Triathletes come from a variety of backgrounds, and swimming is often the most challenging discipline for many. While some swimmers move through the water smoothly and efficiently, others seem to struggle yet were determined to improve.
For those who are new to swimming, it can be a tough discipline to master. Even for experienced swimmers, swimming efficiently—using as little energy as possible—is crucial, especially in triathlons where conserving energy for the bike and run is essential.
The Importance of Swimming Efficiency
Swimming fast doesn’t necessarily mean swimming well. The key to swimming efficiently lies in reducing the energy you expend in the water, which directly impacts how much energy you’ll have left for the rest of your race. It’s not about who was a high school swim champion or who has the fastest sprint time—it’s about who can maintain a strong, efficient stroke throughout the entire swim leg, leaving enough in the tank for the bike and run.
Understanding Drag and Its Impact
Why are human swimmers so inefficient? The answer lies in understanding the types of drag that affect your swimming. There are three main types:
Form Drag: Caused by non-streamlined body parts like your shoulders, legs, and arms. When these parts are out of alignment, they create resistance that slows you down. The good news is that form drag is the easiest to correct by improving your body alignment in the water.
Wave Drag: This occurs when movements or strokes create waves and splashes, reducing your efficiency. If you hear a lot of noise or see water splashing around you, that’s wave drag in action.
Friction Drag: This relates to the surface over which the water flows. Wearing baggy swimsuits or not streamlining your body creates more friction, increasing drag. Opt for swimwear designed for minimal resistance to improve your efficiency.
Think of aquatic mammals like dolphins or seals—they glide through the water with minimal effort because their bodies are perfectly streamlined for aquatic environments. By contrast, humans lose significant energy to drag, making efficiency even more critical.
Tailoring Your Swimming Goals to Your Ability
To improve your swimming, it’s important to set goals that match your current skill level. Here’s a general guide:
Fundamental Swimming Goals – Improve Efficiency: Focus on maximizing streamlining, minimizing fatigue, imprinting correct neuromuscular programming, and creating a stroke that is sustainable over longer distances and faster tempos.
Intermediate Swimming Goals – Develop Gears: Work on stroke counting at various speeds, learn to adjust your speed by varying your recovery rate, and practice choosing and executing a specific stroke count.
Advanced Swimming Goals – Add Fluency to Your Gears: Practice changing pace with fixed stroke counts, create speed by combining longer strokes with faster tempos, and use a tempo trainer to improve your form across a range of speeds.
When Does Speed Come Into Play?
Speed is a natural concern for many swimmers, but it’s important to understand that fitness follows the skills you are working on. For novice swimmers, focusing on time-based goals without a solid foundation of technique can reinforce bad habits. Instead, focus on balance, streamlining, and relaxation. As your efficiency improves, so will your speed.
For more advanced swimmers who have developed a smooth, efficient stroke, incorporating speed work with a focus on form can help build fitness and speed. However, even the most advanced swimmers benefit from continually refining their technique.
Ultimately, speed is the outcome of focusing on form, efficiency, and skill during training. By making these your priorities, you’ll find that your times improve naturally as your stroke becomes more effective.
The Challenge of Swimming Straight for Triathletes
For many triathletes, swimming straight in open water can be one of the most frustrating aspects of the sport. Despite strong fitness and training, even a slight deviation from a straight line can lead to significant time losses and extra fatigue during a race. While pool swimmers can rely on lane lines to guide them, triathletes must navigate without such aids, making stroke efficiency and alignment even more crucial. One of the main culprits of swimming off-course is the “crossover effect.”
Understanding and Correcting the Crossover Effect
The crossover effect happens when your hand crosses the centerline of your body during the stroke. This is a natural tendency due to the way our shoulder joints are oriented and how we use our arms in daily life—reaching forward in activities like typing, driving, or even shaking hands. When this habitual movement pattern carries over into swimming, it causes your strokes to push water diagonally instead of straight back, leading you to veer off-course.
This misalignment wastes energy and slows you down, but the worst part is that it often goes unnoticed until you see it on video or feel it during a swim. The result? Your hard-earned speed is lost as you zigzag instead of cutting a clean path through the water.
To correct the crossover effect, practice aligning your arms during the recovery and entry phases of your stroke. Imagine your hand extending not directly in front of your chest but slightly to the side, aligned with your shoulder, and parallel to an imaginary lane line. This adjustment might feel strange at first, but it helps keep your momentum moving forward rather than sideways.
Techniques for Staying Straight in Open Water
In open water, where visual cues are limited, it’s essential to maintain straight swimming to conserve energy and stay on course. Beyond correcting the crossover effect, here are some additional tips:
Use Bilateral Breathing: This allows you to balance your stroke and avoid favoring one side, which can cause you to drift.
Practice Sighting Regularly: Incorporate sighting into your training so it becomes second nature. Lifting your head briefly to check your direction can prevent you from veering off-course.
Core Stability: Strengthening your core helps you maintain a streamlined position in the water, reducing the likelihood of wobbling or drifting during your swim.
By addressing these factors in your training, you’ll be better equipped to swim straight in your next triathlon, saving valuable time and energy.
Why would you want to lower your stroke count? Simply put, if your stroke count is too high, it can indicate inefficiencies in your swimming technique. But how do you know if your stroke count is too high?
When swimming at an easy pace, without adding much power, you should be able to glide through the water with relative ease. This ease suggests that you’re well-balanced and streamlined. Everyone has a limit where swimming any slower turns into a drill-like exercise, or where you start to feel like you’re sinking. The stroke count you achieve just above that limit is a good indicator of your efficiency.
Balancing Technique and Power
Stroke count, or strokes per length (SPL), is a reflection of two competing forces: water resistance and stroking force. To lower your stroke count, you can either reduce drag or increase power. In other words, you can improve your streamlining or boost your propulsion.
Here are some key concepts to help you balance the skills needed for speed in swimming:
Streamlining vs. Power
Flexibility vs. Mobility
Slipperiness vs. Strength
Your ideal stroke count will vary based on your height and other factors. For instance, a 5’2? swimmer might aim for a lower-end target of 18 strokes per length, while a 6’2? swimmer might target 15 strokes. If you can’t hit these targets at any speed, it might indicate issues with streamlining or balance, essentially problems with drag.
As your tempo increases, the time between strokes decreases, your travel distance per stroke decreases, and your stroke count goes up. Identifying your upper limit—where you still feel smooth and in control—is crucial. For example, a swimmer might feel comfortable at 21-22 SPL in a short course yard (SCY) pool when swimming at a fast, yet controlled pace.
Control and Improvement
Being able to choose your stroke count at will suggests great control over your form. If your stroke count varies widely at the same sustainable pace (more than 2 SPL), this may indicate poor technique or a technique that isn’t well-ingrained. For example, swimming a 25-yard distance at 30 seconds with an 18 SPL is very different from doing it at 16 or 20 SPL.
The stroke rate ramp test can help determine your current comfort level, but it doesn’t diagnose whether your SPL and tempo ranges are ideal—it only shows what feels good right now. Remember, even if it feels good, there’s always room for improvement unless your technique is perfect.
To illustrate, a 5’3? swimmer might be equally comfortable swimming at 14 SPL or 22 SPL. However, the difference is in speed: at 14 SPL, they might swim 1:50 per 100 yards easily and relaxed, while at 22 SPL, they might swim 1:30 per 100 yards but get tired quickly. For a sustainable 1000-yard swim, they might maintain around 1:40 per 100 yards with an 18/19 SPL, consistently staying within that narrow range.
Finally, if your tempo remains the same, lowering your SPL—by either improving streamlining or adding efficient propulsion—will make you go faster. This is why lowering your SPL should be a key component of your swim practice and improvement exercises.
Drill Set to Lower Stroke Count
You can do this as written for a complete swim session, or decrease the drill repeats or distances to incorporate it as a warmup set for a longer swim.
Sculpt Your Stroke
Total Distance: (1100)
Warm-Up: 200m easy swim
Drill 1 (200): 4 x 50 m/yd Swim with Gentle Closed Hand (relaxed fist) for 25, then open hand for 25 (Focus on feeling the water pressure on your forearms during closed fist drill as well as open hand). rest 10 seconds between 50s
Drill 2 (200): 4 x 50 y/m Swim with One Arm, other arm at side for 25, then swim both arms back. Focus on pausing during the extension to give your body a chance to stabilize before you start your stroke. Breath away from the extended arm. (Alternate each length; focus on balance and reducing drag). rest 15 seconds between 50s
Drill 3 (300): 4 x 75 y/m as follows: 25 Closed Hand, 25 open hands, 25 swim with slow, deliberate strokes (Count your strokes per length and aim to reduce SPL for each 25). rest 20 seconds between 50s
Cool Down: 200m easy swim
Main Swim Set: Efficient Endurance
Total Distance: 2200 meters
Warm-Up: (400 meters)
200m easy swim (focus on streamlining and counting strokes per length)
100m kick with a board (maintain balance and reduce drag)
100m pull with a buoy (focus on maintaining a long, efficient stroke)
Main Set: (1600 meters)
4 x 100m at Moderate Pace (200 meters total)
Focus on maintaining a consistent stroke count (aim for the SPL you practiced during the drill set).
Rest: 20 seconds between each 100m.
2 x 200m Descending Pace (400 meters total)
Start at a moderate pace and gradually increase your speed in the second 100m while maintaining or slightly reducing your stroke count.
Rest: 30 seconds between each 200m.
4 x 50m Focused Technique Work (200 meters total)
Alternate each 50m between a strong, powerful stroke (aim for speed) and a long, smooth stroke (aim to reduce SPL).
Rest: 15 seconds between each 50m.
2 x 300m Aerobic Effort (600 meters total)
Swim at a steady pace, focusing on maintaining a sustainable stroke count and minimizing drag.
Rest: 45 seconds between each 300m.
1 x 100m Fast Effort (100 meters total)
Push your speed while keeping your stroke count as low as possible. This is a test of both fitness and technique.
Rest: 1 minute.
Cool Down: (200 meters)
200m easy swim, focusing on relaxing and maintaining a long, efficient stroke.
Key Focus Points During the Main Set:
Consistency: Maintain a consistent stroke count throughout the main set, aiming to stay within the SPL range you determined during the drill set.
Efficiency: Emphasize smooth, streamlined swimming, especially during the longer intervals, to conserve energy while maintaining speed.
Control: Use the descending pace and focused technique work to reinforce the ability to adjust your stroke rate and count based on the pace.
This main set is designed to build endurance while reinforcing the technical improvements from the drill set. It challenges you to maintain efficiency and control as the distance and intensity increase, ensuring that your stroke mechanics remain strong under fatigue.
Bonus Tip: Track Your SWOLF Score
As you progress through these workouts, you may want to track your SWOLF score. SWOLF, short for “Swim Golf,” is a metric that combines your stroke count and time to give you a measure of efficiency. A lower SWOLF score can often indicate more efficient swimming. By paying attention to your SWOLF during the main set, you can gain valuable insights into how well you’re balancing stroke efficiency with speed. For more on how to use SWOLF to improve your swimming, check out this this article.
References
Chollet, Didier, et al. “The effects of an incremental protocol on arm coordination in front crawl.” Journal of Sports Sciences, vol. 18, no. 4, 2000, pp. 321-330.
This study examines the relationship between arm coordination, drag, and propulsion in swimming, providing insights into how stroke mechanics affect overall efficiency.
Costill, David L., et al. “Upper body power as a determinant of swimming performance.” Journal of Swimming Research, vol. 8, 1992, pp. 27-32.
This paper explores the role of upper body strength and power in swimming, highlighting the balance between force production and streamlining for optimal performance.
This is a response to a forum post over on Beginner Triathlete about so-called “Hypoxic Breathing” swim drills, and originally appeared on my retired blog, exercisephysiologymd.comon January 17th, 2007
I’m a huge proponent of using terms that accurately reflect the underlying physical changes that occur on a biochemical level when training for triathlon swimming. The words I use as a coach transmit meaning to the athlete that may help reinforce what the benefit is.
That’s why the term “Hypoxic Breathing” does not belong in a swim or triathlon coach’s lexicon. If you ask swimmers, triathletes and many coaches what hypoxic breathing drills are, they’ll respond with answers like:
Holding your breath
Swimming Underwater (as far as you can)
Swimming a length while minimizing breathing
Swimming with increasing time between breaths, eg. every 3, every 5 or every 7 strokes
I want to address the first two responses primarily, but principals apply to the latter 2 answers as well.
Firstly, holding your breath prevents CO2 from escaping your lungs. Our body is constantly consuming oxygen and producing CO2 as a waste product. The CO2 builds up much faster than the oxygen is consumed, and needs to be released through the lungs. Holding your breathing causes the CO2 level to build up in your bloodstream. So these sets should really be called “Hypercarbic” sets. “Hyper-” meaning elevated and “-carbic” relating to the carbon dioxide level.
The build-up of Co2 in the lungs while holding your breath stimulates the brainstem and diaphragm to breath. This is the sensation you feel when you hold your breath without exhaling. The lungs start to burn and the urge to breath is irresistible. Breathing is usually involuntary, meaning we don’t think about it and when not thinking about it, don’t have control over it. Our brainstem, spinal cord, and diaphragm will keep the bellows moving no matter what.
But when we voluntarily decide to hold our breath, we are overriding the built-in mechanisms. We can continue to override those mechanisms even when the urge to breath crops up. When trying to stay under the water for a long time, some swimmers and divers will hyperventilate first, in order to lower the CO2 level and delay the urge to breathe. This means that the oxygen in your bloodstream drops lower and lower while the CO2 level takes longer to build up.
However, people have died doing these drills. There is no physiologic benefit from doing them. The name is a misnomer. If you want to swim uninterrupted without worrying about breathing, use a snorkel. The benefit of using a snorkel is that you don’t have to break form when breathing, and can focus on other parts of your swim stroke comes from not having your form break down when you roll (or don’t roll, or lift your head, or claw your way to the surface) to take a breath.
A far, far better solution is to have someone work with you to learn how to breathe properly. The number of strokes you take per breath is irrelevant. There is no right number. You need what you need. The body’s need for oxygen consumption and getting rid of carbon dioxide is dependent upon how much energy you are using and in what form you are using it (aerobic/anaerobic, etc). When I start my swim warmup, I will frequently swim 7 to 9 strokes without breathing only because I am swimming smoothly, I have not gotten my oxygen consumption up by working hard, I am not generating a lot of waste products due to the low effort. When I have the urge to breathe, I breathe. When I am doing long endurance sprints, I may breathe every 2 strokes. When I am rested and doing a single 25-yard sprint, yes, I can do it with no breaths. But not because I am forcing myself to do it. It is because 15-20 seconds of maximum effort requires little oxygen.
A novice swimmer who uses all the energy they have just to stay on the surface of the water will need to breathe every stroke because of the amount of energy they are using.
Do not play with the basic needs of your body.
There is a mantra in Emergency Medical Services:
Air goes in and out, Blood goes round and round Pink is good and blue is bad.
That’s all an EMT, Paramedic or Emergency Medicine nurse or physician needs to know in order to resuscitate a patient. If it’s good enough for these professionals, it’s good enough for the recreational swimmer.
Air goes in and out.
Don’t forget it.
Practice it daily. Frequently. You’ll get really good at it.
Whether you are looking to swim a sprint distance or an Iron distance triathlon, having a few “goto” 1000 meter or 1000 yard freestyle workouts will help keep you from getting into a rut when training. For the long course triathletes, do these 1000 meter/yard sets 2 or even 3 times through to cover the distance needed in your training.
Creating a Mini-Project Accelerates Your Progress
You can use these sets to create mini projects or tasks to challenge yourself. It is a great way to stay engaged with your swimming and take control over your own training plan.
For example, a 1000 yd improvement project may look like a sequence of 3 sessions cycled through for 3-6 rounds before retesting. You can use these 1000 meter/ yard sets as the main set, add a 500yd tuneup or warmup to swim exactly 1500m (a swimmers mile). If you are swimming in a yard pool, just add on a 150 yard cool-down for an imperial version of the swimmers mile (1650 yards)
If you are looking for a main set that’s longer, such as 2000 or 3000 yards or meters, you can repeat the main set, or combine two of these into one practice.
Suppose you’re looking for 2000yd main sets, you could take these three suggestions below, each at 1000 meters/yards and to them in any of 3 combinations (1 & 2, 2 & 3, 1 & 3). Rotate through these combos for a unique set of 3 main sets, each having a set that you do twice before taking a break from it. There are a lot of ways to customize this practice idea.
Here are sample 1000 meter practices sets for you to play with
Pre-project test set: favorite warmup, 1000yd TT with splits & stroke counts, cooldown
Swim #1: 5 x 200
Swim #2: 10 x 100
Swim #3: 5 sets of 4×50
For each of these swims you can choose some element to improve like…consistent SPL across all sets, or consistent tempo (use a tempo trainer). When you gain or if you already have good control, manipulate a variable…like 5 x 200 swimming the first 50 at one SPL, the next 100 at SPL + 1 and the last 50 at SPL + 2. This should result in a build within each 200.
Vary the rest intervals to create a bit of variety. Since the 200s are more aerobic, keep the RI short in that practice. Since the 50s *can* be anaerobic, maybe choose to swim descending 50s with 30 sec rest, rest 2 minutes and repeat that 4 more times.
Then you cycle back to the 5 x 200 set and have some comparison…choose 1 metric to try and improve.
After 3 cycles of this…whether you swim every day, every other day or 2 times a week…you go back to your 1000yd TT and by that time you should KNOW before you swim it that you’ve improved based on metrics from the previous sets.
Maintain Focus on Form and Skill During this time as well.
Be sure to toss in at least 1 swim, possibly 2, of un-timed, form only swim sets, other strokes, or a team workout for variety. Or a water aerobics class.
Comment below with how you are using these sets!
For more ideas on creating swimming improvement projects consider downloading this Fresh Freestyle Sampler for 3 practice swims from our book.
Triathletes come from a variety of backgrounds, and swimming is often the most challenging discipline for many. While some swimmers move through the water smoothly and efficiently, others seem to struggle yet were determined to improve.
The Importance of Lowering Your Stroke Count
1000 Meter Freestyle Workouts for Triathletes