⚡️Same, Same…But (VERY) Different! Give Your Swim Stroke a Re-Focus This Weekend!

You can probably imagine that over the last 20+ years I've collected a large library of images of people enjoying their swimming right around the world.

Without a doubt, the above shot is one of my favourites 👆. 

This is squad stalwart and positivity queen, Suzi Scarff (centre) with one of our coaches, Marie-Therese Hunter. It was taken just after one of our more challenging Red Mist Endurance sessions at the wonderful outdoor 50m pool in Claremont, Western Australia. We've been lucky enough to call this amazing facility “Swim Smooth HQ” since 2008. You're welcome to come and visit us anytime! 

Suzi has completed every single one of these weekly endurance sessions since her squad buddies pleaded with me to let them try it way back in 2010 after hearing about it's benefits. I would conservatively estimate that means Suzi's done over 650 of these sessions. Suzi is 65 and has just completed number 651 moments ago as it happens! Incredible. She's not training for an event, has no race goals, she just loves the regular routine of completing a challenging swim with her mates.

Suzi's buddies swim in our 9.30am session on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Given the time of day, we often see a large spread of speed and ability in this session. This can make it quite tricky to work out a suitable target pace or cycle time for everyone (especially anyone new) when we up the ante in the main set. Maybe you've experienced this yourself in your own squad, club or with those that you coach?

Same, Same - But Different!

I must sound like a broken record sometimes, harping on about the virtues of using the FINIS Tempo Trainer to accurately set these targets and cycles in an individually specific way using our CSS Calculator, but what about when you haven't defined these benchmarks for yourself, or you're so new to swimming that for every session you do, you seem to be two steps forward and one step back (hopefully not vice versa!) - never quite knowing what to set for yourself?

Well, for swimmers in this scenario, I'll often ask them to ditch the notion of any target times or cycles, and just focus on their rhythm. 

For five close mates in this same 9.30am session - Roxanne, Jane, Liz, Gillian and Mary - I'll often set them up with their own beepers using Mode 3 (stroke rate) and ensure that they're dialled into their optimal stroke rate. Whatever interval times are produced from this “are what they are”. And that's OK. It's just a different way of doing it.

In today's video (just 9:58 in length!), I'll show you how to define this easily for yourself. For Roxanne & Co., I know their swimming so well that I'm able to define this rate on any given day, even without doing a Stroke Rate Ramp Test.

Sometimes we'll gamify things by shifting this rate up or down according to the main theme of what everyone else is doing. It's proven time and again to allow these swimmers to just focus on their rhythm and fluidity but still with some structure. They often report how it allows them to calm things down and just enjoy the process…beep, beep, beep…

Open Water Opportunity:

Now, I won't deny it, the pandemic was a pretty challenging time for swim coaches worldwide. Without sounding trite (given the wider issues the world was facing), working out how to transition the successful structure of our ordinary pool sessions into the open water presented both a challenge and an opportunity.

If you think about it, the beauty about swimming in the open water is that you have total freedom; the disadvantage though is that you have no frame of reference to distance and speed. Yes, your Garmin or Apple Watch will tell you have far and how fast you've swum (after you've swum it), but they're not 100% accurate and how do you account for waves, swell and current? You can't. At least not reliably. But you can swim to a stroke rate and vary your sessions around this simple metric with your Tempo Trainer, and this works very well.

Even to this day, when I'm conducting open water sessions, I'll have each of my swimmers kitted up with a beeper, set at stroke rates based around their optimal rate to provide structure and focus where usually there is none. 

But your starting point always has to be knowing where yours is right now. 

Defining this is much less mentally taxing than a CSS time trial, so why not check out the re-mastered video clip below to give you just the nuts and bolts that you need to work out “what is my ideal stroke rate?” and then give it a try in your own session next week and let me know how you got on? 

Here's the video ⬇️ - I hope it helps: