If you have good swimming technique, will more upper body muscle make you faster in the water?
I have good swimming technique, but other guys in masters swim are simply faster. But they are also bigger in the shoulders/arms/lats and that muscle allows them to pull harder. I’m the classic skinny triguy. My 1000m is 16m , mile round 27m. I want to get faster and I think the way to do that is develop more upper body muscle, probably through off season weights.
It isn’t about your strength if you are going 16 minutes for a 1000. There are 10 year old girls who weigh 80 pounds who can swim circles around you. Technique technique technique! You only think you have good technique.
If you want to be a faster swimmer spend more time in the pool, not the gym. I think if you just swim then the muscle you need to swim fast will come along nicely on its own (n=1, that’s what happened for me).
It isn’t about your strength if you are going 16 minutes for a 1000. There are 10 year old girls who weigh 80 pounds who can swim circles around you. Technique technique technique! You only think you have good technique.
I have to agree. I swim about 16min 1000 meters and did Lake Placid in 1:08. After a few years of bodybuilding, I have rather large shoulders and back. Its not about the muscle at all, its all, and I mean 98% technique. That 2% muscle is just to be able to move your limbs.
In my masters I struggle in lane 4, this is the 1:30ish lane. I am simply in awe of the 1:00 lane, and they are chatting after each set like its nothing.
Its all about technique.
It’s both.
But for the most part, swim strength is a very specific sort of thing best developed through a lot of pool time. Right now, your time is better spent in the water doing the movements that will actually build the right kind of muscle strength rather than in a weight room that’s not quite building the muscle in the way you need it to build.
Definitely technique. The more muscle, the harder you may be able to pull, but the more likely your form will start to break down and you’ll end up fighting the water as opposed to working with it – slower stroke with more of a catch-up type action, head will start to bob, etc. I am a currently reforming, brute-force swimmer who needs a constant reminder to keep things rhythmic and steady and can feel myself moving faster when I’m not trying to push aside as much water as possible.
and stretchcords can help as well. once you’re done with stretchcords, jump back in the pool 
with 27min 1mile you should still get some help with your technique. Otherwise you’ll be practicing bad habits alot.
More muscle will most likely make you slower in the water as it will impair your flexibility (unless you stretch lots!).
At your speed, your technique is definitely limiting you. Strength won’t make any difference with poor technique. It is most likely as well that your flexibility limits your speed by limiting your stroke technique too (hence the above statement).
Look at the male elite triathletes - they are proof you don’t need muscle to swim fast. Just power and great technique!