Posted by heathweaver

First a few stats about Stefan Nystrand

• Birth Date: October 20, 1981
• Birth Place: Haninge, Sweden
• Height: 193 cm (6′ 3")
• weight: 85 kg (187 lbs)

Stefan Nystrand is the current world record holder in the short course 50 meter freestyle and the short course 100 meter freestyle. There are some fantastic videos of his swimming style. The first video is of him swimming while focusing on his technique rather than speed. The second video is him swimming at top speed. After some comments and videos I have taken both sets and done a frame by frame comparison.

One note about Nystrand’s stroke is that many people don’t like his arm recovery in races, as it looks really brutish, because he has very little elbow flex as he brings his arm over, but there is no mistake that he is extremely fast.

The first video allows you to see him swimming at a slow pace (the video is 30 seconds and he swims 50 meters). For me it is striking to see how he moves his body. Some of the things that really stand out to me are how much body rotation he gets on each stroke, how much he looks forward, how he turns his head to breath, how long he keeps his head back to breath, and how well his kick is timed with his stroke. 

 

 

The images on the right are from the clip where Nystrand is swimming at top speed and the images on the right are from the technique oriented clip.