Slow It Down, Swim Faster!

Slow It Down, Swim Faster!

Sometimes we need to slow it down and reduce our stroke rate.

Yes, that’s right. Reducing our stroke rate. This appears to go against our recent articles on stroke rate, doesn’t it?

Sometimes you actually want to slow your stroke rate.

Why? There are a few reasons for this.

Controlled Speed

Sometimes, when I ask swimmers to do fast 50s or 100s, they hear the word ‘fast’ and their stroke goes turbo-charged. Arms spinning, legs bouncing. Using a technique we’ve never seen before!

Having a tempo trainer inside your cap during these fast efforts focuses the swimmer on staying controlled, keeping their stroke rate steady and using their technique to produce more force per stroke, swimming quickly with great control.

For example, I did a set last week where I wanted to swim 8 x 50s fast – but I wanted to do this using the same technique I would use if I was swimming a 400m. I set the tempo trainer to 72 strokes per minute and swam fast – controlled, but fast. I hit 34s for all of the 50s.

I could have gone quicker had I used a quicker turnover and increased my leg kick, but what’s the point if the technique disintegrates? My races are not 50m long so I need my technique to hold up for a little longer. I also did 8 of these all at the same time (34s), where without the tempo trainer I would have done 3 or 4 a little quicker and then really struggled for the rest.

Or, maybe we use the tempo trainer to control our stroke rate for longer sets e.g. 400s. We can sometimes start a bit too ‘eagerly’ (fast) and then fade. Using the tempo trainer to control stroke rate means we start at more or less the same pace as we finish the 400m.

Helping Us Hold Back

Sometimes, we do a set where we start slowly and increase pace as the set progresses. To stay disciplined, it can be useful to reduce the stroke rate on the early part of the set – and then increase as we progress.

Or perhaps we’re having a recovery session. Using the tempo trainer to force us to adopt a slower stroke rate helps us stay disciplined and do the recovery session properly.

Distance Per Stroke

We’ve spoken a lot about distance per stroke, but having a deliberately slower stroke rate can help us slow the whole stroke down, give us time to set up a great catch and then really propel ourselves through the water on each stroke. What’s the saying?

If you can’t do a movement well when going slowly, you’ve got no chance of doing it well when going fast.

Or something like that. So, we might use a slower stroke rate when doing a set of distance per stroke 25s for example.

Solving The Windmilling Problem

Some swimmers spin their arms and don’t get a great purchase on the water, taking ‘lots’ of strokes on each length. Often, they exhaust themselves in the process.

In this case, we want to deliberately slow the stroke rate down so they can focus on what they’re doing, to get some length on each stroke and try and make each stroke count.

Setting a stroke rate slower than their current rate can be really useful for this.

Stroke Timing

Slowing the tempo trainer down can be really helpful for stroke timing.

If everything is done quickly, the body often doesn’t connect very well and we find that our arms are doing one thing, our legs another, and things like body rotation are completely out of time with the stroke.

I have used this with one swimmer recently. The swimmer is only ‘allowed’ to start the catch and pull once the beep has gone. For this swimmer, this meant that their arms were extended and they had a small glide at the front of their stroke before they started pulling. This had a great effect of lengthening the stroke, of connecting rotation with the pull, the stroke becoming a little more ‘predictable’ and much more power being produced with each stroke.

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Does all of that make sense to you? Can you think of any more reasons you might want to slow the stroke rate down?

Slow It Down, Swim Faster!

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