Swimming Faster

Just like the mantra in real estate - "location, location, location", to swim faster it is technique, technique, technique!

As your speed in swimming increases, so does the resistance from the water against your body. Unfortunately, the resistance increases exponentially! So it literally becomes much harder to go faster as you go faster!

The challenge then is to make your body as efficient as possible. This comes through working on technique as much as possible.

I believe most coaches spend too much time having young or inexperienced swimmers swim laps for conditioning, which often forces them into bad habits. It is a much better use of a coaches time to work with drills to teach technique. Of course you are also working on conditioning at the same time.

What is the easiest measure of efficiency in swimming - STROKE COUNT. Count how many strokes it takes for you to swim a length of the pool. From then on the goal is to lower that number as much as possible. (You can go slower by taking too few strokes, but most swimmers do not have that problem.)

So the next time you are in the pool, count your strokes to get a base line of how efficient you are at each stroke. Then start to work on lowering that number.

More later!
DA