Long Plods Or Short Swims To Get Better
Many people seem to get in the pool and plough up and down for length after length. Here’s a little secret of the swimming world: you do not have to swim 400m repeats or a 3k straight to get better or faster.
In fact, if you are a beginner swimmer, shorter repeats like 25 to 100m can actually make you faster and more efficient than doing longer distance efforts.
Since swimming smoother and stronger is largely dependent upon much your body position and pull technique, if either or both of these two are lacking then you are going to be expending a good deal more energy for very little gain; sometimes you might actually swim slower.
By swimming shorter, having shorter and more regular breaks, and focusing on your form each and every time, you can build your muscle memory with good habits and not have to worry about fatigue breaking down your technique. You’ll probably find that you swim slightly quicker as a result too, so you can look to maintain this as you swim longer.
Try a session like this – or a variation of. It will build your swim stroke up through drills and then will take that technical work and translate that into speed:
Warmup:
4×25 side kick drill (go half on your left side and half on your right)
4×25 6/3/6 drill on 10-15s rest
4×25 catch up drill on 10-15s rest
Main set:
20×25 following this rotation Focus on your balance in the water
Focus on good rotation
Focus on focus on good hand placement
Focus on high elbow catch
Put it all together
8×50 Smooth and strong on 30s rest
Cooldown: 2×100 choice of stroke
This sort of thing will always work best when you understand your stroke and what the breaking points are, what things you need to work on and improve; whether that is from a swim lesson or a friend has watched you swim.
As your season and your form progresses, this sort of session can become more of an easy recovery swim rather than a normal session.
If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch; either by email, Facebook or leave a comment on here! Remember, you can always get your swimming reviewed in the endless pool with our video swim analysis packages.
See what’s up next week for our #SwimTechTues tip!