Using underwater swimming to improve swimmers ability to feel frontal resistance is a great kinestetic tool. 

These drills are called ‘Spider-Man’ drills because they are a genre of drill that are all similar. If you had your swimmers swim freestyle underwater then it looks a bit weird. And feels weird. But it looks like Spider-Man climbing a wall. So when I first used this drill in a random act of ‘fun’, which I am compelled to do, I knew it was gold.

I have obviously swum underwater since I was a child, (think four year old going off three meter springboard), so I was aware of how swimming underwater feels like, but with a coaches hat on, I imagined what it had taught me. Underwater resistance is completely around your body so it is much harder to move through it than on the surface. Your body position has to be perfectly aligned to find the easiest way through the water.  Ergo…correct position if you want to lower your head or adjust alignment.

So breaststroke under water became Spider-Man Breaststroke, underwater fly became Spider-Man Fly and the hardest, for those kids that can do anything; Spider-Man Backstroke.

Try them.