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How to Swim Faster

As simple as it sounds, there’s really only two ways to swim faster.

  1. Decrease Drag
  2. Increase Propulsion

Watch this Whiteboard Wednesday episode to learn more!


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Decreasing Drag

Drag is the resistance that your body creates in the water. Remember, that water is 800 times more dense than air so your body is going to create a lot more drag in the water than on land. Drag is what slows you down; therefore, to swim faster, you must decrease drag!

How do you decrease drag?

When you adjust your head position and look at the bottom of the pool, you’ll improve your hip position and raise your legs in the water. Instead of your legs dragging through the water, they should float at the surface. The only way to do this is by keeping your eyes on the bottom of the pool…it will feel like you’re swimming downhill.

Beyond improving your body and head position, you can reduce drag by rotating. In long-axis strokes like Freestyle and Backstroke, you don’t need to fully rotate to both sides each time you take a stroke, but by rotating, you not only improve efficiency by increasing your distance per stroke, but also reducing the amount of space you occupy in the water.

Additionally, you can reduce drag by making your kick smaller. Kicking can actually slow you down and cause more resistance by way of drag than propulsion you are creating. It’s often counterintuitive, but you can swim much faster without kicking by keeping your legs straight and in line with your body. Kicking is only beneficial when the amplitude of your kick fits inside the amount of displacement your body creates in the water.

Increase Propulsion

Increasing propulsion primarily comes down to improving the efficacy of your catch. Yes, you can improve your kick, and this will play a role in increasing propulsion, but your biggest improvement (with regard to propulsion) will come from improving the way your fingertips, hands, and arms catch the water.

Related: 5 Freestyle Drills for Advanced Swimmers

There are three main phases of the catch:

  1. Initial Catch – when your fingertips first slide into the water at a 45 degree angle. Your arm should extend straight out from your shoulder.
  2. EVF – (Early Vertical Forearm): Watch this Whiteboard Wednesday to learn more.
  3. Pull Phase – Pulling your body through the water using your hand and arm as an anchor. This phase continues through the exit when your hand leaves the water and begin the recovery phase.

Swimming Tips

It sounds simple, but it’s true. Start with technique and build speed and endurance off of that. Without technique, you essentially have nothing to build off of. Once you start to get a feel of the water and your stroke technique is consistently improving, it’s time to apply training techniques to improve your performance. The best way to do to this is with speed.

“If you want to swim faster, train faster”

How to Train Faster

You might be thinking to yourself, it’s not that easy to just ‘swim faster’. You are correct, without changing anything, it’s very hard to all of a sudden swim faster. On the flip side, you do have more control over how fast you can swim in training than you think. Here’s a few tips how you can do that!

First focus on technique, then teach your body how to swim faster. It’s hard work, but that’s the best way to improve your performance and get to the next level of swimming!

If you’re looking for swim workout ideas, download the MySwimPro app to start your Personalized Training Plan. You’ll get detailed technique videos, drills, and a calendar of Guided Workouts that are tailored to your specific goals.

If you’ve made it this far, you’ll definitely be interested in our video about How to Swim Perfect Freestyle.

I hope this Whiteboard Wednesday was helpful in mastering the perfect freestyle. Have questions? Leave us a comment below! For more tips like this, follow our series on the MySwimPro YouTube Channel

If you’re looking for swim workout ideas, download the MySwimPro app to start your Personalized Training Plan. You’ll get a calendar of Guided Workouts that are tailored to your specific goals. Use code SWIM35 to save $35 on your first year of MySwimPro Coach >

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