Swim Technique Focus

Swim Technique Focus.

This time of the year is a great opportunity to work on swim technique. The 1-1 sessions that I’ve been running on Wednesday evenings have been super popular. Same goes for our Monday evening technique sessions. And we’ve had some great results.

Take the swimmer I met for a 1-1 a couple of weeks ago for example.

This swimmer has been a Swim Squad regular for a couple of years now and has made some big improvements with his swim over that time, knocking almost 30 minutes off his 3.8k Ironman swim. Tidy stroke. Good rhythm and flow.

So, big improvements already.

Race season over, this swimmer wanted to take advantage of the extra time he now has in his life and booked two 1-1 sessions. We had the first one a couple of weeks ago.

The 1-1 Session

Taking a look at his stroke, we wanted to make three changes:

• Improve his body position in the water. His legs were sinking, with his toes rarely tickling the surface of the water. We wanted to lift his hips a little, and then make sure his legs were extended, and his toes pointing a little more.

• Improve his catch. His reach was great, nice and long. The initial part of the catch looked good, looked like it would set up a strong pull. But then, instead of fingers pointing towards the bottom of the pool and having a nice long hand and forearm ‘paddle’ to push water backwards, the finger tips pointed to the other side of the pool and the hold on the water was lost / diluted.

• Hold the water. Maintain hold on the water all the way from the initial catch, through the pull and all the way onto the push phase of the stroke. One of his hands would start the pull and then ‘slice’ through the water rather than push water backwards. We wanted to ensure the palm faced backwards all of the way though the stroke.

The 60 minutes just flew by and we made some great improvements during the session.

Results

A few days later, the swimmer came to our Monday 9-10pm Swim Squad session, his first swim since the 1-1.

“I tried to focus on the points you identified. Definitely felt different in the water and could feel the muscle aches in a few new places!”

I did warn him that in trying to improve the catch we would be engaging the back muscles a little more. I also mentioned that if we’re trying to hold more water on each pull, the stroke would feel more ‘muscular’ and he would experience some muscle fatigue. Looks like he’s experiencing both of those things already!

Interestingly, this swimmer shared some of his swim data with me. Similar sessions, four weeks apart.

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An improvement of 15 seconds per 100m. And the athlete is taking three fewer strokes per length to achieve that speed.

Reduced drag, a better hold on the water and pushing all of the way through the stroke.

What a great start!

Let’s see how this athlete progresses and what we can work on in his next 1-1 session!