Sculling is one of the most popular drills swimmers have at their disposal to improve swimming performance.
Sculling can be used to improve your feel for the water, improve forearm strength, and even expand range of movement in key parts of the stroke, leading to more efficient technique.
Here’s why swimmers should add sculling to their swim workouts, along with some tips for maximizing their time egg-beating the water with their hands.
Let’s get to sculling!
What is sculling for swimmers?
Sculling involves continuous and quick figure-eight movements of the hands that mimic parts of the swimming stroke. We angle our hands, apply pressure to the water, and generate lift and subtle propulsion while maintaining body position.
Whether we extend the arms out in front to work on holding water in the catch, or work the beginning of the push phase under the body, sculling is a foundational skill for every stroke, helping us to learn how to grip and hold water.
How Sculling Can Improve Swim Performance
Here are some of the things that sculling can do for your swimming:
Improve forearm strength
Sculling effectively isolates the stabilizers and forearm muscles that position our hand during each stroke. These under-appreciated muscles are crucial as the hands are responsible for around 95% of upper body propulsion when swimming (Takagi et al., 2023).
Fast swimming relies on us being able to position our hands effectively when swimming, including using the right hand pitch to that final “push” at the end of the stroke.
Sculling can improve forearm strength, reducing improper hand position and helping us to get more from each stroke.
Improve feel for the water
“Feel of the water” is often talked about in mystical terms. A swim practice can go well because we “felt” the water that day. A session can also sink to the deep end faster than a brick on days where our feel of the water is nowhere to be found.
But feel of the water doesn’t have to be a mystery. It’s largely the result of being able to sense and manipulate pressure differences on the hands.
When sculling, these pressures are highlighted and isolated:
- On the palm of your hand, positive pressure builds as you push water
- On the back of the hand, negative pressure builds, creating suction
This combo is what leads to propulsion and “feel” of the water. When sculling, swimmers can really get a sense of how these pressure differences work. The key, of course, is taking this increased sensitivity and applying it to your regular swim stroke.
Increase range of movement
One of the lesser discussed benefits of sculling is that it can be used to explore ranges of movement in the stroke, particularly at the front of the freestyle/butterfly pull, where swimmers want a strong catch.
Small, controlled sculling actions at various depths train joint mobility through the wrists, elbows, and shoulders, while strengthening stabilizing muscles around the scapula.
In other words, sculling is a way to open up the joints so that you can better apply technique when swimming, use the right angles of attack, and get after it with cleaner form.
Build propulsive awareness
As seen earlier, sculling is awesome for isolating how our hands work with (or as is sometimes the case, against) the water. Which makes it a great diagnostic tool for stroke technique.
For example, if you know there is a specific part of the stroke that needs some TLC, you can throw some sculling at it:
- Front scull – Works the catch, angle of attack of the hands, wrist positioning, gripping water earlier in the stroke
- Mid scull – Hands directly underneath, extended, working on holding more water for the critical push phase of the stroke where you reach peak propulsion
- Back scull – Improve hand speed and control towards the end of the stroke
Sculling is part feel and part feedback, helping you get a grip on the water at various parts of your stroke, leading to cleaner technique and faster swimming.
Tips for Sculling Like a Chlorinated Pro
- Slow things down. Start with grip, apply speed as necessary. Gentle, slow sculls are a great way to start. Focus on pressure control before jacking up the speed.
- Focus on vortex control. When you feel yourself slipping or sliding, slow down the palm or adjust pitch to keep pressure differences that lead to vortices.
- Prime feel in warm-up. Use short scull sets in your warm-up to prime the hand’s grip on the water.
- Mix positions. Play around with different arm and hand positions to get a sense where your hands really catch the water and where they can improve. Explore the full stroke.
- Use it as a reset skill. When your workouts/main sets slide and your stroke is feeling sloppy, go back to feel (i.e. “control”) of the water with short sculling sets.
The Bottom Line
Sculling is one of those drills for swimmers that can often be wasted or misused (like anything, really).
But when used intentionally it can be a remarkably powerful tool for swimmers of all abilities, from beginner swimmers looking to get a handle on basic technique to the elite swimmer wanting to maximize every phase of their stroke on race day.
By adding some sculling to your training, your hands stay in touch with water manipulation, vortex control, and lassoing those pressure differences that lead to propulsion.
Control the flow, improve your technique, and scull your way to faster swimming.
ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer, 2x Olympic Trials qualifier, and author of several books for swimmers, including YourSwimBook, Conquer the Pool, The Dolphin Kick Manual, and most recently, The 50 Freestyle Blueprint.
The book is a beastly 220+ pages of evidence-based insights and practical tips for improving freestyle sprint speed.
It details everything from how to master stroke rate, technique, build a thundering freestyle kick, improve your start and underwaters, and much more.
The 50 Freestyle Blueprint also includes 20 sprint sets to get you started and a bonus guide on how to master the 100 freestyle to complete your sprint preparation.
👉 Learn more about The 50 Freestyle Guide today.
