How to swim combat side stroke FASTER
PROPER combat side stroke technique
Combat Side Stroke (CSS) is a unique blend of freestyle and breaststroke. It’s quiet and powerful. Having the proper technique and understanding how the stroke works is key to swimming fast. The way I think about it is in a sequence - a cadence of: “Big arm, little arm, together, shoot.”
#combatsidestroke
Combat side stroke ARM PULL
You can swim CSS on either side (right or left) and I like to teach everyone to be able to do so. It’s nice to be able to switch sides during a long ocean swim. In Phase 3 of BUDS, you have a 5.5 mile swim. That’s roughly 8,800 meters. In a pool, if you did 88x100’s on 2 minutes, it would take you about 3 hours.
If you swim on your left side, your left arm will be closer to the bottom of the pool. This is called your bottom arm or little arm. Your right arm is the top arm, also known as your big arm.
Bottom Arm = Little Arm
Top Arm = Big Arm
bottom arm/Little ARM
The bottom arm, I call the little arm, because for 98% of guys, they go faster with a shorter, smaller bottom arm. This is the biggest misconception when it comes to teaching combat side stroke - the bottom arm does not have to go all the way down. It can be just a little circular arm motion - a scull of sorts. When you pull your bottom arm all the way down to your side, you have both of your arms at your side, and your velocity plummets to nearly nothing. Guys that swim like this are easy to spot because they are so herky-jerky. If you hooked them up to a velocity meter, you would see a big spike up and a big spike down. When you shorten the bottom arm, you maintain speed better.
You should play with the length of your bottom arm. If you want to lengthen your stroke, make the bottom arm circle bigger. If you want to speed the stroke up, shorten the bottom arm. It’s nice to have a longer stroke when you are doing 2 mile ocean swims every week in BUDS. But if you are trying to post a really fast 450 for your PST test scores, then a shorter arm is almost always faster.
I think of the bottom arm as a scoop. One huge mistake I see all the time is guys using a straight arm. Don’t do that. Straight arms are weak arms. You need an angle - a power angle. The bottom arm is a circular scoop. Make the circle bigger if you want to make your stroke longer.
TOP ARM/BIG ARM
The top arm, I call the big arm, because it’s always a normal freestyle pull from top to bottom - it really can’t or shouldn’t be shortened. There are plenty of mistakes that can still be made, though.
The biggest mistake I see is guys doing is not fully rotating over on to their stomach and really reaching out with their arm to lengthen the stroke and put the arm in a position to properly catch the water. I’ve seen a lot of guys with their big arm’s elbow coming out of the water during their pull - which is not good.
Another popular mistake is pulling way outside their body or not pulling deep enough - both are something that can be fixed by rotating a little more, too. This can be helped with a slight flutter kick or two after your scissor kick. We will talk more about this later.
It is critical to get your fingers pointed towards the bottom of the pool, while keeping your elbow as high on the surface as possible, when you begin your top arm pull. This is called your catch - this is you putting your paddle in the proper position before pulling. Your fingers shouldn’t be glued together or fully spread out - just a little spread in between your fingers.
During the recovery phase of the stroke, unlike freestyle, your arm won’t come out of the water. If it does, you’ll get yelled at. This typically happens as practice goes on, guys get tired and lazy and the arms begin to come out of the water to get away from the resistance. Keep it as close to the surface as possible while not having it come out. Long Dog Paddle drill is helpful in practicing this.
bringing the arms together
“Big arm, little arm, together, shoot.”
Your big arm and little arm should meet each other at about your shoulders. Another common mistake I see is guys leaving their top arm on their side after their big arm pull. Don’t do that. It should always be moving. We always want to be propelling ourselves through the water or streamlining. “Shoot” is shooting both arms into streamline while scissor kicking. You are essentially kicking yourself into streamline, which is why Single Arm CSS is my favorite drill. We’ll talk about that more and how it helps with the connection of your stroke.
Kicking during combat side stroke
Some people say you shouldn’t flutter kick during CSS, and I highly disagree. But let’s start with the scissors kick.
scissor kicking
Like the CSS arm pull, the CSS leg kick has a bottom leg and a top leg. If you are swimming on your left side, your bottom leg is your left leg, your right leg is your top leg.
The bottom leg is your kicking a ball leg. It’s your propulsion leg - perhaps the most important part of the entire stroke. You bring your heel to your butt and whip it back down like kicking a ball.
The top leg is your heel kick leg. Your knee will come up and you will heal kick back down.
Your legs do this at the same time, which makes you look like a scissor.
One of the biggest mistakes I see is having a huge massively wide kick. When you do this, you create a ton of drag which is suboptimal. Try keeping your knees together. While nearly impossible, give it a shot.
You should also begin stretching a lot more. You definitely do not stretch enough. Hip flexors and quads especially. Proper swimming technique is about being able to put your body in the most ideal positions that reduce drag.
flutter kicking
Now, some folks think doing flutter kicks after the scissor kick is dumb and wastes energy and oxygen. But that is just not true. If you want to sprint combat side stroke, then an aggressive flutter kick after a scissors kick is a must. But the flutter kick doesn’t have to be that egregious during longer swims (same goes for freestyle). Instead, we are looking to use the flutter kicks to rotate our hips so that we can lengthen out the stroke, putting our arm in a better position to pull. If done properly, you should be doing a flutter kick at the same time as your big arm is anchoring the catch.
Some guys do find that a breaststroke kick is better for them instead of a scissors kick. A breaststroke kick, sometimes called a frog kick, is not usually faster for most but worth testing out. The watch never lies. We’ve had people drop 30 seconds in a PST simply by changing from a scissor kick to a breaststroke kick. That being said, the breaststroke kick sucks for buddy towing. It is beneficial for you to learn both - plus the egg beater kick (sometimes called single leg breaststroke kick).
What's Next?
Join the Combat Side Stroke Workout Group
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