Actually, I'd read page 37 entirely, in particular the top part of the 'practical' section, and how this work should be used by coaches...

wait...you can read?!?

Huh...

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

Wait to see your training next week, jerk.

Timely article on Gerry Rodrigues in LAVA mag.

http://www.lavamagazine-digital.com/...0111011?pg=134#pg134

Some of the more interesting parts start on page 136.

John

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Agreed physics has not changed. In this article it talks about the movement of water in the opposite direction is waist. I would agree. This is why technique is so important and has a big impact on distance per stroke and efficiency. That being said, you can have the best underwater technique but fail to have the strength or conditioning to perform for extended duration. A higher turnover rate with a less efficient pull can compensate by using a more cardio approach rather than using strength, not unlike the difference in cycling cadence. The most efficient swimmers waist very little, move very little water backward by applying force using a slight scull motion throughout the stroke. This motion allows the hand and forearm to always push against still water and the path that the arm takes is considerably longer than a straight through pull. IMO the most efficient method for you is based on all the things you should consider, do you have the strength and conditioning and skill to handle a slower cadence or rely more on a cardio effort this time and work toward more efficiency over time.
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Swimming is Tracking, Torque, Traction and Timing

I'm not against his thoughts. But I am against people taking his findings from race speed and applying those to themselves when they are out jogging along at 8:30 per mile.
Someone running 8:30 is going to have a slower turnover and shorter stride then when they are running 7:00 per mile.

Since you naturally increase both as you get faster, & since 95% of people self select the best cadence for themselves (which can change as they change velocities) I think asking people to go out and focus on a particular number across all velocities is kind of ridiculous.

At 8:30 pace he is going to be stutter stepping while at 7:00 pace he could be inhibiting his ability to go faster.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
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thank god someone finally said this!!

I have been reading all the literature, emailed with bobby mcgee..."your cadence should be 180 or greater weather your doing 100m sprint or a marathon"...but no one ever addresses what it should be for JOGGING...slower than marathon pace. You do an IM your going slower than IM pace. I've tried running 180cadence for 9:30-10min pace (I'm 6'2), it gives me a stride length of maybe 3 inches...seriously. My wife running the same pace and cadence has a longer stride length (she's 5'4")

What cadence does ryan hall run at when he's jogging? It may be worth while to have your cadence up there for marathon pace and faster, but for going slower I'm not sure how much your mechanics get screwed up trying to keep it at 180. I just ran a half and for the last 5 miles I ran with a firend and we were doing 9:30 pace or slower. I tried to keep my cadence up and I have never been so sore after a run as I was for that

Funny you mention that. I always feel like I am putting a lot more stress on my lower legs when trying to keep a high cadence when running really easy. I am of the believe that you will self select your cadence. Definitely when you get to the end of a hard run and your are suffering. I swear I hurt my calf last year by trying to keep my cadence up when jogging.

I know that I remember reading a statistic that said something to the effect of...

The cadence of elite runners only varied by about 5% over a range that was roughly double the speed.

So, if they had a cadence of 95 steps per minute at a 5 minute mile, they would have a cadence of roughly 90 or so at 10 minutes per mile or so. But, that's just what I 'remember' and of course don't know where I saw that...could have been in the training bible or something!

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Brandon Marsh - Website | @BrandonMarshTX | RokaSports | 1stEndurance | ATC Bikeshop |

Alex Hutchinson at the Sweat Science blog has had some interesting posts about running cadence in the last few weeks. Here's one of them:


http://sweatscience.com/...-some-personal-data/

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Thats really helpful. That about coorelates to what i run at a slower pace..about 85-87 cadence which is comfortable...but trying to get up to 90 is not at all

Yeah,

I read that part too. Faster swimmers had lower stroke rates at 1.5 and 1.7 m / s. Which is saying they had longer stroke length. The practical section says that tracking kinematic parameters can be useful.

I still don't see what in there agrees with your point that improving stroke length to improve speed is a fallacy. There are several shortcomings there for sure but it's a big jump from shortcomings to fallacy.

Because for the vast majority of triathletes (pretty much all the ones that don't come from a swimming background), the way to increase the length per stroke is to increase the glide phase. This is further buttressed by all the proponents of TI. All this does is produce dead spots in the stroke, and rather than maintaining a steady speed, it's tiny surges every time they take a stroke followed by a speed decrease as they glide.

If you increase stroke length by improving the form, you get some benefits, but until you can get rid of the stroke, glide............stroke, glide.......... adherence, you probably won't increase speed much, you'll just find it easier to do the same times.

Which is why I generally say that TI is good for completing, but not competing, the swim.

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I think you're setting up a false dichotomy there of either longer strokes or slower swimming when it's not necessarily so.

Of course I see people who have misinterpreted recommendations of longer strokes to mean that they should glide in a sort of freeze frame position to get longer strokes.

But it's easy enough to keep that from happening, you can make sure that your communications on the matter make it clear that adding an extra 5 kicks underwater or using freeze frame swimming are not the proper way to increase stroke length. Ideally you would have seen the swimmer and can recommend specific changes.

But also sets of swim golf can get toward the proper things by adding time into it. But even more so descending sets at the same stroke count are something we have used to positive effect to train the long end of people's swim speed (anecdotally of course) and in fact I think this is the way the total immersion folks are going with their ongoing development; although they will have to speak for themselves.

To bring this all back to the original thesis though; in terms of stroke rate; my own impression is that lots of triathletes are swimming at stroke rates that are on the low side of optimal. I don't have a shred of data to support it, but I consider 63ish to 75ish to be the range of effective stroke rates depending on style and morphology. There are lots of people at the middle and back of the pack with turnover below 60 per minute who would benefit by simply raising their turnover. but that's not to say that they wouldn't benefit from some increased stroke length in conjunction.

Probably agreed on most points. But consider, how many "average" triathletes are getting swimming instruction? They simply hear "Well, you need greater distance per stroke", and the easiest way to get that is to simply increase the glide phase.

And for your optimal stroke rate, I'd refer you to the threads referenced in this one and the lava article on Gerry Rodrigues. I don't think you are far off the mark, but I think you are underestimating a bit. I also find interesting the references on different stroke rates per swimmer in various parts of the race, just like surges in running/biking. How many people train for that in swimming, especially once you take the ex swimmers out of the equation?

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...rch_string=;#2832663

http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...rch_string=;#2832764

John

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Top notch coaching: Francois and Accelerate3 | Follow on Twitter: LifetimeAthlete |

I think I still disagree. Why? Because everyone's stroke has a "glide" phase to it. Distance per stroke (DPS) makes the glide more important than speed. Also, you can do all sorts of crazy skulling to increase DPS and that also doesn't do anything for speed. But once again everyone's pull has some skulling in it. Same with a heavy kick. It increases DPS but may not be optimal for long open water swims.

My experience is that triathletes and DPS are not a good mix -- not much good comes of it.

Individuals are often most economical in their self selected method because it is what they are adapted to. With an appropriate change in technique it is not abnormal to see an initial decrease in performance followed by adaptation and better performance.

Elite runners run at fairly similar cadence regardless of velocity. This is not to say that their cadence doesn;t slow with velocity, but not as drastic as it is made out to be.

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awesome site. Thanks

Reading comprehension anybody?? I NEVER said that improving stroke length to improve speed was useless. I said that improving stroke length for the sake of improving stroke length is useless. You have been
constantly equating lower stroke count with efficiency (which is the fallacy here). I can get in the water, and do 2 strokes per 25yrs. Actually without cheating with longer underwater dolphin kick off the
walls etc. I can swim 13 strokes per 25yds. That said, my kick isn't very good, I'm not particularly buoyant, so I swim faster, with a lot more ease at 16-17 strokes per 25yds, because the stroke is long enough to
get momentum, but not so slow that I sink too deep in between strokes. A vast majority of triathletes would be in a similar situation.

Thus what many here have been saying: lowering your stroke count by itself does not mean you're more efficient, and certainly does not make you faster.

90% of the slow people I see have low cadence. 100% of fast people I see have high cadence. Coincidence? I think not.

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http://jesse.centuries.com

Correlation =/= causation.

Yeah... maybe.

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No dog in this fight and don't suppose to know the answer. Just pointing out the flawed logic.

Swimming or running?

I assume swimming.... It seems to me that most pros who don't do sprint races use a low cadence/slow stroke rate.

In fact it's something that almost all the really good 1500m swimmers have in common. At the extreme is Sun Yang, he looks like he's barely moving.

If it were correlational you'd have some outliers. Point to me one fast runner that has a cadence in the low to mid 80's.

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