It’s hard to find a swimmer who doesn’t love their pull buoy. The tricky thing about doing pull work is that swimmers can often use their pull buoy as a crutch.
Makes sense: it artificially balances our body in the water and metabolically, it’s about 20% easier compared to swimming at similar speeds.
The swim workout below, done recently, mixes some PB work with the hardest type of pull work in the pool—swimming with an ankle band.
For swimmers looking for a pull buoy for their pulling adventures, read our detailed comparison of the best pull buoys for swimmers.
The set mixes some submax distance-per-stroke swimming with a pull buoy, along with high-intensity pulling with that cursed, err, awesome ankle band. The set also adds some short chunks of transfer swimming—no toys, no gear, with kicking and all.
Overloading the pull is great, but the goal is becoming a faster swimmer, too.
The Pull-a-Geddon Swim Workout
Here’s the full workout:
Warm-Up
- 400 swim mix + 300 pull + 200 kick + 100 double arm backstroke to open up chest
Pre-Set
- 6×150 pull desc. 1-3(x2) @2:30 for round 1; 2:15 for round 2
Main Set
- 400 pull strong cruise – focus on distance per stroke @1:30 base
- 8×50 free w ankle band fast @1:10
- 4×50 free swim, build to fast – focus on EVF and balanced body position @1:00
- 300 pull strong cruise – focus on distance per stroke @1:30 base
- 6×50 free w ankle band fast @1:05
- 4×50 free swim, build to fast – focus on EVF and balanced body position @1:00
- 200 pull strong cruise – focus on distance per stroke @1:30 base
- 4×50 free w ankle band fast @1:00
- 4×50 free swim, build to fast – focus on EVF and balanced body position @1:00
- 100 pull strong cruise – focus on distance per stroke @1:30 base
- 10×50 free w ankle band fast @1:15
- 4×50 free swim, build to fast – focus on EVF and balanced body position @1:00
Warm Down
- 6×50 easy backstroke or choice stroke @ 20 seconds rest between reps
Focus Points
- Maintain a high hip position during the strong/fast ankle band 50s. This means keeping your face pointed at the bottom of the pool.
- On the transfer 50s, don’t just cruise them out—hold the same forearm catch and flat hips you were forced into with the band. That’s the whole point.
- No breaks between the 50s and the distance per stroke pull.
- Finish strong on the last 10x50s.
- No pull buoy on the band 50s — just the ankle band. Yes, ouchies will ensue.
- Swimmers with creaky or injured shoulders should not do this set.
Why This Set
The main goodness of this pull set comes in the form of the 50s freestyle with a band looped around your ankles. Swimming with a band is tough—you’ll go a little slower and you will apply more force with each stroke (Kadi et al., 2025).
Ankle pulling reinforces a better early vertical forearm (otherwise your forward momentum stalls and you start to sink), and encourages a higher hip position and face-down stroke (which will also help you maintain forward momentum and keep your hips up).
And the big key to making this set productive is the 50s swim between each round of pull.
As mentioned, pulling can have some significant effects on the stroke, including shortening distance per stroke, reduced metabolic cost, and increasing trunk inclination—a proxy for “body position” (Gourgoulis et al., 2014).
We want the training stimulus and adaptations of the pull work to land in our regular swimming stroke, and that’s why those 50s swim are there.
For beginner/developing swimmers, shorten the 50s with band to 25s, increase the rest, and start from a pull 300 or 200 to make the full set more manageable.
More pull resources:
How to Improve Your Freestyle Pull (Plus Sample Swimming Workouts). Learn about freestyle pull mechanics, how to use pulling equipment properly, and some sample workouts to get you started.
A Swim Workout for Improving Kick-Pull Connection in Freestyle. Struggling to time the legs within your pull? Here is a swim workout to improve the connection between the upper and lower body in freestyle.
