Why faster on short swim sets? (Page 2)

More strength can sound nice, but how you develop it matters a lot. As was said before, your catch is almost non existent. Your elbow is dropping very early and a lot, almost like you're going to hit someone in the gut with it. You can work very hard like this, but as you've seen with the swim times it's really not effective. You have to learn how to get a better grip on the water during the time you're trying to pull. More "strength" isn't necessarily going to do that as your arms aren't really ever making a decent catch. Need to get a better idea of what to do there so that the fitness gains will have more relevance. 

3mar has put up a lot of drawings to that can help. Your arm extension out front is at least in the ball park. More important (for now) seems to be continuing to slip your arm around and down so that your hand and and forearm are vertical way more early in the stroke. This feels very awkward when not used to it. You may have heard of sliding your arm over a barrel or other expression. Getting your arm in position. 3mar had a bunch of the markings showing how your arm  is kind of arching the wrong direction here. When you get into a better position, you're not pushing water back so much as creating a more solid anchor to pull forward. When done well, it's more like sticking your your arm in the mud as it's so much more solid.

Developing this arm position is what much of the fitness improvements are for. It's not just pulling hard, but pulling well. And may actually be more with the latter than the former. When you get some idea of what you're trying to do, you keep on swimming while pressing on your ability to do this. You'll figure out how to do it while in the water and by doing it over and over again with an emphasis on doing this well you'll develop the necessary fitness to press it more, better, and longer. Tendons & muscles will expand their range of motion and their strength throughout that range. Any fitness gains have to come on top of swimming well. And the gains will come along with a lot of swimming well. So keep emphasizing swimming well. That never, ever stops.

Originally posted by aribloch Thanks very much 3mar for the picture analysis, it really helps.

Originally posted by yazmaster

the lack of power/muscular endurance is by farrrr the dominant feature.

Yes, I suppose it's time to put in some serious gym work on those arms..... scrawny as they are

To clarify -

Gym work on the arms is NOT what i'm referring to with regards to muscular endurance/power in the swim stroke, and working hard in on your arms/lats in the gym will NOT translate to faster pool times. 

You have to develop muscular endurance specifically in the swim stroke pattern of movement. It's not about how 'buff' your muscles are - it's about how often they can fire hard in that specific swim-motion that is best for pulling water (early vertical forearm.) The swim stroke requires a coordinated set of unnatural motions, and the whole stroke doesn't work if you don't develop it specifically. Bodybuilding type workouts do NOT help with distance swimming. Swimming a LOT (and faster) helps with distance swimming.

It takes a lot of work, and your technique will be far from good when you start, but do not let that hold you back. In fact, you will not be able to do the correct EVF until you build up significant endurance in the motion, which means that EVF will start off ugly, but improve little by little as you swim more and more. 

Keep striving to have the best form possible as the diagrams posted before, but don't let perfection get in the way of practice and training.