When used properly and with intent, grabbing and using your very best pull buoy can be a very powerful tool for better swimming and for getting the most of your swim practices. It can be easy to make the case for its use based on the following arguments:
1. Teaches you proper body position.
Fast swimmers ride the surface of the water. They glide across the pool, their hips high, giving them a slim profile in the water. When a swimmer's legs drop, drag shoots through the roof.
The pull buoy helps us to achieve a more efficient body position by keeping our butts nearly dry and our feet dangling at or just below the surface of the water.
The idea is that by being better able to feel proper body position we can transfer this over to our regular swimming.
We learn how efficient swimming should feel like.
2. Pull buoys isolate the upper body.
There is a myriad of reasons that you would want to be doing this-your legs are gassed, it's a recovery workout, or you simply want to level up your upper body strength, you can isolate your arms, shoulders and back with the use of a pull buoy.
3. It is less taxing than swimming.
Our legs demand a lot in the water. While flutter kicking may only provide a fraction of actual propulsion, it contributes to overall swimming speed in other ways, particularly with keeping proper body position in the water.
This contribution comes at a cost-our legs are incredibly oxygen-thirsty and can leave us feeling winded quickly. The pull buoy allows us to train for longer, allowing us to develop increased upper body fitness.
4. A pull buoy can help you focus on better technique.
Swimming faster is equal parts conditioning and efficiency (i.e. awesome technique!). I find that when using a pull buoy it's easier to focus on that high elbow catch and a balanced arm stroke because there is simply less to focus on.
With the focus solely being upstairs you can devote all your mental energy to improving your pulling technique.
5. Work on arm mechanics independent of your legs.
Some swimmers have such a hopelessly awful kick that the only way they can develop the fundamentals of a better arm stroke is to use a pull buoy and completely isolate the movement.
It allows these swimmers to experience moving through the water as though they had a better kick and proper leg and hip positioning.
6. It is helpful with breath control work (and even improving your walls).
As an age group swimmers, long course swim practices were always fertile ground for lung-buster sets. It wasn't uncommon to see coaches write up breathing patterns of 5-7-9 when doing pull sets.
These are great for helping us learn breath discipline.
In addition, while doing pull sets I find that flip turns can be better addressed because you aren't so out of breath and scrambling for air between the flags and the wall-as a result, you can swim in and out of the wall without breathing, resulting in generally faster turns and breakouts, a small but sharp positive.
7. Combined with paddles and a band can be a heckuva workout for your arms.
Swimming with a pull buoy might be "easier" but add a pair of hand paddles and a band to the equation and things start to get a whole lot harder.
The band in particular will escalate things.
If you want to get truly serious about developing upper body power and strength ditch the pull buoy and go strictly with the band around your ankles. It's great for stroke rate, stroke power, stroke awesomeness, etc etc.
8. Good for improving feel for the water.
The debate in the competitive swimming community has almost always been quality versus quantity in training. I sit somewhere in the middle, with larger yardage sessions being helpful for one thing in particular–helping you improve your feel for the water.
Doing long pull sets isn't the most exciting thing in the world for most swimmers, but as a sprinter, I actually enjoy them. My stroke always feels a little more dialed in afterward.
Because you can *generally* do pull sets longer than regular swimming there is more time spent working on the arm stroke, and more time improving your hand's relationship with the water.
Alexander Popov, the Russian sprint legend who dominated the 50m and 100m freestyles for a decade, did long, unbroken swims in practice. The goal wasn't necessarily aerobic work, it was a conscious effort at playing with his stroke to test what was most efficient.
Long pull sets–when done with correct form, of course–are great at improving your feel for the water.
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