How to build your swim speed and skill at the same time

If you’ve ever entered a race, you understand the importance of speed. Regardless of the distance of the race, the goal is to finish as fast as possible.

As a result, speed is a huge focus in all aspects of training, regardless of the discipline (swim, bike, run) or the type of training (speed work, race work, aerobic work). And that focus can reap huge benefits over time resulting in more fitness and faster performances.

When it comes to swimming, an exclusive focus on speed can be problematic because there is a huge skill component that influences performance. And just focusing on speed can often lead to underdeveloped skills.

As a result, the concept of counting strokes has become popular because it can help to quantify efficiency. It’s a decent measure of how skillfully a swimmer is moving through the water.

But if you just focus on stroke counts, you never swim fast enough to challenge your fitness.

The problem is that by focusing on speed or focusing on stroke count, you’re missing out on opportunities to improve your swimming. Both are important for facilitating long-term improvements.

Instead of focusing on speed or stroke counts, start focusing on speed and stroke counts. It provides a unique challenge because you have to swim well and you have to swim fast, which is exactly what you need to do in a race. Here are my favourite ways to implement it into training sessions.

Descend at the same stroke count

With this strategy, you’re going to get faster from repetition to repetition. However, you can’t take more strokes to do so. That challenge is that you have to create more and more speed while maintaining a really efficient stroke.

Many triathletes struggle to swim fast and efficiently at the same time. This strategy requires you to do both. Even better, you have to get better throughout the set, just like you’ll want to do while racing.

Negative split at the same stroke count

With this strategy, you’ll aim to swim the second half of each repetition faster than the first one. However, as with the strategy above, you can’t take more strokes to make that happen.

You have to be more effective with each stroke precisely when you’re starting to get a little tired. It’s a great way to build efficiency and fitness at the same time.

Minimise stroke count plus time

With this strategy, you’ll learn how to combine speed and efficiency to achieve the best combination of the two. You’ll swim a set distance, say 50 meters, and add up your stroke count and your time.

If you took 40 seconds and you took 40 strokes, your score is 80. On the next repetition, the goal is to score 79. That might mean more speed or fewer strokes. You get to experiment to try to find the best combination of speed and efficiency, and try to improve that combination over time.