Swim cadence help - need to improve

Triathlon Forum
1

I really enjoy swimming and have made progress, but I am not where I’d like to be. I may be stuck and cadence could be the issue.
I am 4 months out from florida and I really need to go fast, but more importantly, I want to continue to get better.

Problem:

I think my problem is that since I breathe every right stroke, I may be stuck at current pace since I could be slowing down my stroke rate in order to have controlled continuous breathing.

According to my garmin, I take 8 strokes per length (scy) and my stroke rate is 52 strokes/min, at continuous endurance pace (1:20-22/100 yard).

I also have a non existent 2 beat kick, so if I’m not in the middle of a pull, I’m not moving.

So how do I speed up my cadence without messing up my breathing? Or am I looking at this wrong?

I’m not sure bilateral breathing is an option or how quickly I could perfect it, but I know watching the pros swim they are mostly breathing every stroke as well.

Any help from experienced swimmers would be greatly appreciated.

Background:
adult onset but have been swimming 3-7x a week since starting to swim 3 years ago.I have slowly built volume over the years and I am currently swimming about 15-18000 yards a week for last few months and plan to be at 20k by October. mixed of speed work, tempo work and endurance workFirst year I swam ~450k yards, Second year I swam 580k yards, This year I’m on pace for 650k.

2

Probably the easiest way to go about systematically speeding up your cadence would be to get a Finis Tempo Trainer Pro. You could initially set it at your current cadence then gradually speed the “beeps” up.

Btw, that’s a nice endurance pace.

3

Others will have more expert advice, but a long time ago, we increased turnover by using fins or surgical tubing (to pull us towards the wall) to increase turnover. The idea was (again, this is a long time ago – coaches will probably have better advice now) to decrease resistance and allow your arms to learn to move through your stroke more quickly.

I suppose an analogy would be running on a slight downhill for speedwork.

4

So what are you doing when you breathe?

For newer swimmers, it’s common to be trying to get your mouth too far out of the water. Which makes sense on one level because accidentally inhaling water while swimming is uncomfortable and scary. But in flat water, you’re probably trying to do too much there.

The classic fish mantra is ‘one goggle side out of the water when you breathe’. It’s not an absolute, but you want to think about minimizing long axis head roll- just kind of roll your head along with your body when you need to breathe, and think about breathing on the air side of your mouth.

Short axis pivot of your head should not be happening when you breathe; you only move your head’ up and down’ when you need to sight in open water.

Exhale into the water, and you need less time to inhale when your mouth is in the air.

Get that part of your stroke sorted out so you’re used to quick inhales and exhales, and it makes it easier to improve cadence as a whole

5

what about your stroke rate not according to your garmin? I’ve seen that to be off by many strokes in my athletes.

but if you need to speed up your rate use a tempo trainer set it ~ 2-3% faster for a week then bump that up a bit more until it’s about 5% faster. Hold it there a bit then increase again

6

Thank you for all the responses and the willingness to help. It seems you guys are recommending a “tempo trainer” which I have not heard of and I will look into.

So what are you doing when you breathe?

I definitely stick just the bare minimum of my face out of the water, but my breath stroke is a little longer than my left hand stroke. So there my be some improvement by speeding up my inhale, thanks for the help.

what about your stroke rate not according to your garmin? I’ve seen that to be off by many strokes in my athletes.

but if you need to speed up your rate use a tempo trainer set it ~ 2-3% faster for a week then bump that up a bit more until it’s about 5% faster. Hold it there a bit then increase again

I was actually curious about the accuracy as well before you sent this and at lunch I counted and it is correct. Thanks for the help.
I will try a tempo trainer, however, I am also worried about speeding up my breathing. If it is comfortable for me to take a breath every 1.15 seconds; will speeding this up to every 1 second cause an excess of stress on the system? Or will my body learn to adapt and breathe comfortably to the system?

Also you said “if you need to speed up your rate”… I believe I need to speed up my rate just based on watching people who are fast swim compared to me. Is there a method or threshold I should be swimming at to check this? I am 6’2 if that matters.

7

Capture your stroke rate in OWS, not a pool. You have a lot of seconds at the turns without strokes that throws off the stroke rate calculation.

8

I’ve been playing around with increasing my stroke rate over the past 6 months so this may be of use. Note, however, I’m not a front of the pack swimmer. I’m self-taught with all the aggravations, introspection, analysis, and more aggravations, that implies.

First I quit gliding so darn much. For quite a while I was doing the Total Immersion thing with huge glides. I fixed this by downloading the Swimsmooth virtual swimmer dude and stared at it for weeks. Seeing the virtual dude nearly glide-less technique helped me go from a huge glide to a pretty short one. This took lots of pull buoy time. I really really like how a pull buoy allows one to focus on stroke and rotation flaws. Mostly I try to fix my problems with the pull buoy, then I switch back and forth between PB or not and try to make the “fix” work w/o the PB.

Next I started focusing on momentum, and fast arm recovery. I’m concentrating on the feeling, on my hips, of maintaining the velocity of water flow. That is to say, maintaining my momentum. This is going to be hard to explain. I’m maintaining my momentum better by increasing turnover. I’m increasing turnover by speeding up my arm recovery, but not attempting to increase my arm speed during the pull.

When I started experimenting with this, I found that I couldn’t speed up my pull much because it became inefficient. That is to say, my arm/hand, lost it’s grip on the water. So, for the past couple months I’ve been doing this kind of odd stroke pattern where I get a higher stroke rate via “rapid recovery” without attempting to speed up my arm-velocity of my pull too much. I say “odd” because it feels like I’m whipping my arms forward in recovery, and then dramatically slowing them down to pull by deliberately anchoring them with a big armful of water and pulling myself past.

I know when I’m getting it right when I can feel the water flow velocity past my hips pretty much maintained.

I accidentally ended up with 2x temp trainers. Send your snailmail to scott at gress dot org and I’ll send one to you.

9

I’ve been playing around with increasing my stroke rate over the past 6 months so this may be of use. Note, however, I’m not a front of the pack swimmer. I’m self-taught with all the aggravations, introspection, analysis, and more aggravations, that implies.

First I quit gliding so darn much. For quite a while I was doing the Total Immersion thing with huge glides. I fixed this by downloading the Swimsmooth virtual swimmer dude and stared at it for weeks. Seeing the virtual dude nearly glide-less technique helped me go from a huge glide to a pretty short one. This took lots of pull buoy time. I really really like how a pull buoy allows one to focus on stroke and rotation flaws. Mostly I try to fix my problems with the pull buoy, then I switch back and forth between PB or not and try to make the “fix” work w/o the PB.

Next I started focusing on momentum, and fast arm recovery. I’m concentrating on the feeling, on my hips, of maintaining the velocity of water flow. That is to say, maintaining my momentum. This is going to be hard to explain. I’m maintaining my momentum better by increasing turnover. I’m increasing turnover by speeding up my arm recovery, but not attempting to increase my arm speed during the pull.

When I started experimenting with this, I found that I couldn’t speed up my pull much because it became inefficient. That is to say, my arm/hand, lost it’s grip on the water. So, for the past couple months I’ve been doing this kind of odd stroke pattern where I get a higher stroke rate via “rapid recovery” without attempting to speed up my arm-velocity of my pull too much. I say “odd” because it feels like I’m whipping my arms forward in recovery, and then dramatically slowing them down to pull by deliberately anchoring them with a big armful of water and pulling myself past.

I know when I’m getting it right when I can feel the water flow velocity past my hips pretty much maintained.

I accidentally ended up with 2x temp trainers. Send your snailmail to scott at gress dot org and I’ll send one to you.

What’s funny about this, is I pretty much took the same path. I too have the swim smooth app and watch the 2 beat kick female version often before swims.

Also, like you, when comparing my swim stroke to Ledecky for an example, I see how much faster her recovery is than mine. My first approach to speeding up my stroke rate was going to try to increase my above water recovery.

10

It’s been kinda startling to me, this past month, how much faster I am when I concentrate on keeping my momentum via the fast recovery. I need to get to the point tho where I can do it on auto pilot and when I’m tired. Right now it only works (no pull buoy) when I’m fresh and concentrating on it alone.

I gotta tell you tho, be wary of doing what I’m doing. Because “self taught” pretty much means “I really don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”

11

Also, arm recovery should be shoulder-driven and not led from the elbow or lower on the arm.

You can often tell the fish as a child set apart from the adult onset swimmers because the longtime fish understand how to engage the lat muscles and will be showing the world their armpits on stroke recovery. Adult onset will often be trying to recover and extend on the front end with closed armpits, and you don’t get a nice, quick, and long front extension with closed armpits.

12

If I’m reading it right 52 strokes/min would put your tempo (there’s no such thing as cadence in swimming) at around 2.3 (time in seconds to complete one stroke cycle). That’s too slow. The range that typically works for IM athletes is between 1.2 and 1.8 which is a fairly wide range. You might want to try to get to around 1.5 - 1.7. There are a couple ways to do it and much better than working with a tempo trainer.

First, are you pulling a lot with big paddles? If you are, stop. The big paddles are slowing down your tempo.

Second, stop the long slow distance/endurance swims. You don’t need to swim 10x400 or 8x500 or 4x1000 or 4000 straight. Those sets, especially if done by yourself, will make you practice slower, less efficient technique.

Third, do sets of 40x25 or 40x50. For you the pace you’d want to hold would be around 36-38 per 50 and 16-17 per 25. Add about 20 seconds rest to those hold paces and you’ve got your interval.

If you feel like you have to use some gear, get some “sensory mitts” from aquavolo. They are a much better choice for a beginning swimmer trying to develop a better “feel” for the water.

Don’t worry about bilateral breathing. It’ll make you slower and usually causes other problems further down the chain. Just make sure you are getting an equal pull in each side.

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Tim

13

If I’m reading it right 52 strokes/min would put your tempo (there’s no such thing as cadence in swimming) at around 2.3 (time in seconds to complete one stroke cycle). That’s too slow. The range that typically works for IM athletes is between 1.2 and 1.8 which is a fairly wide range. You might want to try to get to around 1.5 - 1.7. There are a couple ways to do it and much better than working with a tempo trainer.

First, are you pulling a lot with big paddles? If you are, stop. The big paddles are slowing down your tempo.

Second, stop the long slow distance/endurance swims. You don’t need to swim 10x400 or 8x500 or 4x1000 or 4000 straight. Those sets, especially if done by yourself, will make you practice slower, less efficient technique.

Third, do sets of 40x25 or 40x50. For you the pace you’d want to hold would be around 36-38 per 50 and 16-17 per 25. Add about 20 seconds rest to those hold paces and you’ve got your interval.

If you feel like you have to use some gear, get some “sensory mitts” from aquavolo. They are a much better choice for a beginning swimmer trying to develop a better “feel” for the water.

Don’t worry about bilateral breathing. It’ll make you slower and usually causes other problems further down the chain. Just make sure you are getting an equal pull in each side.

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Tim

Tim thank you for the response. Over the past 3 years of trying to learn how to swim, I have looked at you and johnnyo’s posts as gospel and tried to implement anything you guys said.

I took a video this morning to count actual strokes instead of stroke per length and it comes out to 66strokes/min for 1:20 pace and 76 strokes/min for 1:06 pace. Using your math, that makes a stroke cycle every 1.81s for endurance and 1.57s for sprint. So maybe I’m not as bad as I thought? But mannnnnnn, my recovery and stroke rate looks so slow. I’m sure my stroke rate slows down during a swim as well.

I typically swim 5 days a week and Thursdays are usually stroke work and lighter swim using paddles but thats the only time I really use them. One day a week I do longer sets like you mention but the other 3 days are 2 days made up of 100s-200s on 5-10s rest and Fridays I swim 25s-100s all out with big rests.

I’ll break up the long intervals for your intervals and push the pace and stroke rate.

Thank you for addressing bilateral breathing as well, however, are you concerned at all about forcing your body to breathe more often by increasing stroke rate?