Are You Counting Stroke Rate?
There are so many ways to improve your swim efficiency and speed for triathlon. Some of these include a variety in the strokes you swim in practice. This means not just swimming freestyle but learning to swim backstroke, breaststroke and even butterfly. The benefits are vast and definitely deserve it’s own blog post. Technique is another big component of improvement as well as a variety in your effort throughout your session. The strategy we are going to talk about briefly in this post is your stroke rate.
If you don’t know what stroke rate (swolf) is, think of playing golf. The lower your score in golf the more efficient your game is. Similar in swimming the fewer strokes you take per lap or per minute equates to more efficiency. This also depends on if your using hip driven freestyle, shoulder drive freestyle or a hybrid of those two styles. If you have watched Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecky they use a hybrid of those two methods.
You want to take as few strokes as possible each lap and cover the most distance possible. Having a correct entry and catch phase is vital to success but that is another topic but something that you should consider working on. If your not sure if your doing things right get a coach to watch your swim and even video your stroke above and below the surface so you can determine what needs to be worked on. We offer swim analysis at Endurance on Demand, just head over to the store page for more details.
Next time you go for a swim session count your strokes for a single 25. Each time your hand hits the water and pulls that is one. So you are counting both the left and right.
If your stroke rate is 25 or higher you might strongly considering working on improving that number. That can be working on reducing drag, body position, head position, a correct entry and catch. Many things can be worked on to resolve this.
Now that you have your stroke rate for that one lap,, try to improve each lap by 1-2 strokes each time. Make sure you finish your pull completely. That means the hand pushes all the way to the hip and the exit for recovery. You don’t want to turn your hand toward your body or outward towards a wall. The palm should always be facing the wall you just came from when your pressing against the water all the way through to recovery. Now depending on the style of freestyle your swimming as mentioned above this could change slightly. If you have no idea about which style you do it is best to focus, for now on a proper entry and catch as well as your stroke rate.
Over time as you continue to improve your stroke rate you will notice a difference in efficiency, time and energy levels as well.
Now I don’t recommened counting your rate every lap. Aim to do this a few times during your warmup for say a 4x25. Then try it again towards the end of your main set and one last time during your cool down.
Aim to get below 20 and you will really start to see and feel improvements.
Most swimmers I work with are more than strong enough to swim much faster than they think but they lack the technique and skill set to do so. Many focus on the distance and quantity but forget about the quality in their sessions. Is there variety in your sessions? Are you working on open water technique? Are you working on reducing drag with better body position, hand entry position. Maybe improving that kick will give you a better balance in the water and more powerful rotation. There is so much to it and focusing more on quality you might just find the improvement happens faster and you will be able to get time back from your swim sessions that you can spend elsewhere like with family, friends or sleeping in!
-Coach Ray Delahoussaye
