Increasing Stroke Rate

Simple Tips To Increase Stroke Rate

If we think, generally, that increasing our stroke rate is a good thing, how do we do it and what should we be thinking about?

Kit

First thing you need is some sort of metronome to measure your stroke rate and then set higher or lower stroke rates for you to follow. The Finis Tempo Trainer (the little yellow gadget) is my tool of choice here.

Benchmark

Firstly, do you know what your current stroke rate is?

And when you swim with that stroke rate, do you know how many strokes you take per length? If not, you need to get that data through some trial and error with the tempo trainer or by asking your poolside coach to check.

Do you know what your stroke rate is when swimming at different paces?

Easy, moderate, race pace, hard? Again, do you know what your stroke count is at those different paces? Again, find out that data.

Once we have a good idea of our stroke rates (and associated stroke count) we can start to think about increasing our turnover.

How Much Do We Try And Increase By?

Once we have identified our stroke rate, we want to increase stroke rate gradually.

Let’s assume you have a stroke rate of 50 strokes per minute. Use the tempo trainer and increase to 52 for a week or two. Not much of a shift, quite simple to get used to. It will come quite quickly and will become comfortable and your ‘normal’ rate. When that happens, increase to 54 for a couple of weeks, and the same will happen. And so on.

Use The Tempo Trainer All Of The Time?

No, not on all sets. Perhaps do the warm up without the tempo trainer and then use it for the main set. If you do open water swimming, it is a great idea to use the tempo trainer to help transfer you pool rhythm and tempo to the open water.

Careful With The Legs

One thing to look out for when you try and increase stroke rate is an increase in your leg kick.

For our purposes, long distance swimming, we really don’t want to increase our leg kick. It will result in fatigue and exhaustion, with very little propulsion. Instead, look back to my earlier post and one of the lessons I learned – to maintain a 7/10 effort I learned that the faster the arms turned over, the slower the legs had to kick. Keep your legs under control.

Beware!

You may increase stroke rate but find that you’re still swimming at the same pace.

This is probably because you’ve shortened your distance per stroke. Once you get used to the change in stroke rate, combine the beep of the stroke rate with counting strokes, making sure your stroke count doesn’t rise as your stroke gets faster. Think back to your benchmarks and the number of strokes you took per length. Keep that number in mind and try and hit that with your increased stroke rate.

Small Changes

Small changes over time will equal big results. Sounds simple really doesn’t it?

Does this post make sense to you? Can you see the logic? Is it something you might try? Let me know how you get on?