This frame by frame analysis was originally on limmatsharks.com. The sequence shown is taken from the 800 m freestyle final in Fukuoka 2001. I won’t repeat the analysis as I think it is enough to see the images and make your own judgements.

The only two points to highlight are: 1) Notice how high their elbows are. Amazing! 2) Notice the lack of bubbles on the insweep, which means they really do anchor in the water and not slide through.

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I am really happy with the progress I am making. The week before last (week 39) was frustrating for me, but I learned an important lesson that made a big difference for me. I figured out that if you want to swim fast, you need to practice swimming fast EVERY DAY. Most of my practice sessions were spent trying to work out different problems with my stroke, but at the end of the day I was swimming slower (see week 39). In week 40 I pushed myself every single day and I saw new personal bests across the board.

This morning I had another person best that I am especially happy with. Not only did I beat my previous 35 meter time, but I beat my best 25 meter meters per second while swimming 35 meters. I often worry that my 25 meter times won’t translate into 35-50 meter times and I promised myself that after I break 15 seconds on 25 m. that I would permanently switch 50 meter sprints. I’ll still stick to that promise, but with the break through of this morning it is encouraging to think that my 50 meter times might not be so bad (on 25 it would have been faster than 16.586). I could really feel a huge slow down around 25 meters and wouldn’t doubt that I would have swam somewhere around 16.

I will try and get some video up next week to show a few things I am working on, but one thing I have noticed is that a very fast swimming time is largely in the way you hold your shoulders. I am no coach, but I feel that shoulder position is the key to freestyle swimming. After doing some filming I was happy to see that my stroke looked okay with very high elbows. Underwater, I feel like my elbows are staying high as well and I am getting a lot of reach. However, what I noticed is that I stay submerged except my arms as they come around. When comparing that to other swimmers it is a very big difference. Coaches often call this ‘staying high in the water’, but I think that it is more easily explained as using counter-balance to keep your shoulders inline with the surface of the water.

Take a look at my shoulders.

These two images aren’t easy to see, but if you look close to the image on the left I am almost completely submerged and on the right you can see my arm out of the water, but everything else is underwater.

Now, compare that to Olympic Gold Medalist Bill Kirby. Our arms have a similar angle, but he is a few centimeters higher in the water than I am. You can see that clearly as his head is out of the water and mine is not. Also Alexander Popov (on the left), current 50 meter world record holder shows the same thing. If you watch videos of Popov you can see that when he moves faster he really comes out of the water.

Having the right shoulder position is the base to swimming fast. It is important in so many ways: It keeps your legs in line, it keeps your head from dragging, it facilitates the movement of your arms, it helps connect the movement with your hips, the list goes on. I don’t have years of experience or million dollar computer analysis software, but I think if you want to learn to swim fast, figure out where your torso should be and everything else will follow.