6.3. Crawl with snorkel and pull buoy

Crawling with a snorkel and a pull buoy can be your first attempt at learning freestyle, where your arms don’t reach all the way forward. It’s your first attempt at finding the rhythm of the stroke. In this drill, you can even flutter kick with the buoy if it feels more comfortable.

What to focus on most:

• Extend the arms underwater as far as possible – the moment of switching arms is when one finishes ¾ of the full cycle and the gliding arm starts pulling;
• body position – keep shoulders, hips, and ankles aligned near the surface;

• rotate the whole torso – dynamic movement from one side to the other, then slow down during the arm recovery above water and exaggerate the glide phase.