Our masters coach is trying to get us under 40 strokes per 50M length.
I’m right at 50 strokes and I’ve gone 1:11 IM and :33 in a half, pretty underwhelming.
What’s your stroke count and what are your swim times?
How many strokes per lap have you been able to eliminate since you started counting? Just curious what type of reduction is possible and what the impact to times might be.
I was counting some of the faster people in our club a while back and one of them was over 50 strokes, this person had a sub 50 min IM swim a few years back. Then I saw someone in the slow lane 1:20 Im and they had a lower stroke count, go figure.
Yeah, lower isn’t faster. I’m at 34 strokes/50 and my half IM swim is 33 minutes. Some people in the tri club I’m in are under an hour for IM swim and they’re stroke count is over 50.
I am at 34 and extremely slow. 36 for a 1/2 IM.
My brother, around 30 strokes and he hasn’t swam for years! and he is overweight.
My ex boss and good friend. Same case, hasn’t swam for years and has a stroke count of about 25.
Whenever I end up swimming with them, their warm up pace is a lot faster than my race pace.
Me… around 56 Half IM time 33 min. =(. They both mention it is “just” technique.
I’m about ~ 37-40 strokes for LCM. Olympic swim times from 22 to 24, don’t do the longer stuff. I sometimes swim with a really fast 30+ woman who has much higher turnover (50+?) and swims a 1500 lcm in 18 minutes and change.
Edited: my times are non-wetsuit, haven’t yet swum a wetsuit legal olympic race.
I’m 34-38 strokes per 50m, depending what speed I’m swimming. I count strokes all the time, have been counting for 30 years. I can’t stop. Its an obsessive/compulsive thing. I did a :28 half this past summer, normally swim long course 100’s on a 1:30 interval, scy on 1:20. I’m short, 5’4’', not that it matters. Janet Evans took a bazillion strokes per lap and had crazy windmill arms, but she obviously got it done underwater, which is where it counts, so its not all about stroke count. But for me, fewer is better, and more relaxing, and more efficient. I wouldn’t generalize though and say it works that way for everyone.
I am well under 50 per 50, more like 32-35 long, slow and smooth is my game, and my last IM time was 1:15.
Pretty interesting…people are all over the place.
FWIW, I swim at 14 strokes per length in a SCY pool. Let’s see…swim 20 yards after subtracting push-off, that 20/14= 1.42 yards per stroke. 45 meters (again, subtracting push off) is 49 yards. 49/1.42= 34.5 strokes/length. My pr’s last season were 21 flat for an Oly and 28 low for HIM. Swam a 56 in an IM years ago as well.
I agree, I don’t think stroke count is the end all, be all of swimming efficiently, but 50 sounds high depending on how tall you are.
Between 32 and 36LCM depending on speed 32 would be around IM pace 36 would be start of sprint distance pace. I swim HIM in 27 and IM around 53. Lower is not always faster as it is fairly easy to get a super low count kick lots and go along way under water but not that fast. There was a good interview with Hayden Wooley on ironmantalk a while ago that explains why DPS can improve swim performance.
I’m definitely under 40 strokes per 50 meters…probably in the low 30s. Swam a 58 in all of the chop and wind at CDA this year.
Brooke Bennett won a couple Olympic gold medals, and she was 51 strokes/50 LCM in the middle of the race.
Kate Ziegler’s getting more distance per stroke than she used to, and it’s probably a factor in her new world records. A year or two ago, she was around 47 strokes/50 LCM, and now she’s more around 45/50M.
Very few of the elite distance women these days are under 40.
First off you are comparing two completely different strokes, and my guess is that every response so far has done the same. Unless you are swimming in a wetsuit in your masters workout, the stroke count you are citing is speedo swimmng let’s say. Your coach is trying to make you more efficent in the water using your own bodys floating abilities. That can vary widely between people, and makes a huge difference. It is also a measure of strenght to weight/hydrodynamics. This exercise is to force you to try and find a path of least resistance.
When you then go on to compare it to wetsuit swim times, that are on totally unreliable measured courses, it just means nothing. When you put on a wetusit, it changes everything in your stroke and evens out the floaters from the sinkers. So the advantage gained and different stroke counts have no real meaning for comparison purposes. And if you take a poll of every response so far, if not all, most are wetsuit race times. It’s human nature to put their best foot foreward, and I doubt that anyone has a faster non wetsuit PR than their wetsuit one. If the courses were accurate, and non wetsuit swims, then there might be some valid comparisons there. Watch the final of the mens 1500 sometime, you will find only a few stroke difference in the entire heat, and I bet that all of them are under 40 or so. That should tell you something.
The best you can do is to just keep it to the pool, and compare longer distance pool times, but even then as others have pointed out, you can go fast with a lot of strokes, or a few. It all depends on a variety of factors. Just use yourself for comparisons, and if you lose strokes and swim faster, then it is working…
yeah, I’ve noticed that the elite women tend to have high stroke counts.
FWIW, I swim at 14 strokes per length in a SCY pool. Let’s see…swim 20 yards after subtracting push-off, that 20/14= 1.42 yards per stroke. 45 meters (again, subtracting push off) is 49 yards. 49/1.42= 34.5 strokes/length.
Interesting calculation, FWIW, my scy stroke count is ~12-14 and lcm count ~37-40.
36
.
before i read your post in this thread, i had already started opening up bookmarked youtube videos about this very point…
http://youtube.com/watch?v=c52CAXf2PSw -grant hackett. somewhere around 33-36 strokes per 50m.
i personally stroke about 38 or so per 50m (long course), no wetsuit, assuming i’m doing some endurance.
if i’m doing a sprint tri in a pool, my turnover will be more like 42-44.
The top men have lower stroke counts, but then again they prob avg 6’5".
It’s not just the top men, it most all good to great swimming men. I would venture to say that there are a 100 guys on this forum that have stroke counts under 40, and many like myself are just 5’10". It’s true that taller swimmers tend to take fewer strokes, but overall, efficient men swimmers will be in a tight stroke range, and definately under 50…I think it is pretty clear that for distance swimming, a lower, more powerful stroke suceeds most of the time over a shorter, choppier stroke.
I don’t swim except to race, except a few times per year. When I’m at the pool the 3 times per year I’m there, my stroke count is about 26 or so for a 50. BUT…I’m very tall with very long arms…it helps alot. I’m also quite slow, 76:00 for an IM and 38 for the half.