Walk onto any pool deck and you’ll spot two staples in nearly every swimmer’s mesh bag: a flat foam kickboard and a figure-eight pull buoy. They look simple, but each one trains a completely different half of your stroke — and using the wrong one for the wrong drill can waste a session or reinforce bad habits.

This guide breaks down exactly what each tool does, how to use it correctly, and how to fit both into a balanced training plan so you build a stronger kick and a more powerful pull without one compensating for the other.

Quick Answer

Use a kickboard to isolate your legs and drill kick technique — you hold it out front with straight or slightly bent arms while your legs do all the propulsion. Use a pull buoy to isolate your arms and upper-body pull — you squeeze it between your thighs so your legs float, letting you focus entirely on your stroke, catch, and core rotation without kicking.

What Each Tool Actually Does

A kickboard is a flat, buoyant board you hold in front of you, arms extended, while your legs kick behind you. Because your upper body is fully supported, all the propulsive work — and all the technical feedback — comes from your kick: ankle flexibility, kick amplitude, and hip-driven leg action. It’s useful for beginners learning to float and kick, and for competitive swimmers isolating leg strength and rhythm without their arms compensating.

A pull buoy is a foam float, shaped like a figure eight, that you place between your upper thighs (closer to your crotch than your knees). It lifts your hips and legs so they float behind you with little to no kicking, which removes leg propulsion from the equation entirely. That forces your arms, shoulders, lats, and core rotation to do all the work — making it the standard tool for isolating and strengthening your pull and stroke mechanics.

In short: kickboard = legs-only work, pull buoy = arms-only work. They’re opposites by design, which is exactly why swim coaches program both into a week’s training.

How to Use Each One Correctly

For the kickboard: grip the top edge lightly with hands about shoulder-width apart, keep your head in a neutral position (not craned up), and let your hips stay near the surface. Kick from the hips, not just the knees, and keep ankles relaxed so they can flex. If your legs sink or your board bounces up and down, that usually signals a kick that’s coming from the knees instead of the hips, or a body position that’s too vertical.

For the pull buoy: place it between your upper thighs and squeeze gently to hold it in place — your legs don’t need to be rigid, and a little relaxed drift is fine. Focus on a strong catch at the front of the stroke, a high elbow through the pull, and finishing the stroke past your hip. Many swimmers pair the pull buoy with a swim snorkel to remove breathing rotation from the equation, or with paddles to add resistance once technique is solid — but add paddles only after the base stroke is clean, since paddles amplify existing habits, good or bad.

A practical rule coaches use: reserve pull-buoy sets for one or two sessions a week rather than every swim. Used too often, it can mask weaknesses in body position and kick timing that only show up when you’re swimming full stroke.

Tips / Common Mistakes

Don’t let the pull buoy become a crutch — if you notice your hips sink the moment you take it out, that’s a sign you’re leaning on it too much instead of building real core and body-position control. Balance pull-buoy sets with plenty of full-stroke swimming so the isolated gains actually transfer.

On the kickboard, avoid over-arching your lower back or lifting your head too high to breathe — both flatten your body position and make the kick less efficient. Keep the board low in the water and let your legs, not your arms, generate the pressure against it.

Match the tool to the goal: use a kickboard when you want to build leg strength, ankle flexibility, or kick rhythm; use a pull buoy when you want to build pulling strength, stroke mechanics, or upper-body endurance. Mixing both into the same set (kickboard on one length, pull buoy the next) is a common and effective way to structure a technique-focused practice.

Explore more: More swimming training guides.

Kickboard vs Pull Buoy FAQs

Can beginners use a pull buoy?

Yes, though it’s often introduced after a swimmer is comfortable floating and kicking. A pull buoy is a great way for newer swimmers to feel proper hip and body position in the water without worrying about kicking at the same time.

Should I use a pull buoy with paddles or a snorkel?

Both are common pairings. A snorkel removes the need to rotate for breathing so you can focus purely on arm mechanics, while paddles add resistance to build pulling strength — but only add paddles once your stroke technique is solid, since they’ll exaggerate any existing flaws.

How often should I train with a kickboard or pull buoy?

Most coaches suggest working both into your routine a couple of times a week each, rather than relying on either every session. The goal is to isolate and strengthen specific parts of your stroke, then reinforce that improvement in full-stroke swimming.

Will a kickboard slow down my kick technique for racing?

Not if used correctly. Kickboard drills that emphasize hip-driven kicking and a streamlined body position reinforce race-relevant mechanics. Problems only arise if the kick is done with poor form, like kicking from the knees or arching the back.

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The post Kickboard vs Pull Buoy: When to Use Each in Training appeared first on SportsSteps.

Most young swimmers don’t get slower because they aren’t working hard enough — they get slower because a small technique leak is quietly adding drag or wasting energy every single stroke. A high head, a crossed-over hand entry, or a kick that comes from the knee instead of the hip can cost tenths of a second per lap without ever showing up as an obvious flaw on deck.

This guide breaks down six of the most common freestyle technique errors in youth competitive swimmers, the specific drill coaches use to fix each one, how to spot the flaw from the pool deck before it shows up in a race, and how to fold the fixes into a realistic weekly practice plan. Work through them in order during warm-up or technique sets, and layer in one fix at a time rather than trying to rebuild the whole stroke at once.

Quick Answer

The fastest technique gains for young freestylers come from six fixes, tackled one at a time: head/body position, a high-elbow catch, clean hand entry and catch-up timing, body rotation, a hip-driven kick, and a full pull finish. Pair each with its matching drill — kickboard sighting cues, closed-fist swimming, fingertip drag, side-kick rotation, streamline kicking, and stroke-count counting — then reinforce the whole stroke with bilateral breathing and two to three short technique sessions a week.

6 Technique Fixes That Make Freestyle Faster

1. Fix head position first. Swimming with the head up is the single most common flaw at any age, and it drops the hips and legs, adding drag for the whole length of the pool. The fix: eyes should look down and slightly forward, with the waterline hitting around the crown of the head, not the chin. A kickboard set with ‘look at the bottom’ cues, or simply counting tiles on the pool floor, retrains this fast.

2. Build a high-elbow catch instead of a straight-arm pull. Many kids drop their elbow on entry and pull straight back with a stiff arm, which slips water instead of holding it. The fix is an early vertical forearm: after the hand enters, the elbow stays higher than the hand as the forearm rotates down and back, so the swimmer is pressing water toward the feet, not just pushing it down. Closed-fist freestyle is the classic drill for this — swimming with fists instead of open hands forces the forearm and elbow to do the work of catching water, and swimmers immediately feel the difference when they open their hands again. Sculling drills with the hands just under the surface build the same feel at an even slower, more deliberate pace.

3. Clean up hand entry and the catch-up timing. The hand should enter fingertips-first (not thumb-first), with the palm angled slightly outward before it rotates into the catch, and it should enter roughly in line with the shoulder — not crossing over the body’s centerline, which causes a snaking, zig-zag path through the water. The catch-up drill directly builds this: one arm stays extended out front while the other completes a full stroke cycle and ‘catches up’ to touch it before starting the next stroke. It slows the stroke down enough for young swimmers to actually feel a clean entry and a full extension.

4. Add body rotation so the stroke comes from the core, not just the shoulder. Swimmers who stay flat on their stomach can only reach and pull with the arm; rotating the hips and shoulders together (roughly 30-45 degrees each way) adds reach, engages bigger muscles, and helps the recovery arm clear the water. The side-kick drill builds this directly: kicking on one side with the bottom arm extended and the top arm resting on the hip, then rotating to the other side every six kicks (a ‘6-kick switch’ drill), teaches the body to rotate as a unit instead of twisting just the shoulders.

5. Kick from the hip, not the knee. A common youth error is a big, bent-knee ‘bicycle kick’ that creates drag and burns energy without adding much propulsion. The fix is a narrower, faster flutter kick that starts at the hip with a relatively straight leg and a relaxed ankle. Streamline kicking on the stomach and on the back, done off every wall push-off, reinforces both the tight kick and a strong core-driven body position at the same time.

6. Finish the pull past the hip. Many young swimmers stop pulling too early, near the belly button, which cuts the most powerful part of the stroke short. Coaches often cue swimmers to ‘flick water at your thigh’ at the end of the pull, or use a stroke-count drill — counting strokes across the pool and trying to hold or lower that count while keeping the same speed — to reward a longer, more complete finish rather than a short, choppy one.

How to Spot Each Flaw From the Pool Deck

Parents and assistant coaches don’t need underwater footage to catch most of these six flaws — the surface signs are visible if you know where to look. A high head shows up as a visible wake breaking around the swimmer’s chin instead of the crown of the head, and hips or feet that ride low or kick a spray of bubbles into the air. A dropped elbow looks like the hand pulling straight down and back with almost no bend at the elbow, and it often pairs with a short, choppy stroke because the swimmer can’t hold water long enough to finish the pull. Crossover entries are easy to see from behind: the hand lands near the opposite shoulder or centerline instead of extending straight out from that same-side shoulder.

Flat swimming (no rotation) looks like a swimmer whose head barely moves side to side and whose recovery arm seems to drag or scrape the water on the way forward. An over-bent knee kick creates a visible splash and a bicycling motion at the surface rather than a tight, narrow flutter just below it. Filming ten to fifteen seconds of freestyle from the side and from behind on a phone — even without a waterproof case, held just above the surface — is usually enough to confirm what’s happening below the waterline.

Fixing One-Sided Breathing With Bilateral Drills

A seventh issue shows up constantly alongside the six stroke flaws above: young swimmers who only ever breathe to one side. Breathing exclusively to a dominant side tends to pull that shoulder and head around more on every stroke, which reinforces uneven rotation and can make the crossover and flat-swimming problems above harder to fix, since the stroke is already asymmetrical by design.

Bilateral breathing — breathing to both sides on a rotating pattern, most commonly every three strokes — is the standard fix, but it should be layered in after head position and rotation are already reasonably solid, not before. Start on the side-kick drill described above, practicing the exhale-and-rotate-to-breathe pattern on the swimmer’s weaker side in isolation. Once that feels comfortable, move to full-stroke freestyle breathing every three strokes for short 25-yard reps before mixing it into longer sets. A dry cue that works well for kids: exhale steadily through the nose or mouth while the face is down, and only turn (not lift) the head to find air, letting the body’s rotation — not a head lift — bring the mouth to the surface.

Expect the new breathing side to feel noticeably weaker and more tiring at first; that’s normal and it evens out with regular bilateral work over time, not a single session.

How Often Should Youth Swimmers Drill Technique

Two to three focused technique sessions a week, of roughly 15 to 30 minutes each, produce better results than one long occasional drill-heavy practice — consistency and quality of movement matter more than total volume for young swimmers still building motor patterns. Within a given practice, many age-group coaches build technique sets that are drill-heavy in the early season (drilling can make up roughly half of a technique-focused practice) and taper toward more full-speed swimming and racing pace as a meet approaches.

Within each session, pick one or two drills that target a specific, identified fault rather than rotating through all six fixes at once — a swimmer trying to fix their catch, their rotation, and their kick simultaneously usually improves at none of them. Give a single fix sustained, consistent practice across multiple sessions before moving on to the next one; how long it takes for a cue to show up automatically in full-stroke swimming varies by swimmer and by skill, so there’s no single realistic number of weeks that fits every case.

How to Build These Fixes Into Practice

Don’t try to correct all six at once. Pick one focus per warm-up or technique set — for example, closed-fist freestyle for the catch on Monday, side-kick drill for rotation on Wednesday — and stick with it across several sessions before layering in the next fix. Keep drill sets short (25s to 50s) and swim them slowly enough that the swimmer can actually think about the cue; drilling fast just reinforces the same bad habit faster.

Pair every drill with one full-stroke swim immediately after, so the swimmer practices transferring the feel of the drill into normal freestyle. A simple 25 drill / 25 swim, repeated four to six times, is one of the most common formats coaches use for exactly this reason.

Tips and Common Mistakes

Don’t skip video. Young swimmers often can’t feel the difference between a high elbow and a dropped one, or between a rotated stroke and a flat one — a phone video from the side or from underwater makes the fix obvious in a way verbal cues can’t.

Avoid over-kicking on drills that are meant to isolate the arms, like catch-up or closed-fist freestyle; a big kick can mask a weak pull and defeat the purpose of the drill. And progress is not linear — a swimmer will often look worse for a session or two after a new cue is introduced, before the new pattern settles in and the old habit fades.

youth freestyle swim drills and technique fixes FAQs

What is the most common freestyle technique mistake in young swimmers?

Swimming with the head too high is the single most common flaw across age groups — it drops the hips and legs and adds drag for the entire length of the pool. A dropped elbow during the pull is a close second.

What drill fixes a crossover hand entry in freestyle?

The catch-up drill and the fingertip drag drill both target crossover directly. Catch-up drill slows the stroke down so the swimmer can feel the hand entering in line with the shoulder instead of the centerline, while fingertip drag reinforces a wide, controlled recovery that lands the hand in the right spot.

How often should youth swimmers do technique drills?

Two to three short, focused sessions a week (about 15-30 minutes each) beat one long occasional drill session. Pick one or two drills per session tied to a specific flaw rather than rotating through everything at once.

When should a young swimmer start bilateral breathing?

Once head position and rotation are reasonably solid — bilateral breathing (rotating breaths to both sides, commonly every three strokes) is easier to add after the stroke fundamentals are in place, and it often exposes a one-sided rotation problem that breathing to only one side hides.

How can I tell if my swimmer has a high-elbow catch without underwater video?

Watch from the side: a dropped elbow shows a nearly straight arm pulling down and back with little bend, and often produces a short, choppy stroke. A high-elbow catch shows the elbow staying above the hand as the forearm rotates down, with a smoother, longer pull.

How long does it take to fix freestyle technique in a young swimmer?

There’s no fixed timeline — it depends on the swimmer and the specific flaw, and a cue only becomes automatic after sustained, consistent practice across multiple sessions rather than any set number of weeks. That’s why it’s best to work on one fix at a time, with regular reps, rather than overhauling the whole stroke at once.

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The post Freestyle Swim Drills for Kids: 6 Technique Fixes + Breathing appeared first on SportsSteps.