2.4. I’m struggling with the “slow glide and kick” drill

In the practical section, there are several drills called “slow glide and kick” and also “two-beat kick timing.” These are closely related and both are super important for learning how to swim freestyle in a relaxed, smooth way without burning out. So let’s focus on them and explain in more detail. Turning on all your motors—arms, legs, and charging forward like a bulldozer—is not the goal. The art is in letting yourself glide on the surface, not pushing too hard, and not trying to swim fast like that bulldozer. To do that, you need a great body position and synchronized arm-leg movement. The kick timing is precisely defined: you must kick at the exact moment your opposite hand enters the water. So when your right fingers enter the water, you kick with your left foot. Sound complicated? Just watch the video and keep watching until it clicks.

We’re not focusing on breathing right now, but rather on syncing arms and legs during the two-beat kick. I explain this to my swimmers in two ways—two perspectives that help absorb the timing. Let’s break it down:
First perspective: focus your eyes on the arm that’s flying through the air. As soon as the arm enters the water, the OPPOSITE leg kicks.
Right arm enters, left leg kicks. Right hand, left leg. Left hand, right leg.
2. Now the second view – focus your eyes on the hand as it starts pulling underwater, on the fingers that just begin to sink below the surface. As soon as the pull starts, the SAME leg kicks. Right hand pulls, right leg kicks. Left hand pulls, left leg kicks. See? We’re breaking this coordination down into atoms, and the very first fundamental drill is “slow glide and kick”, where you try just one or two strokes and stop — you can’t expect more from your coordination at this point.
The second step will be to connect it into continuous freestyle, which I call “phasing of the two-beat kick.” In Swimbook, I use the first description — meaning that when the hand enters the water, the OPPOSITE leg kicks.

Even if you feel like an uncoordinated whale at first, try to stick with it and keep practicing — these are seriously important drills.
It’s just terribly hard to describe all of it in a few lines of text, so it might seem complicated, but I believe that now you can better imagine what it is you’re supposed to do.