Finding Your Swim Rhythm Again

Finding Your Swim Rhythm Again

I don’t know about you, but many of our Swim Squad swimmers hadn’t swam too often during our three week Christmas break. To get us back in the groove, and to help us feel like we could swim again, our first Monday evening technique session of the year was all about feeling our way back.

If you find yourself in this position, with a little ‘swim rustiness’, going through the steps below might help you too.

Staying Relaxed

We swam some 25m intervals where we focused on our breathing, particularly our exhale. Making sure we relaxed in the water and didn’t hold unnecessary tension and hold our breath underwater. Being relaxed was the foundation of the rest of the session.

Stroke Timing

Next to breathing, stroke timing is the thing that eludes us when we return to swimming after a break. To help us focus on this timing, we did some 25s using the 3/4 catch up drill. This helped keep our stroke consistent, smooth and gave us a bit more rhythm when we swam.

Stroke Length

Next, we thought about our stroke length. Entering the water with our hands and extending forwards, with a slight glide, gave us some good length at the front of our stroke. We combined this with an emphasis on pushing all the way back on each stroke, getting great length on each stroke, avoiding short and choppy strokes.

Acceleration

By now, we were feeling relaxed, had a nice stroke rhythm and good stroke length. Next step was to feel good propulsion, to move well on each stroke. For this, we thought about accelerating the pull under the water. Nice, relaxed (and slow) recovery, followed by a more aggressive pull, accelerating under the water. Moving well now.

Distance Per Stroke

Putting all of this together – staying relaxed, long stroke length, efficient stroke timing, good propulsion – we did some 25s where we wanted to travel really far on each stroke. Using their normal stroke rate, how few strokes could our swimmers take on each 25m?

We did the above as a 30 minute technique session. However, if you didn’t want to dedicate a whole session to finding your rhythm, you could use all or part of this approach as part of your warm up or pre-main set?

Many Ways

There are many ways to get your feel for the water, and to pick up where you left off after a swim break.

Take our first Monday Swim Squad sessions of the year for example. 

We used 50m intervals for most of the session, started nice and steady to feel our way into the swim, before gradually applying more pressure and swimming really fast towards the end of the set.

I think the swimmers swam well – fast even – because the set gave them the space to find their rhythm and their power.

However you decide to make your return to the pool, make it deliberate. 

“Despite the Christmas swim slow down I really enjoyed this session. Doing 50’s felt spot on with the distance, not too far and short enough to put some effort in – felt like the rustiness from last Thursday swim had been cleaned off.”

“Great session. New 50m PB.”

“Great session back, tough to keep pushing the pace but felt good 🙂 a great welcome back, thank you!”

“Sooo happy to be back in the pool! Felt pretty good too which was an extra bonus!”

Finding Your Swim Rhythm Again

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