It's already been said, but I'll underscore the point:

1. Gradually increase your yardage to a decent amount (don't expect much serious improvement on less than 15K yards per week; double that amount and you'll be swimming much faster; triple it and hold it there for 2-3 years and you'll be swimming with the FOP) .

2. Swim harder 1-2x (repeats, longer hard sets, TTs, get a coach to help you with a structure) per week once you can handle the yardage.

You will likely "find" the technique improvements on your own as you swim more, especially if you are an attentive swimmer. And if you hit a wall and can't improve, you'll need to do even more and even harder swimming, and have a qualified coach look at your stroke and see what kind of tweaks can be made for further improvement. This process goes on ad infinitum. More swimming, more technique tweaks, more swimming, etc.

Really want to improve? In the off-season, do a 12-16 week swim focus (with big yardage, 40+K a week) and you'll see huge improvements. Guaranteed. If you want to make a breakthrough in swimming, at some point you are going to have smack some serious yardage. There is no other way. Anyone who tells you that you can get down to long swims at 1:20/100meter pace from where you're at with just technique tweaks is lying.

Best of luck!

Proof? Look at any of our top swimmers in the world, and they will tell you that incorporating their whole body by using the different strokes makes you a stronger swimmer. Kate Ziegler, Larsen Jensen, and all the other top distance freestylers do all strokes during workouts. Not only increases strength using different ROM, but also can cut down on repetitive type injuries that can occur when you do the same thing over and over again.

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Debi Bernardes

Owner, UCANDOIT Coaching Group, LLC

I have heard this many many times and actually told my swimmers the same thing. BUT have never seen proof of this.

I don't know that you actually will see hard proof of this, not amongst competitive swimmers anyway. Not many coaches are willing to risk their program on having people swim nothing but free, especially not when you get to the volume that a typical university or similar program is following. But anecdotally, most swimmers will tell you that swimming other strokes does provide some benefit. Doing so improves feel for the water and body position awareness, and perhaps just as importantly, uses different muscles in the rotator cuff which may help stave off injury.

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