Brett Hawke on Technique, Training & Strategy for Masters Swimmers

Imagine hitting the water like a torpedo and propelling yourself through it with power, precision, and speed.  How to make that happen, is another matter!

In this excerpt from our podcast chat with Brett Hawke, he addresses the power, precision and speed continuum. He talks us through the technicalities of a 50 freestyle race, emphasising maintaining stroke length and tempo. Brett shares his personal take on breathing strategies during this explosive event. He also introduces us to his favourite freestyle drill, as well as sharing a unique drill designed to enhance an explosive dive. Brett then walks us through his favourite freestyle set, which is an amalgamation of high-paced and technique-focused sections designed to simulate the rhythm and strategy deployed in a real race, helping swimmers prepare for competitions efficiently.

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From your point of view Brett, what is the most important technical part of the 50 freestyle in holding your stroke together.

Brett Hawke: That's the toughest part. Anybody can get to the 25 fairly quickly, but holding that together is the key to winning. The winner generally is between the 30 and the 45. That gap in there. If you can master that, hold your technique together, which means length and tempo. If you can hold those together, then you'll do really well.

Do you breathe at all on a 50 freestyle yourself?

Brett Hawke: I didn't. No, I still don't think you need to on a 50, but it needs to be well-trained. If you do have a good breath where you don't lose that tempo and length and power and speed, then breathing is still a good thing. It can get difficult, so it has to be well-trained. I still haven't seen anyone show me that breathing is faster than not breathing in the 50.

What's your favourite freestyle drill?

Brett Hawke: Favourite freestyle drill. I love a good polo head-up freestyle drill. The reason why I like the head-up freestyle drill is if you do it correctly, you can position your hand the way I want your hand to be positioned. You catch water immediately. You get over the top of it. You're very high in the water, but you're pressed as well. You have to keep your chin very steady. I don't want any side-to-side movements in sprint freestyle. You don't want any movement up or down side-to-side. Holding that position in a high head-up freestyle is again key. Then you lock your core in. You keep your hips fairly flat. You don't want tons of rotation in your hips, fairly square. Then you have to have good shoulder rotation in order to get over the top and get that length. I've always wanted to do a good head-up freestyle drill, but doing it a certain way.

Listen to the Pod Excerpt here. Blog continues after the podcast

Are you better at kick or pull?

Brett Hawke: I was definitely better at pull, but kick was something that I knew I needed to improve. So I put a lot of work into improving my kick to a point where it was just above average. But it was never elite. I was never the best kicker, Michael Klim could kick me (under the table). You know all around the pool Matt Welsh (I trained with him) What a brilliant kicker that guy was. So yeah, I was not in the elite, but I definitely had to make improvements.

What's one drill that you could use to work on for an explosive dive?

Brett Hawke: Explosive dive. We used to put a resistance band around the block. I can see you've got a block behind you here. And what I would do is I'd put a resistance band on that metal part there and I would have it really tight and I would do explosive push offs from the wall, right. So maybe do like five in a row explosive, so you'd push out, but the band would pull you back in really quickly. So it would have to be very, very tight, so you explode out five times, take the band off and then get up on the block and then do an explosive dive. So that's just a way to kind of like activate the power in your legs. So that's something that anybody can do, yeah.

That's a good one. It's really hard to transfer that horizontal speed off, onto the push off on the blocks and vice versa.

Brett Hawke: Yeah, it is. You can get yourself in a track star position with a resistance band and push off the wall and then jump up on the block and then activate those legs like that.

And what's your personal favourite freestyle set?

Brett Hawke: My personal favourite is a set that I actually did with Brian Sutton. I said that I had trained with him from 1999 to 2003, and he was a brilliant coach and his set is one that I repeat all the time. And so what I would do, what he would do for me and then I'd do for all my athletes, is a 25 off the block, at at 100 speed. Then you do a 75, easy, so you basically get your time, you know, and then immediately start a 75 easy technique, good technique, so your heart rate's going but you're holding good technique. You do a 75 and then you'd rest 10 to 20 seconds and you do a back end 50. And so you would basically want to be at your race pace of your second 50 to 100. So let's say you're training for the 100, your first 25 would be, you know, 10.8secs (men's elite). If I was to swim 48 seconds, i'd be 10.8 for the first 25, I'd get my time, I'd go into a 75 technique, I'd rest 10 seconds and then I'd go into a 50, trying to push under 25 seconds. So you want to be under 25 seconds. Everybody who comes back these days are all coming back under 25 seconds, so that would be the goal. And then you would repeat that six times. So you'd have a rest. After that, maybe swim another 100 easy. But the 100 easy this time would just be a flop, so you'd be on your back just doing some easy backstroke And then you do that six times. So that's easily my favorite set. It's very specific and it really gets you thinking about how you want to take out your 100 and how you want to bring it home. And there's enough cool down in there and there's enough technical work in there that gives you the recovery that you need to be able to back it up. And six rounds of that and you're cooked as toast.

That's a great set. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with us today. Brett, it's been amazing talking to you and getting all your perspectives on everything in swimming.

Brett Hawke: Yeah, I appreciate it, Danielle, thank you.