Looking back on our season, one of the best techniques we worked on was stroke rate. In hind sight, we should have done even more with it. I know we tapped into the potential, but we didn't utilize it to it's full potential.
Basically stroke rate is how fast you are moving your arms. It is the same as RPM (rotations per minute, but we call it strokes per minute, SPM). The more SPM you take, the faster you will go. Typically swimmers will tend to have too low of a SPM or the SPM will break down during a race. There is also a break point on the high end as well. When your stroke rate goes up too high, you start to lose the feel of the water and your speed will decrease.
The key is first making sure you have good technique established before you work on SPM. The best tool for the job is the Tempo Trainer by Finnis. It is basically a waterproof metronome. You set it for the tempo you want and either clip it on your goggle strap (with a clip provided) or tuck under your cap. We found it is easier to tuck it in the cap. From there the idea is to match your SPM to the beep of the tempo trainer. We found that the swimmers were able to increase their SPM and maintain that tempo during races.
If you don't have a tempo trainer, but have a metronome, you can always use that at the end of the pool. Just make sure to keep it dry!
More on this later.
DA
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