- Regardless of our current swim ability,
I think its fair to say that we all want to swim faster,
I mean, that's entirely natural.
- Yeah, and today we are at
Playitas Resort in Fuerteventura,
and we have three, rather simple ways in which you
can improve your swim speed.
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Stroke rate can have a really big impact on our speed.
You can calculate and measure your own stroke rate
by counting the total number of strokes
completed in a minute,
the higher that number, the higher your stroke rate.
Now, stroke rate is a really important metric to
keep a track of, because not only will it affect your speed,
but also your rhythm and your efficiency as a swimmer.
If you have too slower stroke rate,
it could be a sign that you're over reaching,
and gliding too much in your stroke.
That will result in a loss of perches on the water,
and a loss of momentum.
Equally, if your stroke rate is too fast,
that could be a sign that your hand or your arm
is slipping through water,
and also, getting that perch on the water,
and that valuable propulsion.
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Now, finding the optimal stroke rate for yourself
is all about finding a balance between
stroke rate and distance per strike.
And this will vary from swimmer to swimmer,
and obviously depending on the distance
that you're targeting.
To give you bit of an idea and an example here,
the 2012 Olympic games, the lead male group
had an average stroke rate of
between 42 to 48 cycles per minute.
The lead female group,
38 to 44, and then in the 2015 Ironman World Championship,
so slightly longer distance event here,
we had an average stroke rate
between 42 to 45 cycles per minute.
And this isn't to say that you should certainly
be trying to swim with a stroke rate of over 40
cycles per minute,
but its just gives you a little bit of an idea
of what we are striving for here.
Now, naturally as we do increase our stroke rate,
a lot of us find that we start to increase our leg kick too.
But trying to swim a long distance event,
with a six feet leg kick
is a pretty weird idea.
It's going to be unsustainable.
And it's a pretty unique skill,
being able to increase your leg kick,
and keeping the legs relaxed,
but it is a skill we can practice.
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Well, something I used to like to do to help this
was popping a pull voyage,
or just using a band, or both if you like,
pushing off to the wall and sprinting for 10 to 15 meters,
and really spinning the arms over.
Now granted, it didn't always look the prettiest,
but the idea was to almost disconnect the arms and the legs.
So, I wasn't relying on the leg kick
to increase my stroke rate, and vice versa.
And if you implement this into your own training
by doing the same, to a few of these
short efforts off the wall,
and then go into 100, 200 meters of normal swimming,
really like kicking now,
we're trying to keep that arm rate fairly high.
I tell you there's a lot of sports watches these days,
will also track your stroke rate.
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- We've been focusing on our arms until now,
but we don't want to neglect our legs.
Propulsion can still come from this phase of the stroke,
even if you are swimming open water long distance event,
or triathlon.
Now, if you've already worked on stroke rate,
you'll know how hard is to improve
the speed of which your arms move around,
much more so than your legs
as one whole arm movement, say this
is going to take much longer than this
if you want to quickly find some speed,
Its a good idea to work on your kick.
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In triathlon, having a strong kick
is going to give you the edge at the start of a race.
But, beyond that, if you go to a stage
where your kick is nice and efficient,
it's actually going to add to your propulsion
for very little effort as well as
helping your legs and hips, find that correct body position.
So, it's time to move away
from thinking that you don't need your legs when swimming.
If nothing else, it adds to the balance of your stroke.
So, it's time to start incorporating some kick work
into your training.
It's like many you struggle with a kick.
It could be one of two reasons,
either having stiff ankles or incorrect technique.
You just only see people kicking from the knee,
as opposed to the hip.
So ideally, the kick needs to come
from the hip with a very slight flex of the knee,
and then the final phases is a flick of the toe.
And that final phase you might struggle with,
if you do have really tight ankles.
And a great way to work on your ankles
is pop some fins on, as this will work
as obviously a bit of resistance,
so you get some training from it,
but it also, it can help to increase that range,
that you have at your ankle.
So, for this session,
you can actually do some fast ball kick in the deep end,
or you can have a kick board, and then kick off the wall
and go as hard as you can for 10 meters,
kick out for the rest of the length, nice and easy.
Take plenty of rest and repeat it a handful of times.
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- Our final tip is a fairly obvious one,
and this is to include some speed workouts,
within your training,
is obvious, but it needs some explaining.
- Yes, and it can be tempting to,
if you're trying to achieve something to do it
all of the time.
But if you're putting a lot of speed work
into every single session, you'll just find that you
plateau and you're no longer actually able
to get that top end quality and speed.
- So, this calls for a structured training approach,
we want to target one swim per week
where the focus is to swimming fast.
It doesn't mean swimming fast from
start to end of the session,
but picking out and doing some
fast intervals within that
with some good recovery.
An example session that I've always enjoyed,
after a good warm up is
12 lots of 25 meters steady swimming
but every fourth 25 meter rep
as maximal effort taking 30 seconds recovery,
then into nine lots of 25 meters steady swim,
but every third max taking 25 seconds recovery,
six lots of 25 meters steady swim,
but every second rep max taking 20 seconds recovery.
And then finally three lots of 25 meters,
all max taking 15 seconds recovery.
- The purpose of this session
is finding that top end speed,
and just teaching your body to get used to
moving fast and becoming efficient, that's it.
- Yeah by combining these three tips today,
we are confident
that if you include them in your training regularly,
you will see an increase in your swim speed.
If you have any more questions,
drop them in the comment section below,
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