Make no mistake about it. You can become an excellent swimmer with nothing more than your own body, a swimsuit, and some smart coaching. No accessories necessary.
But there are plenty available. Some of them are actually helpful. Kickboards may be the most familiar, followed closely by fins. Hand paddles, pull buoys, elastic tethers—all beckon with the promise of greater strength or more impressive speed. They supposedly work like weight machines of the water, letting you isolate muscles you need to work on, then bear down on them with concentrated training.
Some are beneficial. Others at least won’t do you particular harm. And still others sound good but are a waste of time at best and an actual detriment to your swimming at worst. It’s true that virtually everyone uses them, but this is one of those cases where most folks just have the wrong idea about what these training aids really do. So let’s give them a critical analysis.
Of all the elements that make up the hard-to-define gift known as “swimming talent,” the most valuable is extraordinary kinesthetic awareness—gifted swimmers just know how to work with the water better than anyone else to achieve less resistance and more fluid movement. But, as I’ve suggested, a surprising amount of what coaches call “talent” is learnable. “Average” swimmers can unquestionably heighten their own kinesthetic awareness, which will always produce more improvement, more quickly, than anything under the heading of “work.”
The most commonly used training tools have two drawbacks: (1) they encourage you to focus on effort, rather than efficiency; and (2) they actively interfere with your ability to improve your kinesthetic awareness. Finally, for developing swimmers there is also the issue of prioritizing precious time for activities that have the largest value. TI methods help you swim better immediately. Buoys, boards, and paddles simply don’t.
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