and proper catch. Try varying speed/intensity and direction too! Do sculling drills one day and then “over the barrel” drill then next. A speed set with paddles then no paddles mixed in might be fun too!
Once I found out about sculling and how to do it properly, I have incorporated it into every swim session I do. I find the version with my hands straight out really helps develop and maintain a feel for the initial catch. My technique and feel for the water feels flawless immediately after each length of this. I also do the high elbow/EVF version as well, but haven’t found it quite as helpful to my stroke.