How Do I Swim Faster? Your Favorite Swim Drills?

I would read this and apply the principles to your swim training:

http://joelfilliol.blogspot.ca/2012/01/most-popular-post-on-this-bl...

Shane

Drills are a big part of swimming faster, because they focus on creating your stroke more efficient, but in all reality, it's about building your endurance. It's about building up the ability to go stronger, faster, and harder for a longer period of time.

Any time someone has a not-so-quick pace, it's because that's what their comfort level is without them getting too tired to hold it. The same thing goes for running.

Few questions, and I can tell you exactly what to do
What drills do you currently do?
What kinds of sets do you do...meaning, do you break things up or do you just do 1500 and keep your eye on the clock?

Here's what I found: To swim fast, you have to swim fast.

In every one of your workouts you need to swim some ALL OUT sets. Start with 4x25 with about 1 minute rest, AS HARD AS YOU CAN.

The beauty of swimming is that you can really push yourself and recover much faster than the run or bike.

This user's post has been ignored.

Not to be a debbie downer, but that seems like an enormous jump of time to do in a few months. Although I'm unsure to tell you exactly what kind of time gains are possible my best advice regarding that would be forget about specific time gains. What's the difference between a 5 minute mile and a 4:59 mile? 1 second. The physical exertion to do one or the other is not significantly different. The designation we give to numbers is a false sense of meaning based on arbitrary benchmarks. More so try to focus on simply getting faster however much that may be at a time.

Now to the actual swimming part, my favorite drill is referred to by my coach as the "teeter totter" drill or sometimes it's referred to as "pressing the t" and the form in general is considered "downhill swimming." It's a drill where arms are at your sides and you work on pushing your chest down into the water to try and flatten your body position out in the water. This has been my number one biggest gain in efficiency drill.

Second is actually going faster in the pool instead of just doing laps. Like all the other sports, you have to go fast to go fast. I think BT is full of swim workouts and swim workout suggestions on various sets to do, but you might start with 25 meter reps or 50 meter reps with a short rest period (5-10 seconds). The idea is to build up your body's ability to keep good form at higher speeds over time versus just doing that "long swim" pace which isn't typically going to improve your 1500 much after you get a good swim base in.

Let us know what kind of distances you're swimming right now and we can probably make more suggestions.

This user's post has been ignored.

Thanks to all for your suggestions.

To your questions:

Currently I hit the pool about 3 times a week, 45 mins or so per session.

I just completed the Ruth Kazan "0-1650 in 6 weeks" schedule:

http://ruthkazez.com/ZeroTo1mile.html

Going forward, I've been doing 6-10 x 100m sets, timing myself and trying to go as fast as I can. Also, I try to fit in 1 x 1500m OWS every week.

Maybe 1:30/100 by end of summer is too aggressive but I'm optimistic :-)

One general question - should I be focusing on a lot of shorts sets or a few longer ones?

Thanks!
SM

Great info...and that looks like a good program to get going. Well done! I also love that you work an OWS in there...nothing really helps you prepare by having a lot of experience doing them.

When you time yourself to go as fast as you can, does your time tend to increase the more tired you get? Also, how much rest between each are you giving yourself? To piggy-back off what a couple others have said here, you will build endurance and increase speed by doing both broken up sets, and longer sets (or a 1500 all at once). Here are a couple awesome tips to remember that will help with both:

Do your best to do your speed sets moving the rest down to shorter and shorter increments, like, 30 seconds or so, and MAINTAIN the same fast speed. What happens, obviously, is when you do something like 6 x 100s, the 6th one is not going to be as fast as the first...heck, there may be a visible decline in speed as the set goes on, and you may even feel as though you get sloppy the more tired you are. Endurance is significantly increased if you can maintain the same fast pace as well as good stroke technique, while taking little rest. So, the thing to do would be, say, the first time, do 6 x 100 sprinted, with a minute rest between each, and then each time you do them, knock 10 seconds off rest, making sure you do your best to be within 1 or two seconds on each 100. You may feel like you're going to throw up the first few times you do it, but that's where the endurance will come in.
Another great variation of that is to do 6 x 100 where 1-3 and 4-6 are descended, which is that you get faster with each 100. So, your 3rd and 6th 100s will be the fastest.

If you're not really good at keeping an eye on the clock, then use your pulse. Do the 6 x 100 sprint (pulse should be REALLY high, 170-190, depending on your age) and then do the next one when your pulse gets down to 120, for example. Then, the next time, do another one when your pulse gets down to 130 and so on. It's the same idea, only you're using your heart rate as the thing that determines how much rest you get

In terms of longer swims, I always suggest the same thing: it's better to maintain a steady pace for the entire 1500 where your pulse is around 130 or 140 bpm than to do it at a pace that is super slow, or a pace that starts out really fast and then just dwindles. Or, what you can do is time yourself to see how long it takes you to do 1500, and then just keep that time amount, but try to increase the distance. So, if 1500 takes you 45 minutes, for example, the first time, do that for a week or so, and then the following week, try to do 1600 in the same amount of time.

What else are you doing in your workouts? I would aim for at least 2500m everytime you get in the pool and aim for 3000m or more as often as possible.

The 1500m OWS is great practice for open water but unlikely to improve your speed in any meaningful way; it may make you faster in OW due to better navigation, dealing with waves, current, etc. I wouldn't do these workouts, at least not often, as 1500m straight but rather broken up with focused work; say things like 5x300m with an entry, hard for 100, race effort for 200m, exit and repeat.

In the pool I would be doing lots of 25's, 50's, 100's and some 200's with some very fast stuff (all out with long rest - equal or a little longer than the swim portion) and most at race effort with short rest (5-10s typically).



I would do almost all of your stuff as short, race pace or higher sets with short rest. Things like 40x50 and 20x100 as your bread and butter workouts. Throw in some fast stuff like 12x25 all out with equal or longer rest along with easy warmup and cooldown and maybe some drills IF you know what is wrong with your stroke.

Shane

I am curious how you are making out and what workouts you are doing? Tonight is my first official swim workout, in that I am going to do intervals and not just swim by time. I did my first mile in a race on Saturday. Yes, I am wicked slow but I think based on the fact I have no soreness I am not doing anything terribly wrong, I am just not moving very quickly.

Would love to hear about your progress as I feel like I am very much in the same boat.

Thanks!

Patti

If you're slower than 2:00/100, this will help you a LOT:

Learn to swim with a pull buoy, and preferably with no kick. You may have to even use an ankle band (look it up) to limit your kick since you'll instinctively want to kick.


The reason for doing this is to clean up your front-end stroke. 100% of people I see who swim slower than 2:00/100yds have an imbalanced pull. They don't even realize it, but you can tell immediately by the scissor kick that is required to compensate for the errant stroke or weird roll.


The moment you clean up the stroke so the scissor kicking disappears and your pull is not wasting energy, you'll almost immediately dip to sub 2min/100yds. It's NOT easy though - most folks who try the pull buoy + band thing at first absolutely HATE it because they quickly find that they can't even go 25 yds at first, and they'll abandon it quickly - but stick with it. Isolate that upper body so you can really fix the underlying problems.


As a adult-onset swimmer myself who had NOTHING come to me easily or naturally, and having to earn every second of my gains from 2:30/100 pace to 1:35/100 pace and below, this was absolutely the single biggest technique-related speed gain I made after I was able to swim 1000yds straight as a slow beginner. I actually gained far more in speed and technique from this than any coach I used.


Don't forget to mix in regular swimming in there as well though - you don't want to get too reliant on the buoy for leg flotation, even if its being used to clean up your stroke.

I don't mean to hijack this thread but I think the original poster may benefit from this question too.

I am in a similar position where I can swim 1500m at around 2:10-2:30 per 100m. I took a few lessons with a swim coach and I know my areas of improvement are my body roll and the lead arm dropping. My main drills are the streamline/catch up drill. I plan to pick up a pull buoy soon too.

How long should my workouts be? Should I be aiming for 2000-3000m worth of drills/intervals per workout? I'm worried if I fill my workouts with interval training and drills that I'll lose my endurance.

Thanks!

Edited by aavlee 2013-07-16 10:23 PM

I will add, that although it's always best to get a coach or experienced swimmer to work with you and break down your errors, the drill-swim I mentioned of pull-buoy+band with zero kick is as close as I've found to a self-correcting drill that for me was better than swim lessons (by a lot, for me.) It's actually pretty hard to swim with fundamentally bad form with this setup since errors tend to magnify (no errant kick to compensate) and stop you cold in your tracks.



It won't totally perfect your stroke, but if you can indeed swim no problem with buoy+band+zero kick, you've essentially proven that you have a more or less balanced pull and that alone should get you sub2/100 for distance.


I'm not a swim expert, so again take my experience as a n=1, but if I were slower than 2:00/100 and couldn't do this swim drill, I'd avoid intervals nearly completely and spend almost all my time working on learning to do this since that cleaned stroke will give you more free speed than all that hard work doing errant strokes in the pool.


And once the buoy+band becomes routine for you, lose the buoy and just keep the ankle band for even further self-correcting (sink or swim!) stroke refinement if you don't have access to a coach.



Edited by yazmaster 2013-07-16 10:38 PM

Firstly all you people advising 25's and 50's how many of you can actually hold 1:30/100m for 1500m? I'm going to say none. You will not make it to 1500m in 22:30 by doing this short of intervals!

The reason you have all been told to do short intervals is because your swimming ability at the time would have been poor. This making 25 or 50 the only distances you could hold form whilst swimming fast.

Doing these short intervals is okay for now but will only help you so much. You will not build the endurance required to hold 1:30 for 1500 doing these fast/short intervals with long rest like suggested. Someone mentioned reducing your rest as you get better that is a good idea. As you do this you will then want to start lengthening your intervals up to 400's, even 500's SO LONG AS YOU ARE HOLDING FORM.

If you are swimming 2mins+ per 100 now you will not get it to 1:30 within 3 months. I would readjust your goal. Best piece of advice get into squads with some stroke correction. Even at my worst I wouldn't get to 2 minutes per 100 solely on the fact my stroke is efficient. Water is dense. Form matters so much in swimming than it does in running or riding. Why do you think 14 year old boys and girls can swim sub 1:30 pace. I'm sure you're a lot big and stronger than children.

If you think I am being to negative and/or critical goes ask a swimming coach his/her opinion.

First thing the OP needs is to learn how to use the pace clock.

I swim lots of 50's and 25's and my lifetime slowest 1500 is 21:35 when I was a tiny runt of an 11 year old. 25's and 50's are a good way for the OP to develop. Yes I agree the OP is dreaming as far as timelines go. I can swim under 18:30 any day of the week with zero warmup and tgats a cruise control speed. Lifetime PR is 16:10, masters is 17:06.

60x25@25 done average 15 sec/ 25 metres ... tell me this does not help me in my 1500. The OP needs short intervals. Triathletes are obsessed with going longer, this will do the OP little good in the short term to swim tons of crap volume.

FWIW when I was swimming, I could go sub 22:30 and almost all of my swim training was 200's and under (mostly 100's and 50's).



So it sounds like you agree that this advice is good for the OP.



I suspect that you've misread some of the advice; there were suggestions of lots of race pace 25's, 50's and 100's with short rest and some occasional fast 25's and 50's with long rest.

Some occasional longer intervals can be useful but still I would suggest sticking with lots of 50's and 100's with short rest; the short rest is key to building endurance not the length of the interval.



Agree that swimming with a squad and with a coach on deck is probably in the OP's best interest.



I'm pretty sure this guy knows what he is talking about:

http://joelfilliol.blogspot.ca/2012/01/most-popular-post-on-this-bl...

Shane

Edited by gsmacleod 2013-07-17 7:16 AM

I regularly do 25's, 50's and generally swim under a 1:20/100 pace for 1500. So there's +1

I don't think anyone is telling the OP to just do short interval sets rather to add it to what they are doing now and build on it from there.

I'm an adult onset swimmer who started about 2 years ago. From my experience, this is how I tracked my own progress through the tiers of swimming fast, as evidenced by time:

Time
>2:30/100yards
Diagnosis:
IF I could actually swim 100 yards without stopping, if you're like me this speed generally means you have some serious technique issues that need to be corrected, and more than likely you're not very swim fit yet, and need to put some more time in. Personally, it also meant I could not do the freestyle stroke much more than 50 yards.
Graduating:
I think we can all spot the catch 22 at this level - you can't build your endurance until you fix your technique, and you can't fix your technique until you build your endurance. Meh, in my experience, I just started swimming more, at least 4 hours in the pool a week. I tried to do as much freestyle as possible, and my body slowly but surely started to 'feel' better and better technique. I'm not saying there were no flaws! But the folks that say you're going to etch your bad habits in stone are silly I think. When you're this slow, mentally you aren't committing to the stroke yet, you're surviving it. The athlete in you knows there is a better way and seeks it. The big issues at this speed are obvious ones, like head never goes underwater, can't breathe to the side, feels like doggy paddling, etc. You can learn how to get to the next tier just by watching others and trying new things. You'll figure something out.

Time:
2:00-2:30/100 yards
Diagnosis:
Hey, I'm swimming! I'my starting to look at my stroke in terms of things I think you do well and things I know I don't. I'm still not able to comfortably (as in not totally gassed) swim 1000 yards without stopping, which means I shouldn't be ramping down the amount of time I spend in the water any time soon. That 2:00 mark is a big hurdle, it seems to represent the 'big plateau' for most swimmers, and a lot of folks never get too far past it. On the plus side, I could survive a sprint tri!
Graduating:
For me, a process of removing noise. I was out of breath often, and by removing elements discovered the main culprit was my kick, which was negatively propulsive and took loads of energy. I effectively turned it off, which made me focus more on my upper body. I learned how to roll, when in the cycle to breathe, and elongated my position so I was reaching as far out in front as possible. Swimming still wasn't fun, but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Time:
1:45-2:00/100 yards
Diagnosis:
Doing a lot better now, and able to swim 1000 yards without stopping at the same pace. So far the biggest thing that has really helped in swimming a lot. Could I have gotten there faster with a coach? Probably, but I wasn't very fit when I started this process, so I wouldn't have been able to do very much of what they asked. I also might not feel as comfortable in the water as I did at this point if I hadn't spent the year or so figuring things out for myself. My flat out sprint wasn't much faster than your cruising speed, strangely (more on this in a minute)...I've started asking questions on internet forums, watching videos of Michael Phelps, and maybe started experimenting with pull buoys, paddles, kickboards, ties, and other toys. You may be perfectly happy with swimming at this speed and have no desire to improve!
Graduating:
The next two stages require a real gut check. The fact that my sprints weren't different from my cruising pace? That's all the evidence needed to know that it was high time to address the technique issues. Moving faster for me meant thrashing more water, creating more drag. So I knew - painfully so - it was time to break the stroke down and start (almost) from scratch. At this point what you *think* you're doing is VERY likely different from what you are really doing, so you REALLY need to get a video. Have a lifeguard use your camera, iphone, ipad, whatever you got. Be critical! Even better, get a coach! I got the video, not the coach.

Time 1:30-1:45/100 yards
Diagnosis:
Actually not too shabby. My swim is no longer hurting my ability to bike and run competitively. There are likely 2 or 3 things that are "wrong" with your stroke, and any other issues are compensating for one of those key issues and sort out when they're fixed. For example, I had developed a scissor kick on my breathing side, which came about from compensating for pushing down at the beginning of my catch on my non-breathing side, which came about as a result of my lifting my head too much to breathe, which came about as a result of not rolling far enough on my breathing side. I fixed my roll and everything else was sorted out.
Graduating:
Well, I'm moving out of this stage now, so I can't tell you too much about how or when I'll graduate to the next level, but I can tell you what I *think* it is. First, my kick. I don't have one, and I am now working on putting one together and integrating it. I'm doing this with the help of a professional coach. The other issue is now turnover. Now, if I sprint all out, I can go at quite a quick pace, but I can't hold it longer than say 50 yards without a :10 break (I'm defining quick as :35\50 yards). This doesn't take a rocket scientist to decode - my stroke has gotten efficient enough that if I move faster, I go faster, as opposed to before when it just created a lot of splashing and drag. So we're back to spending lots of time in the pool, doing pretty much what Shane and my own coach advise, which is multiple sets of 10x50s and 5x100s.



Well, I'm getting pretty close to that now, and it's been through doing those intervals. Give me a couple more months on my current program and I'm projecting I'll be in the 1:20\100 yard range given the early returns I'm seeing from this program, which is where I want to be. I don't think I realistically could have moved past 1:30\100 yards without a coach, though. The big issues are largely gone, and it becomes death by a thousand tiny pin pricks - a bunch of microscopic changes to my stroke timing and position that when added together equate to a second here or there. The kick is a big deal, and even in the early stages of the progress I picked up a good chunk of time from it. Hope my little adventure diary helps you out.

STANDING OVATION fisherman76!!!

What an awesome post! I've just come off a very intense 3 months of swimming and have learned many of the points that you so eloquently stated. Time in the pool is what did it for me. Once I got over 15,000 meters per week I started to see REAL results.