Working on Swimming Technique to Increase Speed

One of the most important aspects of swimming that I feel needs to be developed is feeling in the water. Especially for endurance swimming where proper technique is essential to reducing drag and making it easier to go faster. That is the whole idea behind my ideals of proper swimming. Not just swimming faster but faster and easier.

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Now this feeling is difficult to quantify or even explain but it will feel somewhat different for each person since each person is different. You definitely need to develop a good imagination; you need to visualize yourself moving smoothly through the water with each stroke. When you are at the pool each stroke should feel like it is moving you along a great distance and you should not feel like you are decelerating quickly. It should feel that if you took a stroke through the water it would propel you quite a ways.

I must admit that you have to be patient and focused on your goals because it can be boring if you are a person that needs to be in a group doing different things like intervals. But then again it can be good if you get a bunch of people that need to work on their technique and all do it together. 

Watching a good swimming instructional video is really good for helping you visualize what you should look and feel like going through the water. Some techniques covered are body rotation, keeping body aligned, and feet high in the water which are the most basic things you can do to feel smooth. These are the foundations for proper technique. Some people may need coaching in this area so that they can initially feel the correct positions of the body. 

One thing to be careful when working on swimming technique is the tendency to start hammering or increasing your turnover (stroke rate) too quickly. This can bring you out of proper technique if it is not ingrained in your system. That is why a good time to work on technique is in the off season or early season when there is no pressure for speed. This way you can have a developed foundation by the time racing season comes. Each season you can find new things to develop because you won't have perfect form in a few months. But, each season you will constantly be improving your swimming to the point where 1500m in 20 minutes won't be so tough. If you try and hammer from the get go and just adapt your cardiovascular system to the demands of fast swimming you are creating a ceiling for yourself that you may not be able to get beyond. I know guys that have been in the sport for over 5 years that still has trouble getting there 1500m time down below 25-27 minutes which for me has become a warm up routine. I know for a fact it's not because I am a gifted swimmer because it took me two months before I could even swim 1500m and it took me over 45 minutes! But I put in a lot of time working on technique and reading just as much as I could on training. (image courtesy of Angela Radulescu on Flickr)