Welcome to the effortless swimming podcast to show that help swimmers and triathletes love the water, become a better swimmer and live a better life. Here’s your host, Brenton Ford. Welcome back to another episode of the effortless swimming podcast. I’m your host Brenton Ford. If this is the first time that you’re listening to this podcast, we are a company that helps swimmers and triathletes improve their swimming through better technique and becoming smarter about their swimming. We run clinics around Australia in most of the capital cities with underwater filming and analysis, as well as having camps overseas and helping people through our online coaching with our different courses, and primarily the effortless swimming membership where you can access all of our courses, all of our workouts, and the video library of elite swimmers that you can watch and visualize yourself swimming like because I think

visualization is a very powerful tool. And there’s a whole bunch of different swimmers, elite swimmers and triathletes in that membership, where you can choose one that you feel suits you the best. In this episode, we are diving into stroke count, the distance per stroke, because I realize it’s something that everyone’s heard of, but they don’t quite know how to use it to their advantage. And we touched on this topic in a recent episode with Frank Huseman. And this is something that I think when you understand the power of it, and you know what to do with it, it can really make a difference to your swim speed. So let’s get stuck into it. So what is stroke count? Well, it’s how many strokes you take per lap, whether that being a 25 or a 50 meter pool, stroke count is how many strokes that you take. And it’s essentially what distance do you travel with each stroke that you’re taking. The importance behind stroke count is your overall swim

speed is a combination of how far you travel with each stroke and the rate at which you take those strokes. So for an example, let’s say you’re swimming in a 100 meters in a 50 meter pool. And let’s say it takes you 50 strokes to complete each lap. So it’d be 100 strokes total. Now in that 100 meters, your stroke rate, let’s say that was 60 strokes per minute, which would be one second for each stroke, just as a simple way of understanding it. Now if you’re taking a total of 100 strokes for that 100 meters, and it takes you one second to do each stroke, then your swim time is going to be 100 seconds, one minute 40 plus the time to push off the wall and the time to turn. So we’ll add on three seconds per lap. So let’s say it would be one minute 46 seconds. If those were your numbers, just as a simple way to understand it, keeping things as simple as possible, the way that you can get faster is to change either of those numbers, your stroke

rate or your stroke count. And we want to improve on both of those. So yes, you can swim faster by just having longer strokes, but you can also swim faster by increasing your stroke rate. And we just want to find that sweet spot between the two when it comes to racing. Now, what the best swimmers in the world can do is they can increase their stroke rate, so their cadence without sacrificing too much distance per stroke. I did some filming with Olympian and silver medalist at the World Champs, Keir Melleton, a couple of weeks ago. When I was filming her, when she was swimming at a easy, easy, like a fairly cruisey pace, she was swimming around 112, 113. And she was taking 35 strokes for each 50 meter lap. And her stroke rate was 62 strokes a minute. When I got her to swim at 800 meter pace, which is for her, it’s around about a 102 per 100 102 to 103 per 100 for her 800 meter pace. When I got her to swim at that pace, her stroke

count went up to 37 to 38 strokes per lap. So only went up two or three strokes. But her stroke rate went from 62 up to 79 to 81. So jumped up quite a bit. Now, what that shows is that her distance per stroke didn’t come down a whole lot when she increased her stroke rate. And that’s a sign of a very good swimmer. So for most people when their stroke rate would go from say 60 to 80, their stroke count would normally go up much more than that. So one of the things that as a swimmer we want to do is to be able to essentially hold the same amount of water to be able to travel a similar distance per stroke as we start to increase the cadence. Now, you’re not going to be able to do it exactly the same, but you do want to make sure that it doesn’t just blow out and come up really, really high. As you fatigue, your distance per stroke will often shorten. And so that’s one thing that we want to be able to train is as you fatigue and you go through a

main set, can you maintain the same stroke count or similar? Because that’s a sign that you’re training the right technique. Because if you if you can feel when your stroke starts to fall apart a bit towards the end of a session, there’s no doubt that your stroke count will be going up because you’re just not holding as much water and you’re slipping and obviously fatiguing with it. So what can you do with your stroke count? How can you start to use that to become a faster swimmer? The very first thing and I like when Frank spoke about this is he’ll have his swimmers do 100 freestyle easy, he’ll get their time and then the total stroke count. And that will give you a bit of a benchmark of or an idea of where you currently at. So let’s say you’re in a 50 meter pool, you swim 100 meters and it takes you two minutes. And it’s and you overall did 120 strokes just as a as a guess. That’s now your number of where you’re

currently at. If you’ve already done a bit of a warmup and then you do an easy 100 freestyle, you’re not trying to like lengthen out the stroke and change things at all. You just swim get an idea of where you’re currently at. We want to be able to use that as an indication of what’s my technique and my stroke currently like and we can improve on that from there. Now, one of the things that tends to happen when people become aware of stroke count being an important factor in their swimming is they will overreach and over glide and just pause with the hand out the front causes them to slow down too much and then their stroke count. So the stroke rate will drop in a big way. So we don’t want to think about trying to have a lower stroke count just by stopping and pausing and gliding because your stroke rate will come down too much. So when we’re talking about all of this stuff, we the way we want to improve it is by doing two things. It all comes back to the

technique stuff that we focus on. It’s how can you reduce drag and increase propulsion. So the ways that we can do that if we think of reducing drag, well, that’s body position. Make sure you’re horizontal. Make sure that you are well aligned. So your hands are entering in line with the shoulders. They’re not crossing over too much. We want to make sure our kick stays within our body line so you’re not kicking too big. They’re the main couple of things as well as when you take a breath that you’re not lifting your head up, which can drop your hips and legs. So they’re the main few things to reduce drag and then those things that will help you increase propulsion clean entry. So you enter in the right spot and reach forwards. Got a good catch and pull and you’re you’ve timed it and connected it well with your body rotation and obviously having an effective kick as well. So there are a couple of things that will help you improve your stroke count. So

that’s how we want to go about improving stroke count. So once you’ve got your number, you’ve done your hundred freestyle easy and you’ve got your time and your stroke count. See if you can reduce your stroke count by being aware of those things that make a difference or that can impact it like that. I just went through with reducing drag and increasing propulsion because sometimes just that initial awareness around, right, well, you are going to be best off. You’re going to be fastest. If you can maintain a probably a lower stroke count compared to what you’d normally do if you weren’t really thinking about it, where you might just be spinning the arms a little bit, slipping in the water a little bit. All right. So your distance per stroke makes a difference. And so if you can be aware of that first of all, well, that’s sometimes the first step at improving upon it. So if you can just bring it down, bring down the time and bring down

the even maintain the same time, but do it by reducing your stroke count. This podcast is brought to you by Form Goggles. Form empowers swimmers at every level to reach their goals, whether they want to get stronger, faster, swim further or be more efficient. Get lap by lap motivation with real time metrics and workout instructions right in your goggles and forms recently released form plans, which included progressive series of workouts to help you achieve your fitness skills or triathlon goals. You can follow along with the plan and your weekly swims will be automatically synced to your goggles. So you’ll swim through your workouts with real time metrics and workout instructions all in your goggles. So it’s like having a coach right there with you. And I’ve had a look through these training plans. And I think they are excellent for people who want to train for certain triathlons or reach certain fitness goals. It will build on

each week and a really good way to progress progressively build up your fitness. So if you’d like to follow along with some plans to help you reach your specific swimming goals, then check out form goggles at formswim.com forward slash effortless. And this will give you $15 off your purchase of form goggles. So formswim.com forward slash effortless to get your pair of form goggles. The other thing I want you to make sure you don’t do is just push off the wall, go as far as you can under the water and do six dolphin kicks under the water. So keep the push off the same, keep the turn the same so that we’re just going by your distance per stroke with your swim rather than trying to go 15 meters underwater. So that’s the first way to begin. Now the way that I would normally apply this when I’m in training and I did we did a set of 2100s last week 2100s on two minutes. And it was there essentially what I’d call best average. So holding as

fast as you can across the whole set. So the best sort of average time across the whole set that you can maintain. And throughout that set, I was counting my strikes on the way down, counting them on the way back. And I was also wearing my form goggles just so I could look back and check out the data. Now I found for the first 10. No, I like the first four 100s. OK, they’re a little bit slow. I was holding this in a 50 meter pool. It’s holding 111 110 to 111 for the first four or five 100s and the stroke count from memory was I think 35 on the way down and then 36 to 37 maybe 36 on the way on the way back. Then I started to pick up the pace a little bit, got down to 109s and the stroke count went up a little bit. I think it was sort of 35 36 on the way down and then around 37 on the way back. Then once I started to get into the 11 12 13 15 100 and so on. So after about 10 100s, I started to fatigue and my stroke count

started to increase. So I was going like 36 to 37 on the way down and then I was starting to get up towards 37 38 39 strokes on the way back. Now as I would hold the same times throughout the whole set. So averaging around 108 in those last 10. So I was going a bit quicker, but my stroke count came up quite a bit and I could feel myself just sort of spinning and slipping because I was I was starting to fatigue. But the way I was able to hold that faster time was because my my stroke rate, my cadence went up. So I just couldn’t quite maintain the same stroke count. Now it’s OK to let the to have that happen. But what I was working on and what I’m going to continue to work on with that set, because we will repeat it, is that I’m going to try and work on holding the same stroke count all the way through those 2100s, because that’s a sign that you’re able to hold the same amount of water per stroke. It means you’re training the

right things and maintaining the best possible technique in form over the 21 2100s. So that’s the that’s the aim of that set. So what you can do is start to count your strokes per lap in a main set. You don’t have to do it every single time, but it’s certainly a good thing to do just as an indication of how am I swimming? How is this compared to where I would normally be at? And then what can I do to maintain a lower stroke count? So if you find that normally you do 45 strokes per lap and today you’re doing 47, 48. OK, well, you’re not you’re probably not holding the water as well. Maybe you’re a bit fatigued. Maybe your technique isn’t quite on point as it would normally be. So what can you change in your stroke to be able to to bring that down? Maybe you need to keep you keep your kick a little bit narrower. Maybe you need to time your catch and pull a little bit better. Maybe you need to try and connect up your catch with

your opposite hip coming back. So figuring some of those things out and being aware of it, because that is that is the sign that is the indication of where you’re currently out with your technique. And so for the swimmers that come to our clinics, for example, they and I find this it takes quite a few weeks to sort of lock this in is usually in the beginning, they’re feeling good, holding better distance per stroke. And then two, three, four weeks after a clinic, sometimes it starts to the distance per stroke starts to reduce because maybe they’ve they haven’t quite got the same coordination and timing. Maybe they aren’t able to be as consistent with these new stroke changes. But if you can continue to practice those things, the consistency of each stroke that you take will increase. So down the track as you develop the strength to maintain the the technique and just have every single stroke be pretty much the same as the last one, that is when

you will start to see those times getting getting better down the track from any sort of stroke stroke changes that you’re making. And we had Kenneth Graham on the podcast who sports scientist and I’m doing a little bit of work with him with the EO swim better, the measurement devices. And on that podcast, he mentioned that the best athletes in the world are the most consistent athletes. So when you look at like a diver, for example, so diving off a off a board into the pool, they are able to just replicate the same thing again and again, same with the best swimmers in the world, they’re able to have every single stroke pretty much be the same. That’s what they train towards is that consistency. And so if you can work on being as consistent as possible with every single stroke that you take, which would mean that you’d take the same stroke count each time, then that is what is going to help you be a better swimmer. One thing to note before we

sign off here on this episode is with your stroke count, usually the first lap in any interval, so let’s say you’re doing 100 freestyle in a 25 meter pool, the first lap will often be one stroke less than one or two strokes less than the other laps, because when you first push off the wall, you’ll normally get a little bit further off the wall because you’re pushing off just just from holding onto the wall rather than doing a tumble turn and then pushing off. So your first lap will often be one or two strokes less. And then the second, third, fourth will usually be the be the same. Sometimes the last lap will be one stroke more as well, because you won’t have that turn. So if you would normally, if you’d normally touch turn, while your stroke count is going to be the same regardless of whether you’re going in for another turn or finishing an interval. But if you would normally flip turn or tumble turn, then sometimes it will

take you one extra stroke because you’re not pulling yourself into the wall and then flipping over, you’ve got to reach into the wall with your hand. So just be aware of those things as well with stroke count that you’ll normally do one or two less on the first lap, sometimes one more on the last lap because you haven’t got that turn. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and it’s given you a little bit of an idea of what you can do when you are in training and how you can be aware of your stroke count when you’re swimming. Now, see, this doesn’t work in open water. You can’t really count your strokes necessarily in the open water. But the same concepts apply, whereas if you can try to maximize your distance per stroke, so you’re not slipping. So and so you’re not like over kicking or anything like that either. If you can maximize your distance per stroke, well, they are the things that make you a better swimmer. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If

you haven’t left us to review on Spotify or iTunes, I’d love it if you could, that helps us reach more people and get more new lists into the show. And if you are in Australia, well, we’ve got all of our clinics scheduled up until next year. So we’ve got clinics happening in Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and Nusa. And we’ve also got some butterfly back and breast clinics for juniors as well in Sydney and in Brisbane and Melbourne as well. So check out our website at effortlesswimming.com should like to come along to any of those. Otherwise, I’ll see you next week with another episode of the Effortless Swimming podcast. Thanks for listening to the Effortless Swimming podcast. If you’d like us to help you become a faster, more efficient swimmer, go to www.effortlesswimming.com.