Help Me with a Particular Exercise?

I don’t know what it’s called. It is used in swimming. Swimmers tie some rubber across the ankles of their legs and then keep their legs still but raised to the surface as much as possible, while only using their hands to swim.

What is this exercise called, what muscles does it train, and how can I train them on surface? Also does yoga in general help with this?

Sculling?

And no. Yoga makes you good at yoga.

Sculling it is. I’m not sure why you’d tie your legs together while doing it, unless it’s some weird BDSM thing I don’t know about. I can imagine it’s a fairly effective upper body conditioning workout.

In terms of the second part of your question, what is it you’re actually trying to achieve here? Are you trying to build/strengthen a particular muscle? Get better at swimming? Get better at weird water bondage stuff?

It’s often used for technique as well. There is a natural tendency for swimmers, especially novice swimmers, to use too much kicking relative to pulling. Removing the kick from the propulsion teaches us to catch and release the water.

Or so a smart guy told me.