Two of my kids had the privilege of being trained by Olympic swimmers Dana Vollmer and Jason Lezak last weekend at the Olympic trials pool in West Fargo, North Dakota (yes, the pool that was used for the Olympic trials in Omaha is now in West Fargo - the Hulbert Aquatic Center!). It was a Breakout Swim Clinic sponsored by Mutual of Omaha.

I caught the last 90 minutes of training, which was the bulk of the time they spent in the pool. Apparently, the first two hours were consumed with photo ops and autographs. My kids actually got to wear Vollmer and Lezak's medals for their photo ops!

But let's get on to the tips . . .

I arrived during the last part of the session with Jason Lezak. He was coaching freestyle and had them do a bunch of drills. Unfortunately, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention.

My main takeaway from Jason was to remember hip rotation. Too often, when swimming freestyle, people rotate their shoulders to grasp the water, but forget about their hips. Rotating the hips slightly with each stroke really helps to make the stroke more streamlined.

Here's a video that illustrates this:

I enjoyed the session with Dana Vollmer even more than the one with Jason. Admittedly, part of the reason I liked Jason's so much was because Dana was on deck with her five-month-old baby at the time! I didn't know that she had a baby, and it was so cool to see how much she loved the little guy. He was so happy out there and the noise and commotion didn't bother him at all.

I googled Dana and found out that she has a website called Momma On A Mission. It turns out that her baby is her second child, and she is the first ever mom to win an Olympic gold medal, which she won in 2016. Wow! She is really making this work for her. Her website shows a picture of her having muscle work (a massage) and the masseuse is wearing her baby in a baby carrier. It doesn't get better than that!

Dana taught butterfly to the kids. Core strength is SO important, and she chose to emphasize this first. She talked about the importance of standing up straight. She said that if you don't stand up straight and maintain a strong core EVERY DAY, your butterfly will suffer. Notice how straight Dana is standing in the photo above, even while holding her baby, who looked to me like he weighed about 16 pounds.

Swimmers are known for poor posture, unfortunately, due to the repetitive motions of their arms. We need to take actions like Dana suggested in order to improve our strokes and even to avoid injury. We need to remember to stand up straight.

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I can't remember if that's what she called it, but Dana spent a lot of time demonstrating how to swim like a dolphin, and use that motion in the butterfly. In fact, the movement she uses has been compared, digitally, to a dolphin's (see video below).

She demonstrated drills that basically were like an undulating motion of a dolphin: hands at your sides, tucking your head down and letting your body follow, and then coming back up. She said that taking a breath should not be difficult as you come up.

She said to take advantage of the air in your lungs (like a water polo ball that's pushed down and then pops us out of the water), balanced against the weight of your hips- using the hips to push that ball forward and down.

Dana emphasized the importance of form instead of speed while learning the technique, and she asked the swimmers to do as many of these mini dolphin dives as possible as they moved across the pool. She emphasized that they shouldn't use their legs to kick during the drill. There should be no splashing or thumping of the feet.

From my position in the bleachers, I could clearly see the difference between the swimmers who "got it" and those who didn't.

Watch your pinkie finger position when doing fly--don't rotate up or toward the center. Dana had the kids stand on deck and bring their arms up as if they were swimming the fly. She emphasized the pinkies shouldn't be up. Too many of us rotate our arms when doing the fly, bringing our pinkies toward the ceiling, which makes it a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

You can try this now. Stand up and do the arm motion for the fly. It's a lot easier when you don't twist your pinkies toward the center, isn't it?


If you'd like to learn more about the Breakout Swim Clinics like this one, click here.
If you're an adult who'd like to learn to swim, check out my Adult-Learn-To-Swim teaching page.