Swimming with fewer strokes
Dukey3d
Posts: 19
in General Chat
Hi all. As a swimming beginner I wanted to share a tip I learnt from the BeginnerTriathlete website. They recommended slowing down your stroke, relaxing and trying to glide in order to reduce your number of strokes per length. I tried this today and was able to go from about 33strokes/length (in a 33m pool) to about 25strokes/length. My speed per length was a couple of seconds slower, but I hope this will improve with practise.
I was really chuffed with this as it was looking like I'd kind of reached a plateau with my swimming and was thinking some other beginners out there can benefit from it.
P.s. I was wondering if times for say a 100m swim can be comparable between a 25m pool and a 33m pool (or a 50m pool)? With the smaller pools will the times be quicker as you are pushing off the wall more often? Just wondering if there's anything in this or if I'm just talking nonsense.
I was really chuffed with this as it was looking like I'd kind of reached a plateau with my swimming and was thinking some other beginners out there can benefit from it.
P.s. I was wondering if times for say a 100m swim can be comparable between a 25m pool and a 33m pool (or a 50m pool)? With the smaller pools will the times be quicker as you are pushing off the wall more often? Just wondering if there's anything in this or if I'm just talking nonsense.
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It allows to really concentrate on good technique, ie getting a good catch and feel for the water. At the mo i am doing around 12-14 strokes per 25m and 18-19 per 33m, Im doing all my training in a 33m pool at the moment though. I also do loads of sculling drills, front, mid and rear. This is always included in my warm up sessions and cool down sessions. Im holding 1:25-1:28 per 100m over 1500-2000m and 1:28-1:30 per 100m over 3500m, although swim fitness and speed come into this id say 85-90% the extra 10% is gained from these drills. My coach has always said to me that swimming slowly will make so much faster in the long term and he taught Will Clarke and Alistar Brownlee to swim! so he must be right!haha I find that you do swim faster in a shorter pool because of the extra push offs, but only if your push and glide is any good in the first place, i usually do 3-4 big butterfly kicks off each turn and this puts me 1/4 way down the length before my stroke. If i do a crap turn then you can drop 1-2 seconds per length easily maybe even 3, which over distance equates to a big difference.