- Swimming may be your strongest discipline
or it may be your weakest.
Either way, we're all searching for ways to swim faster.
So we've got the help of uber swimmer Lucy Charles.
- So here are my top five tips for swimming faster.
(mellow electronic music)
Hey, so my first tip that I'm gonna talk about
is the catch, which is, basically,
the front end of your stroke.
And a lot of people, when you say catch, they're like
what do you mean by catch.
But basically, it is the front end of your stroke.
You want to anchor it, you want to catch the water
and you want to feel the water.
And the main thing is really to be
more efficient, so the more water your can catch,
the easier you're gonna get through the water
and the faster you're gonna move through it.
So that's sort of my first tip.
- So how would you go about reinforcing it
or seeing whether you are getting that catch or not?
- Yeah, so the easiest thing is if you can get
your coach to film you whilst you're swimming
because when I've been filmed before
and watched it back, I couldn't actually believe
that was me swimming.
So if you can get your coach to film you,
then you can actually see what you're doing.
And, even better, if you can get access
to an endless pool with a mirror on the bottom,
then you can really see what you're doing that way.
- Is that what you do yourself then?
- Yeah, so I'm lucky enough to have one at home,
so I really can reinforce, and I think
my strokes actually improved just from seeing that.
- Brilliant, and then, are there actually
any drills that you can do to actually help that catch?
- Yeah, definitely.
So sculling is a key one, really,
because you are strengthening your forearms.
And one that I always say to people
and they always laugh is doggy paddle
because it really is the catch part of your stroke.
You might feel silly doing it, but it really does work.
Okay, so my next tip is structured swim sessions.
I think if you get in and you haven't got a plan
and you're just floating up and down aimlessly,
one, it's going to be really boring
and you're not going to get a lot from it.
So if you've got a plan when you get in,
you're gonna get tonnes more from the session,
and it's actually going to be way more enjoyable.
- Yeah, I think a lot of people
fall into a trap with just trying to cover
the distance they're gonna do on race day
and there's no real meaning to the session.
So you get in and you actually follow
a really structured session and
different on each days, perhaps?
- Yes, every day is normally different.
I make sure there's a lot of variation
because I find swimming quite boring,
if I'm honest, so I'm not gonna lie.
Yeah, so the biggest thing is if you've got
a squad available to you and you can get in
and swim with the squad, then I'd 100 percent go with that.
- [Mark Threlfall] So is that motivation as well?
- Yeah, you've got that slight competitive element,
you've got other people pushing you,
and you've got that bit more social element
that you don't often get from swimming.
So, 100 percent, go with that.
- I think I'm very much the same, actually (chuckles).
- Okay, so up next, I want to talk about arm rate,
which is, basically, your cadence with your stroke.
And for Triathlon in open water,
a high cadence stroke rate often works a lot better,
and I'm very lucky in that, even when I was a poor swimmer,
I had quite a high cadence stroke rate.
Well, if you compare me to my other half, Reese,
he had quite a long, slow stroke rate,
and he was always much faster than me in the pool,
but when we went over to open water, he often struggled.
So he's actually had to adapt his stroke rate now
to a high cadence, especially for open water.
- [Mark Threlfall] So what is it that you kind of
need that high cadence for?
- Particularly, if it's really chalky in the water,
it actually helps a lot more to have high cadence
because you can not fight with the waves.
You actually can get freedom and it works
a lot better that way.
- Because I guess the water's moving,
so you've got more chance of catching a stroke,
that sort of thing?
- I think, like we talked about earlier, the catch,
if you've got a good catch and a high cadence stroke,
then you will really work with the waves
and move through the water that much better.
- Is there anything you do in training
to help that, or perhaps, Reese is trying to
implement in his training?
- Yeah, often you can actually do, I'd say,
do half a length sprinting, but you're actually
exaggerating that high cadence stroke, right,
so you're doing it way more than you would,
but you're going over and above.
And if you can do that, then when you're
doing high cadence, but not exaggerated,
it feels more normal.
- So bring on those windmill arms.
- Yeah, exactly.
Okay, so my next tip is bilateral breathing,
which basically means being able to breath to both sides.
And when I was a swimmer, I actually only breathed
to the right hand side because I was a lot faster like that.
And when I moved into triathlon, I actually
found I had a lot of issues and some injuries
from bike and run because I was so imbalanced
from only rotating to that direction.
So, in that respect, I would definitely say
you should bilaterally breathe, but also in open water,
you need to see what is going on on both sides of you.
So yeah, I'd definitely say get in the pool
and breathe to both sides.
- So when you're swimming in the open water,
if someone approached on your left hand side,
do you switch and start breathing so you can see them?
- Yeah, definitely, obviously,
I've had to work on breathing that way, as well,
because I'm much more efficient breathing to the right.
But obviously, if you say, there's someone
coming up on your left and you don't look that way,
you're not gonna know they're there,
you're not gonna make use of drafting from them
or anything like that.
So yeah, you want to know what's going on on either side.
- So how have you helped to improve
that breathing in your training?
- So I'm swimming the warm up or swimming slowly,
I'll make sure I'm bilateral breathing,
or even make sure I'm actually breathing
to the weaker side, so I'm getting stronger that way.
But I still tend to revert back
to breathing to the other side.
- [Mark Threlfall] Because I guess it's quite hard
to implement it in the middle of
a hard session because you're trying to work
really hard, you're gonna opt for
your preferred option though, aren't you?
- Yeah, definitely, and I've got that competitive nature,
as well, that if I'm getting left behind
on a set with these faster swimmers
because I'm breathing to my weaker side,
then I'm gonna revert back to breathing
on my stronger side. - So start on the easy parts,
the warm downs, the recoveries, that's the good...
- Yeah, for my self, I would almost call it
lack of rehab because I'm strengthening
the other side by breathing the other way,
so whenever it's easy stuff, I definitely
make sure I'm bilateral breathing.
Okay, so my next tip is speed work,
and you may think this sounds pretty crazy
because the distance I'm doing is an Iron Man,
and it's very much endurance, but
I definitely wouldn't neglect the speed work,
you want to make sure you've got that initial speed
to break out at the start, and then if somebody's
gonna surge in the swim, you want to make sure
you've got that speed to be able to react.
- [Mark Threlfall] So what sort of session
would you do in a week?
- So my key session would be something like 30 50s.
So I would do that nearly every week
and really working on the speed and breaking out.
- Are they all out maximum efforts?
- So they're vary from 25 max to three quarters of the way
to a whole 50 max, so you've got three
and then you're building your way through.
- So there you go, there's some top tips
to swim faster with Lucy Charles, thanks for joining us.
- Thank you very much.
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