Hey, what's up triathletes, Taren here.
One way to become a faster swimmer is to dial in your ideal stroke rate.
Stick around because today we're going to talk about ideal stroke rate for triathlon
swimming and how to figure out your ideal swimming stroke rate.
Swimming stroke rate is a very important thing to figure out especially for triathlon swimming
because we're out in open water and getting knocked around pretty severely and having
things like waves and current amplifying the imperfections in our stroke, so it's very
important to figure out what your perfect swim stroke rate is.
Too slow of a stroke rate and you're going to be decelerating in between strokes, losing
all that momentum that you build up and too fast of a stroke rate and you're going to
be working too hard churning the water and expending more energy than you need to.
Speaking specifically about slow swim stroke rates, which I actually battle myself, there's
a lot of focus these days on taking as little strokes as possible to cross the length of
a pool.
Drills like swim golf where you try to cross the length of a pool in as few strokes as
possible, in as little time as possible and entire swimming programs like total immersion
really harp on having a very very slow swim stroke rate.
I'm saying that a lot, we're going to keep running with it, and this is totally fine
when you're getting started, that is.
As I said in a recent blog post where I compared three different online swim training programs,
total immersion swimming had a lot of success for me, where the focus is really just getting
comfortable in the water.
At this point where you have a slow swim stroke rate, it really just calms you down and gives
you a sense that you're not actually going to fight the water and you're not going to
drown.
This is a very good thing, but as I said in that blog post, it starts to hamper you when
the focus becomes not being comfortable in the water and you start focusing on being
fast in the water.
That's where a slow swim stroke rate can hurt you.
The next issue with an improper stroke rate is when it's too fast and this is also something
that I battle when I start doing 50 and 100 meter sprints.
There's a point where I start turning so much that I'm losing the catch in the water and
I actually become slower, even though my arms are turning over more because my form starts
falling apart.
The trick is to find a stroke rate that is faster than too slow and slower than too fast.
You can do this by doing a ramp test that Swim Smooth, which is one of the programs
that I compared in my online swim guide comparison.
They recommend a very high stroke rate and a ramp test is a good way to do that.
We're going to go through it.
Start by getting yourself a tempo trainer.
They're very cheap, they're $50 thereabouts and this is a metronome that beeps every time
you need to take a stroke.
Use this to follow a stroke pattern that you gradually increase throughout a test starting
around 60 strokes per minute.
Ramp that up by about three strokes per minute every single lap.
So it'll go 60, 63, 66, 69 and keep going.
Keep track of how many strokes you take per length, how fast you go per length and your
perceived exertion.
Either write this down yourself or get a friend to keep track of it for you.
What you're going to find is that there's a sweet spot where your stroke rate is becoming
fast, but you're not yet slowing down and it doesn't feel so difficult that you can't
hold it for 750, 1,500 meters or a very long period of time, you're not overly stressed.
That sweet spot where you're turning over fast is going to be right around your most
efficient stroke rate.
Then what you can do in all of your training going forward is use that tempo trainer to
do a lot of your training right around that stroke rate and ingrain that perfect stroke
rate for you into your body's muscle memory.
As an added tip, I'll say that in general, a higher, punchier stroke rate in triathlon
swimming is probably a better way to err because you've got things like current, competitors
and waves knocking you around and having a nice strong stroke rate, as you can see in
the ITU races, they are turning over really fast and that's because they need to fight
through a lot of those challenges that we're going to encounter in the water.
Don't be shocked if you've got to err on the side of a fast stroke rate.
There you go triathletes.
I hope that helped.
If you like this video, thank you as always for liking, commenting and subscribing.
It really does help us out here on the Triathlon Taren channel.
As always, happy and hard training and good luck in your next triathlon.
Nine minutes and 48 seconds of gold.