By popular request from a gathering of the local swim coaches, we will be taking a look at the wide world of sculling in this post.

Like Ben and Jerry’s which has a plethora of ice cream flavors, swimming has almost an infinite way to implement the sculling drill, and a few that will spice up your swim practices as well.  Let’s take a look at what sculling is before we look at the methods.

By definition, sculling is “A stroke which mirrors the sculling movement of an oarsman, with the swimmer using their arms to propel themselves through the water. Can be done on their back or their front”.  However, my personal definition of sculling is the efficient (and sometime creative) movement of the hands and forearms in order to effectively move through the water.  It focuses on the ability of the swimmer to feel the water and make use of what water they have in order to create some sort of velocity.  With that said, let’s take a look at some of the ways a swimmer can scull and why to do these variations.

Front Scull

The front scull is a drill that, I feel, is undervalued in the swim coaching world.  It is one of the best drills that you can do to teach the initial catch and feel for the water in three out of the four competitive strokes.  The key to the front scull is to maintain a high arm position (position 11), point the fingertips at a 45 degree angle toward the bottom of the pool, and use quick in/out sweeps to propel forward.  To make this a bit harder, you can (1) not kick, or (2) keep your head up.

Rear Scull

The rear scull is almost the exact opposite of the front scull.  This variation  of the drill works on the end of the stroke for the swimmers allowing them to feel what movements are most effective for their hands in order to get the maximum thrust at the end of their stroke.  For this drill, the arms are down to the size (by the hip/thigh), and the focus is on the hand out-sweep.  As a hint, make sure the swimmers do not try to force their elbows into this drill as (again) the focal point is on the hand out-sweep.

Under Scull

This flavor of the scull drill is to emphasize the arm position in mid-pull.  The idea behind this is to get up into the high catch position, begin the pull phase, and stop about half-way through.  The swimmers should work on holding that “perfect-pull-position” as they will form muscle memory and learn how to best hold the water throughout this phase of the stroke.  As a variation of this, when the swimmers get good you can have them alter body positions and do a 1 handed scull (with kick) to work on their actual position in that phase of the stroke.

Reverse Scull

This is probably one of the hardest drills to perform initially, but is a great tool, and extremely fun when the swimmers have it down.  The swimmers will lay out on their back, point their feet forward and the arms will be overhead in position 11.  From there, they will propel themselves forward using only their sculling motion of the hands.  This variation truly works on the swimmer’s feel of the water as well as their core stability.

Sit Scull

Again, one of the best drills that you can use for breaststroke to teach young swimmers how to correctly grab the water and maintain elbow position.  Swimmers will sit on the kick board (making sure their board is locked in under their legs to prevent it from sliding out) – this also works balancing muscles.  They will the reach forward like they were shooting their hands for breaststroke recovery.  Have them press out and begin their in-sweep.  Stop their in-sweep half-way through the stroke.  This is the position of the sit scull.  The focus will be on maintaining a high elbow throughout the scull as well as the velocity that the swimmer can drive from both the out and in-sweep.  This can turn into a really fun relay as well for those age groupers out there!

Partner Scull

Now it’s time to get a little creative and add a partner to the sculling drills.  Partners will be swimming side-by-side and working the front scull together.  The goal of this is to establish a scull rhythm led by the swimmer on either side (you pick who leads).  The swimmers, on the out-sweep, will clap their hands together.  This can get a little interesting, and fun if you add a third to the group!  If you need a video for this, GoSwim.tv has a great showing of this drill.

Press Scull

This is a variation of the front scull.  The purpose (and goal) of this drill is to get the initial press to give you the maximum velocity possible.  So, there is no kick, the swimmer will maximize the thrust from the out-sweep of the scull, and minimize the in-sweep drag – we don’t want any velocity coming from the in-sweep on this drill.  This is a great way to introduce some advanced technique in both fly and breaststroke (to be touched on at a later date).

Hopefully you are able to use a few of these in your workouts to work on that feel of the water as well as have a little fun out there!  As always, if you have any other suggestions or know of any other sculling related drills please feel free to leave comments below!