Over the last few weeks, I seem to have done a lot of swim coaching. And I’ve noticed one prevailing “habit” among most of the swimmers I’ve worked with: Low Stroke Count, Low Stroke Rate.

I’ve been very impressed by the stroke counts that some swimmers have been able to achieve, some as low as 12 strokes per 25m lap!

However, few of those swimmers are actually swimming the sort of training times that swimmers in my club achieve with stroke rates of 15 or so.

“But surely a low stroke count is the holy grail!” Or so it would seem many swimmers have been told.

What I noticed is just how slow a stroke rate many of these swimmers are achieving. Some manage to take one stroke every 1.6 seconds.  And I think this is the problem with their swimming.

Looking at the stroke rates achieved to swim the world records for 1500m, I found that these fell into the 0.7 to 0.9 strokes per second range. And I believe that if the average triathlete swimmer is going to achieve their swimming potential, they’re going to have to work on decreasing the time they take per stroke.

And this is where the Finis Tempo Trainer comes in. I’ve had one of these in my swim toys bag for ages, but never got round to using it. Until two weeks ago.

What I did first was to set the Tempo Trainer to the tempo used for the 1500m world record in 1998 (according to Finis anyway) of 0.77s per stroke. This would give me an idea of just how fast this stroke rate is. Now, I’m  said to have quite a quick stroke, but I found myself struggling to keep up!

My next step was to get the lifeguard to time me for 10 strokes every now & then as I swam 200m at an average pace (16-17 strokes per lap for me). From this I worked out that I usually swim at 0.93 – 0.99s per lap.

Finally, I swam a set of 50′s, gradually decreasing the time per stroke from 1.0 to 0.7 by dropping .05s every second 50 and trying to hold my stroke count at 17.

I noticed two things:

• It was hard work!
• I could only maintain the stroke count down to 0.9s per stroke

So, there’s work to be done.

I’m convinced that holding a stroke count & increasing my stroke rate will see me find those 40 or so seconds I need in order to get under 20 minutes for 1500m, after all, it’s simple mathematics. And it will help you too.

More in an upcoming article…