In my teaching, I get to watch a lot of younger age-grouper swimmers in club settings swimming 3-4 lanes of 4-5 swimmers. Coaches don’t have a lot of time to iron out stroke imperfections. When I look over the club lanes, I see a lot of first, second and even third year swimmers picking up their heads while they breathe. And as they get older, that stroke develops into an uneven gallop stroke. 

There are three basic freestyle strokes: Oppositional (or kayak) timing for sprints, where turnover is critical. Overlap (front quadrant) timing for distance. And then there’s something in the middle.

If you watch Australian swimmers in 100 and 200 free events, they swim in with symmetrical front quadrant timing at a pace faster than an 800 or 1500 with less glide between recovery and catch. The power in each pull is equal, left and right, with a high elbow recovery for each arm. 

The other “middle stroke,” the gallop stroke also called the hybrid stroke is unequal. The non-breathing arm swings outward and the hand and elbow break the surface at the same moment. The other arm, the breathing arm, comes in with a high elbow recovery, entering fingertips, wrist, elbow in sequence, setting a good catch for a strong, high elbow pull. The non-breathing arm does not set as good of a catch, and the pull is weaker–but the turnover is also faster as it would be in a sprint. I do see some good swim times with gallopers–for example David Popovici. But younger swimmers tend to push down on the water to lift the head. This creates inefficiencies in terms of drag and pulling power.

When I work with young swimmers, one of my first goals is to teach them how to turn their head in breathing to maintain good vertical and horizontal alignment. But if I’ve got a 14-15 year old who has a gallop stroke, the goal is to manage efficiency, because trying to invent their stroke at that age probably won’t work. You want the arm opposite the breathing side to be almost as powerful as the breathing side.

A very common flaw, one I believe stems from head lifters (nascent gallopers), is that the arm stroke on the non-breathing side pulls underneath the body rather than outside the shoulders. This is typically due to over-rotation as the swimmer tries to get a good breath. I spend a lot of time working to fix this flaw. A great drill to use is one-arm stroke breathing to the opposite side. With the non-stroking arm at your side, start with a nice long entry, rotate into the breath, but as you pull rotate back to neutral, head down after you breathe. 

When I work with older, galloping swimmers, the goal is to 1). Minimize the drag that a swinging arm can create, 2). Reduce lifting the head and shoulders on the breath (the chest creates drag as you lift), 3.) Rotate into an effective catch and pull. If compare Katie Ledecky–a galloper!–from her maiden 2012 Olympics to 2016 and then Paris, you will see the evolution of gaining more power in the non-breathing stroke, with better hand entry and less of a head lift. Breaking those habits from early club days may take years or a good college coach, but it can be done. Hi ho Silver!