(relaxing music)
- I swim regularly, I train hard
but it just doesn't seem to be getting any easier
or any faster.
Sound familiar?
Yep, I bet it does.
I've experienced, continue to experience it,
and judging by the comments and messages
that we receive quite regularly,
a whole bunch of you out there do as well.
But it's not due to a lack of trying.
Quite often it's our own technique or style of training
that can be the culprit that is slowing us down.
(electronic music)
Now, as a swimmer it can be very easy
to get hung up on the clock and the times
that we see at the end of each rep.
But not all improvements are reflected by the clock,
so my first suggestion to anyone out there
would be to stop this clock watching.
Becoming a faster swimmer is a transformation.
Our body is literally learning how to move through the water
with less effort and adapting to that.
And sometimes, this adaptation could mean
that we actually go slower before we actually become faster.
But if you're not getting any faster in the long run,
then you could be making some mistakes
and doing something wrong.
Now today I'm going to run through a few of those mistakes
that could be slowing you down.
(gentle music)
Head position whilst swimming can have
a huge impact on our swimming speed.
Lift it up and look down the pool ahead of you,
can cause your hips to drop
and essentially put the brakes on.
Move your head from side to side whilst you're swimming
will literally steer you down then pool
and then look up at the ceiling when you go to breath,
can cause not only your hips to drop
but also a little bit of side to side movement.
Now not everyone realizes quite how much
they're moving their head when they swim.
So if you can, get someone to watch you
and then relay that back or give that feedback to you.
Or better, get them to film you
so then you can actually watch that footage back.
Now, what you want to think about is that your head
is literally like a rudder.
Everywhere you move your head your body will go.
So you want to keep your head as still as possible,
not tensed and locked in place
but looking down towards the bottom of the pool,
nice and relaxed.
I normally suggest looking around one to two meters in front
with your eye line.
And then when you want to breath,
you just rotate your head around
imagining an axis through the middle of your head
going down through your body,
so that you look to the side of the pool,
as if you're trying to get one eye out of the water
and one eye remains in the water.
What actually happens is the top of your head
creates a bit of a trough around your face
and actually both eyes more or less come out,
and your mouth comes out so you can breath nice and easily.
Now if you are rotating as you swim,
which is brilliant if you are,
and actually what happens when you go to breathe
is you should rotate your head with your body
in the same motion.
(relaxing music)
Well next, and you're going to thing I'm like a stuck here
if you watch any of our other videos.
It's the catch.
But it is one of the most common mistakes
we see from swimmers.
It's this part as we first enter the water
before going into the pool phase.
This section just here.
And what we see from a lot of swimmers
is that they slip through this first part,
either not getting a very good catch,
or no catch at all.
And therefore, they lose their momentum.
It ends up being quite an inefficient and tiring technique
because then they try making up for it
in the pool phase.
I often liken it to running with the heel strike,
a really exaggerated heel strike,
so if you imagine that heel outstretched in front,
striking the ground almost like a braking force,
we lose that momentum,
then to get that speed back up we
then have to put a lot of effort back in.
It's exactly the same with swimming.
Now another knock-on effect of not getting a very good catch
is that we loose our lift in the water
at the front of the stroke.
This therefore means that our body position
lowers in the water, it drops down,
that increases our surface area in the water
and therefore the resistance and a braking force
making us having to work harder
and probably swim slower.
And without the pressure being applied
at the front of the stroke,
it can result in out legs sinking.
Now we're quite buoyant around our midriff area.
So, if we use my hands as a bit of an example here.
Our midriff is just here,
we apply pressure at the front,
allow our legs to raise up.
If we don't apply pressure
it can result in our legs sinking.
So, a good way to practice this
is actually by wearing some paddles
It almost forces you to get a good catch,
to apply pressure and to build that
strength and stability up in the shoulders.
Another good one is the front skull drill.
So that is just going to get you that confidence
of getting a purchase at the front of the stroke,
and again build up that strength and stability
in your shoulders.
But if you'd like more information and detail
on how to perform those drills,
why not subscribe to GTN, head on over to the channel,
and you can find our drill videos there.
(relaxing music)
Now understandably,
as you're trying to perfect your stroke,
you end up slowing things down
and can be a little more delicate with your arm recovery,
and particularly your hand entry.
However, that can have some knock-on effects
that can end up worsening your stroke
and actually slowing you down.
Because if you think about it,
as you come over rather cautiously with your hand
you're actually increasing the amount of time
before you're applying pressure at the front of the stroke,
in that time your body position drops in the water,
and as I mentioned before,
that increases your surface area,
the resistance through the water,
and therefore can make you slower through the water.
Now I'm not suggesting you all start
flailing your arms over and slapping the water,
but you do want to reduce this pause
and be a little bit more assertive in your hand entry.
And that quite often just comes down
to your confidence with your stroke and your hand entry.
Now, something I've found that's worked really well
with swimmers in the past
is doing 10 to 15 meters off the wall at quite a good pace
with a really quick arm rate.
Another good thing to practice is doing 25 to 50 meter reps
with your hands clenched as fists
and try essentially punching the water.
I know it sounds really odd,
but that will hopefully help increase your confidence
of your hand entry into the water.
Try both these tactics
and I'm confident that you'll end up
feeling a lot more confident with your stroke rate
and that hand entry.
(relaxing music)
Finally, something I see an awful lot of swimmers doing
is not allowing themselves time to recover.
And I can understand that in order to get faster and better,
we think that we just need to train harder and train more,
and rarely do we think about the recovery.
But by just plowing up and down the pool
without allowing ourselves time to recover,
can actually be more detrimental
How can we expect ourselves to deliver
good quality from start to finish
if we're not allowing ourselves time to recover?
So what I'd suggest is to break up your sessions
into nice, bite-sized chunks.
If you're starting out in swimming,
then actually just going for really short reps
with nice big recoveries,
then over time you can start lengthening those reps out
and maybe even reducing those recoveries with time.
The same goes from swim to swim,
don't try and do a killer workout one day,
and then another the next day.
Your body just won't be ready to do that.
You may get through it and do it okay,
but again the quality just won't be there.
And you could potentially be digging yourself
quite a big hole.
Now ideally you want to have a nice structure
to your swimming training
to really get the most out of it
and to progress in the best way possible.
So for instance if you're swimming three times a week,
that might be doing one aerobic swim, one speed swim
and one strength or threshold swim.
That way you're turning up to each swim
knowing exactly what to do,
and you're not getting carried away in one versus another.
Well there are four ways
that you could potentially be slowing yourself down
and how to fix them.
I do have one final tip that I know
a lot of people end up doing,
and that is avoiding what they're bad at.
Yeah.
I do this too.
I like to just do what I'm good at
and avoid those poorer, bad parts.
I'm not saying neglect the good bits,
but just find a nice balance of it,
and that will really help to make you a better swimmer.