Heather: There are so many benefits to swimming. It's understandable if you want to swim for longer
and be able to cover more mileage. Whether it's simply for a distance that you want to
do in training, or it's actually a race-specific distance that you want to achieve, we are here for
you. Today we're going to be covering all the aspects that are required for you to increase
your swim distance. [music]
The easier something is to do, the longer we can do it without needing to increase
any effort. When this comes to swimming, we need to look at your stroke efficiency, your fitness,
your pacing, your strength and other aids in order to be able to increase your swimming
distance. [music]
This one probably sounds obvious, we're going to start with stroke technique and efficiency. If you
can propel yourself further for every arm stroke for the same amount of effort, it's a no brainer
really with this target. It all comes down to the catch and the pull. If you do have an efficient
catch and pull, you'll go further for every arm revolution. The catch is initially where it
begins, where your hand enters the water before catching that water going into the pool. We've
delved into this in a lot of detail in a previous video, so I'm not going to dwell on it today.
Once you've worked on that catch, the pull should automatically become more efficient,
but concentrate on keeping the elbow high and engaging your lats at the side
of your body. As you swim further, this will become more noticeable as the larger muscles
will take the force more comfortably than those smaller stabilizing muscles around your shoulder.
Do what you can to take the strain off those. Basically, you want to eradicate
any unnecessary movement around your stroke, anything that's just not helping you to go
faster. Have a look at the amount of rotation you're doing, look at what your head is doing,
especially when you breathe and your leg kick. To be sustainable as you increase that distance,
you want to have a rhythm that you can maintain. When it comes to a leg kick,
you might want to reduce that if you're already naturally a six-beat leg kicker, you might want
to bring that down to four or even two as you go to the longer distances. Stroke rate can impact
on your endurance ability too. I'm not saying you must forcibly slow your stroke rate down,
especially if you already have a slow stroke, but find a balance between efficiency and something
that is easy to maintain. [music]
This is true for all sports, the fitter you are, the easier it is to go at the same pace. Now,
aerobic fitness from the other sports will cross over slightly to swimming,
but you really can't be time spent in the pool training. We'll come on to structure
sessions in a moment because it's not as simple as just swimming for longer on each
session. [music]
This aspect of swing training is easily overlooked. Yes, efficiency is one part
but strength will help your body to be able to withstand that repetitive movement of a stroke
that's over and over again. If your shoulders aren't adequately strengthened, then they can be
susceptible to getting injury. Having a strong core can also help with your body position
in the water. If you can get to a gym, that's the ideal scenario, you can do
some upper body strength work and develop your core then. If you're having to train at home,
then you can still improvise and bodyweight work will help as well as using some physio TheraBands
are great for your shoulders. [music]
The ultimate goal is to swim further than you are currently. How you do that is entirely up
to you. If you're after the quick fix, then you could look to using some aids to help you,
something such as a pool boy. This will improve your body position and for many people,
actually makes their stroke more efficient. You can incorporate it into part of your session
as you start to increase the distance, but just beware not to become too reliant on the strokes.
When you do take it away, you'll find it much harder. You can alternatively experiment with
using some neoprene shorts as you can still kick with those whilst benefiting from the
buoyancy. [music]
When it comes to swimming further, you might well think that you just need to simply
swim a little bit further in every session you do. That isn't actually constructive,
you need to make sure you have some structure in each of your sessions. Swimming is different
to running and that you do want to be swimming further in your training than the final distance
you're targeting. That is up to about a three to four-kilometer swim distance. Over that and
you'll need to be making up more distance over several sessions. Let's say you're hoping to
build up to swimming 1,500 meters in one go. You could break that down to be 16 times 100
meters as your main set to start with. Having a short rest of 10 to 15 seconds.
Progress this to 8 by 200 with 15 to 20 seconds rest. Then that means that would still be at 1.6
kilometers. You'll be testing more endurance as you won't be stopping until every 200.
As the overall session length, always add in a warm up and a warm down and also some drills as
it will all make sure that your total ends up being a little bit larger. As for this target,
our 1,500 meters, it's a good idea to keep the minimum length of your session at around 2k,
even the easy bits are still going to help add to that overall swimming endurance.
That said, not every session has to be long, you can add in some shorter, hard intense work,
which will really help with your strength and your swimming resilience, as well as just keeping it
nice and mixed up. [music]
When it comes to actually approaching the longer distance, pacing is important. Obviously, you've
done the training so you know what pace you feel comfortable at. It's easy to get excited. There
are a couple of aides that can help you, if you've got a tempo trainer that will help keep you in the
right stroke rate. You could even use something like form goggles that we featured on the channel
in the past which will actually tell you your pace live as you're going along. The biggest key
is just trying to hold back a little bit at the start because you will be much stronger
and you'll be really tempted to go off hard and then you'll suffer later on. Reserve it at the
start and finish strongly. [music]
Swimming as a sport can take a long time to actually see the rewards. Persistence
and consistency in your training really is key. If you stick to the structure,
you will reach those goals. Hopefully, this has helped you. Give us a like if
you've enjoyed it. Remember you can follow us on our social media channels and you can also
subscribe to us here on YouTube. [00:07:03] [END OF AUDIO]