If you want to be the fastest swimmer you can be, you have to work on improving your technique and your mental game. Practice and determination are key.
The most important thing, though, is to get the technique down. Without proper technique, what is the point of practicing?
If you want to learn how to shave seconds or even minutes off of your best race times, see Step 1 to be on your way.
There are 3 tips that help you to swim faster:
- Swim technique
- Swim frequency
- Workout execution and specificity.
Swim Technique
Have you taken swim lessons from an established swim coach? How often have you done so? For a newbie swimmer, it is important to get swim lessons on a weekly basis.
You want someone to teach you the right drills, discuss form and help you to execute these the best way possible.
A one time lesson will get a new swimmer started but having multiple lessons will help you to understand each part of the stroke better and better.
Even a former swimmer can benefit from a lesson or two to get the latest knowledge in swim technique.
Swim Frequency
More than the other triathlon disciples, swimming has a biomechanical component that is directly related to the number of days you touch the water.
Your “feel” for the water can decrease and increase with the number of days away and in the water.
Almost all my athletes who swim four to five times a week have said they feel so much better than when swimming two to three times.
There are studies that show that two days a week is maintenance, three days a week will get you some forward progress and form improvement, but four or more days a week will give you your biggest gains.
Workout Execution
There are two different ways to work out in swimming. Straight swimming or doing intervals. With interval training, there is doing an interval with a given amount of rest (5×100 w/20 seconds rest).
There is also doing an interval on a given amount of time (5×100 on 1:50). These are two completely different styles of doing intervals.
The first way the swimmer can do whatever pace they want and they can take 20 seconds rest once they come in.
The second way (5×100 on 1:50) the swimmer has to leave and come into the wall by the 1:50 in order to get rest and go again.
Conclusion
We covered the principles of how to swim faster with less effort.
You can start to integrate those principles in your stroke by following our sequence of swimming drills for the front crawl stroke.