I have read over and over that everyone needs to lengthen their swim stroke and get down the pool with fewer total strokes. So I do distance per stroke drills. But when I do, I feel that I’m just taking fewer strokes for the sake of taking fewer strokes, my lead arm is hanging in front of me for a while while I kick to try to get down the pool before taking another stroke, so I feel totally off. Then when I start swimming regularly again, I don’t think that my stroke has actually changed at all. I’ve been doing these drills regularly for about a year now.
What am I doing wrong? Is there some secret to these drills that I don’t know? Should I just bag them? What is the real point of fewer strokes per length?
Fewer strokes per length is more efficient up to a point. It all depends on where you are starting from though. What is your current stroke count per length?
I think the idea is to get more distance out of your stroke and not lose speed. Basically the goal is your hand stays stationary relative to the bottom of the pool and you move past it. This would be an increase in efficiency.
I’m pretty sure you’re overdoing it dude. Just glide a little, but take a stroke before you slow down too much.
I’ve been swimming catch-up stroke forever because it allows me to go the distance (28-29 min for 1.5K I reckon). But my wildest dream is to drastically increase my turn-over rate… and maintain it for the distance.
I love with Monk said in another post. Look ma, I’m giving swimming advice, and I can’t even find my buttocks with both hands!
how many you take is also dependent on how tall you are. I have no problem getting down to 11 per 25 if I try but I have an 80" arm span. My swim coach is about a foot and a half shorter and twice as fast as me and she takes about 20.
DPS is a very important aspect of swimming if you want to become an efficient swimmer. The whole idea of DPS is to go as fast as possible while using the least amount of energy you can. For a triathlon, you want to come out of the swim with a lot of energy left in the tank but also out in a good time.
For you, it seems like you might be exaggerating the DPS stuff. For some people, DPS is 14 strokes per length others it is 24. You have to find the happy medium between spinning and really lengthening it out.
I would mainly just focus on technique drills instead of DPS drills (lots of body position stuff) then over time, and with thought when your swimming, you’ll feel the “catch” and be able to stretch your stroke out without slowing your tempo.
Trying to reduce your stroke count is all about an efficient stroke with your arms, not cheating with some extra kick to extend your glide.
If you use a pull bouy (but no hand paddle) you will focus things on your arms so you can concentrate on grabbing the water and pulling your body through it rather than just moving them around in the water to make yourself move.
The logic behind a low stroke count is to ultimately try and and cover the same distance in the same time with fewer strokes. Theoretically fewer strokes will require less energy, allowing you to either cover the same distance in a race in the same time using less energy (like saving it for the bike and run) or you will be able to cover more distance/cover the same distance faster with the same number of strokes.
Your stroke count will vary depending on your height.
Perfect topic for me to chime in on as I just went to a swim clinic last week with siginificant talk about that.
For the last couple years I have been dutifully practicing “lengthening my stroke”, to the point that absolutely “normal” swimming for me is 16 SPL, length in, length out. But I was really not getting a whole lot faster. My “sprints” were on the order of 1:24-5 per 100 (meters) and my IM pace was on the order of 1:36-1:38/100m. And of course like any good triathlete, I can’t flip-turn to save my life, so my turns are more of a “grab, collect yourself, push real hard” episode, over and over again.
So part way through the clinic both instructors tell me that my stroke “stalls” at the reach (I probably worked that in there with the drills and now have incorporated it as just part of normal swimming for me). They both helped me actually speed up my stroke a bit and it was like a night and day difference.
The first couple 1000 meters after that tip, I felt totally out of shape, and more than a couple hundred meters was winding me. But I stuck with it assuming it truly was an adaptation to the increased turnover (I went up to 18/length). So now, about 7 or 8 sessions later I just did a handful of 100’s in the 1:15 range (which I totally recognize is not fast for you swimmer guys/gals, but for someone who just learned how to “real” swim a handful of years ago it seems like I’m flyin’!) and my first 500’s under 7:45 EVER! And the best thing is I feel much “fresher” with this slightly faster stroke. I think I wasted a lot of energy trying to be “perfect” my old way and I just couldn’t pull it off for extended periods of time.
So what I guess I’m saying is don’t be me. Of course work on being smooth and slippery and all that stuff, but don’t blindly assume that “less is more”. Everyone has their “right” SPL (I assume) so work on finding yours and seek help at the pool. That was the best thing I did…get someone who actually knew what they were talking about to help me.
Fewer stokes per distance swum is the evidence of an efficient stroke and fast swimming. Utilizing all of those positivie aspects of great technique will manifest a long stroke. But I don’t believe that trying to lengthen the stroke gets you back to the proper efficient swim style. World class runners exhibit a cadence of 90 complete strides per minute but at the speed they are attaining, their stride lenghth has to be much longer than mine. If I were to match their stride length, I’d be slowing myself down each stride. I can do fewer strokes per pool length if I glide too much and kick real hard. Hopefully you get there by better mechanics and more speed.
I’ve been drilling at some point during most of my swims for the past 3 months. 18-19 is the norm, so 15-16 is what I do with stroke count: I hope its helping: It feels like it is and I think it is. It feels good and is changing my stroke for the better: We’ll see this summer. Sub 20 1.5K here I come
Distance per stroke or strokes per length are measures of how efficiently you are swimming. All things being equal, if you take fewer strokes to swim the same distance, you are using less energy.
But, that is not your sole goal when swimming because you will decelerate if you glide too much. I usually do 13 strokes/length when I am really stretching things out during my warm up or cool down, but will take one or two more strokes per lap when I am swimming my fastest. Don’t worry too much about comparing your strokes per length to others as the number really depends upon things like how tall you are and how good your turns are.
Without seeing you swim, I am not positive about this, but it seems from your description that you are probably gliding a little too much and that you need to start your catch and pull a little quicker. Try to find someone that knows how to swim, or, much better, knows how to coach swimmers, and they can probably give you a better diagnosis. If they know how to coach, they might also be tell you what drills will make you swim better.
The swim golf and associated workouts takes up multiple pages in the TI book but I don’t where it came from originally.
Another good test is swim a reasonably long interval and measure your golf score at the beginning and end with a peak at the pace clock. It’s a great way to measure how fast your stroke falls apart.
So the question got me poking around on the US Swimming web site, and they’ve got a couple of interesting articles in their Biomechanics and technique section.
"The optimal stroke rates and stroke lengths are going to differ for swimmers of different sizes. While this study focuses on male sprinters, the findings can be extended to all athletes to some degree
Your goal as a coach should be to find the optimal combination of these variables for your athletes. You can begin to identify this by using the following guidelines as a starting point.
Athletes with long limbs should not be expected to be able to maintain a high SR.
Athletes who are thicker and wider should try to adopt a high SR since their SL tends to be lower; most likely this combination is needed to overcome the extra drag presented by their “wider” bodies.
Taller athletes with longer limbs should try to lengthen their stroke and have a high SL."
I’m planning on it although it depends a lot upon how our sick three year old does tonight.
I can do as few as 13 strokes on warmup only for two reasons. One is that I swam for 12 years so my turns are reasonably good and I don’t start “swimming” until my feet are past the flags after a good turn. The second is the luck of being born with a swimmer’s body, including a “wingspan” that is more than six inches wider than my height. Both make is a lot easier to do fewer strokes per lap. Of course, these are also my excuses why you made up the advantage I had over after the swim less than halfway through the bike leg at Sylvania last year.
I don’t think you should compare your strokes/lap to someone else so much as keep track of your own stroke counts to figure out what is the best one for you, see if you are improving and see if your stroke is getting sloppy during practice. I seem to take 14 to 15 strokes per lap when I am swimming faster instead of 13. But, when I hit 16 and there isn’t a good reason, I know that I need to focus on my own stroke more to swim better.
What am I missing? (Probably everything) I thought this was about stroke length–I thought it was going to be why extend your body out with a long reach? And so I was was wondering if I should be doing that, because I have started doing that, and it seems to help my terrible body position–keeps me a bit more horizontal–and incorporates more of my back muscles. Anyway, so I am wondering about reaching way out–should I or shouldn’t I.
