Altrincham Swimming Club: UW Clinic

The first (since I started writing about these club visits) external club for me to visit is Altrincham Swimming Club. Head Coach Kate invited me down to spend an hour with the youngest kids, and two hours with the more senior swimmers, all focussed on underwater fly kicking.

On land we ran through the perfect streamline, and stretches to help get into this ideal position: emphasising the need to perform these both pre and post the pool session. Streamline is the basis of underwater work, which in turn is the basis for all swimming.

Then in the water, we worked on making the kicks flow from the chest using 6 progressions of vertical kicking, and transferring that into swim reps with extended underwater phases. I then took the older swimmers through some drills for working the upbeat of the kicks, a skill that is difficult, and lacking in most athletes.

We finished the sessions off by swimming a set of 50s where we combined the time with the stroke count to get a score, with the aim of making that score as low as possible. This kind of set promotes fast efficient fly kicking to reduce the time and stroke count simultaneously. There was some very good work from both sets of swimmers today, and I’m looking forward to seeing them at races in the future demonstrating these new skills!