Practice Set for 2 Beat Leg Press

At this stage, if incorporating the 2-beat press rhythm is difficult for you to do in whole stroke, we recommend that you work on this separately from your other stroke skills for a while. You may spend part of many practices doing drills (without whole stroke) to give your body time to recognize and easily slip into the basic pattern and rhythm, then switch over to working on other aspects of your stroke without trying to make the 2BLP happen. Once you are consistent with finding and holding CBP in drills and you feel ready to challenge yourself, then you can try pulling that skill into your whole stroke swimming.

 

Establish The Skills In Order

We recommend that you spend several practice sessions on each step, as many as it takes to feel like you’ve established that skill in your nervous system.

First, establish the ability to lock your legs into the CBP on every stroke, without trying to ‘press’ deliberately on each switch. Just learn to find that position immediately on each switch and to lock that position while the body remains in streamline. Just keeping the legs in CBP on every stroke will greatly improve your streamline and ease.

Once that ability is established with consistency, then work on applying more of a press on each switch to add some emphasis to the torso rotation.

Then, work on refining the timing of the press. Try slightly earlier and slightly later and feel the difference it makes in how well it helps enhance the torso rotation.

Then, work on refining the way you press on the water to form that press in a more compact space.

 

Breaking It Down Further

To make it easier to get control over this in your initial practices, first work on positioning or moving just one leg at time, in and out of position. The other leg may or may not know where it needs to be; practice not paying attention to that second leg for a while and then try holding it in attention as well in order to pull it into its counter-balanced position under the streamline side leg. Notice if one side is easier to control than the other, and use that stronger side as a template for the other. You may spend some minutes focused on just one side, then switch focus to the other side.

Then practice alternating from one side to the other. Try single movements, starting on one side and finishing on the other, with just one switch. Try starting on the left side and switching to the right. Try starting on the right side and switching to the left. Be patient and work with single switches like this until you are able to make a smooth switch and immediately find the CBP each time.

Then try two switches in a row, and then three switches. These switches are not ‘swimming’ but more of a transition from one streamline side to the other. They are about maintaining balance and finding your best position, not about moving forward. So you will be pausing and holding streamline for a few seconds on each side in order to check your position and test stability.

When you can do three clean, smooth, precise switches in a row, consistently, then you can move to doing actual strokes, but do those in slower motion so you have time to notice and control what your legs are doing. Do these in short segments that do not involve breathing (yet) because the breathing action can easily throw off the stroke timing and the legs.

Once you can switch smoothly and find CBP on every switch in these short, non-breathing whole stroke segments, then you can try inserting a breath into the pattern.

Choose three or four of the drills to work with and do them in the order of increasing challenge. Spend a few minutes on each drill. Choose one or two cues to work with and alternate which one you use from time to time.