Improving 50 Meter Freestyle Average Time

My last update, about 6 months ago, was about improving my average freestyle crawl time by measuring my breathing carefully. It is well known that breathing less increases your time. Since that time I have been trying various drills to improve my 50 meter freestyle average time. I’ve dropped it to around 49 seconds still taking about 30 strokes (15 cycles).

I’ve done this in two ways. The first drill is what I call fist paddles. I don’t know the official name, but probably something like closed fist crawl. Generally you just keep your hand closed in a fist. I covered this in February in an article about catching the water in your crawl stroke. I’ve forced myself to only swim like this, where before I was only doing a few drills with it. The results have been great.

First off, once you stop relying on your hand position and learn how to use your arms to anchor your stroke your average time on 50 meters should be the same with or without your hand. Mine was only about two seconds better, but it depended on the lap.

So where did I get my huge gain? By re-trying something I’d pretty much given up on almost a year ago: staying high in the water. Back in October I had a post about my work on trying to get my shoulders higher in the water. It’s interesting to look back at the technique review I’d done using images of Olympic swimmers, but after working on this for a couple weeks I didn’t have any improvement.

So what changed in my swim technique? I figured this out back in July, but didn’t keep it clearly enough in mind (meaning I didn’t use it enough before taking a two week break). When I got back in the pool I couldn’t remember what had made such an increase. I was really upset, but I just kept on doing my fist paddles. The interesting this is when your hands are in a fist you realize how much you focus on them. My theory is that because hands have so many nerves in them your brain focus on the response without realizing. Once I made a fist I suddenly became very aware of my arms, especially my forearms.

I started to feel that I wasn’t getting a great catch in the water and my push was slipping through the water, rather than pushing. As I tried different crawl techniques I tried arching my back more which brought my torso high in the water. This felt a lot better on my arms and I was thrilled to see that taking the same number of strokes and using about the same effort I did my 50 meters freestyle average decreased to 49 seconds. I tested it some more and found it to be consistent.

The impact trickled down to my other drills, which all increased. The most interesting part was when I opened my hand I didn’t swim significantly better. I am going to see how my 50 meter sprints go using this technique, the 25 meter sprints were the best I’d had all year.

Improving Average Crawl/Freestyle Swimming Time on 50 Meters

My average time on 50 meters is around 56 seconds and I take an average of 30 strokes (15 cycles). I was experimenting a bit today and I was able to knock 6 seconds off my time by being more careful about my breathing.

I usually breath on every cycle. Meaning every time my right arm recovers I breathe. I was working on a pattern today that seemed to help quite a bit.

First, I pushed off the wall and did two strokes (one cycle, right then left) without breathing. On the beginning of my third stroke I took a breath. I made sure to breathe until my arm collapsed on my face. Normally I breathe really quickly. I take my breath with the beginning of my recovery and my turn my head back before I begin my entry. This time I waited until the entry and turned my head just as my arm was coming down.

I took my third, fourth, and fifth strokes and took a breath on my left-hand side on my sixth stroke. Of course, alternating left to right in breathing isn’t anything new and is recommended, it is the first time I have tried to time it so carefully with my turn.

I continued down the lane breathing on my third, sixth, ninth, twelfth, and fifteenth strokes. This put me in a good position because my arm extended on the fifteenth stroke and I held my left arm on my side and pulled hard on my right to begin my turn. This left me with a fresh breath of air to allow to turn and to take my first two strokes without immediately going for air after the turn.

Overall I was happy to see the reduction on my time, but I was not happy with my stroke count. My goal is to stay at 14 strokes and still get a breath right before.

Ideally my lap would be:

R1, L2 inhale, R3, L4 exhale, R5 inhale, L6, R7 exhale, L8 inhale, R9, L10 exhale, R11 inhale, L12, R13 exhale, L14 inhale pull hard left into turn. Three hard dolphin beats R1 exhale, L2 inhale etc.

Given that I am only 1.80 m and I don’t have large hands or feet I think this would be ideal (meaning that I don’t want to try and get 24 strokes per 50, 28 is fine).

My velocity (m/sec) is 1.047 (PB is 1.082 during 2008). My DPC (m/cyc) is 3.3, but my DPC in 2008 was around 2.78. That means I go 22 cm further on each cycle. My target for 2009 is 3.57. Also, I am pretty close to swimming one meter per second, but would like to swim, on average 1.25 m per second. One last figure would be now with 30 strokes it takes 1.745 per stroke and if I can reduce my stroke count while increasing my time it would be 2.232 s/stroke.

Anchoring In The Water: 38.69 seconds on 50 meters

Coaches often toss around the concept of getting a feel for the water, which, they say, means to learn to hold on to the water.  Both of these concepts are interesting, but without further explanation leave a lot to be understood of what they actually mean.

The drill I have been working on to develop the idea of anchoring in the water is what I call fist paddles. The drill is very simple: Swim normally, but keep your hand in a relaxed fist. That’s actually all there is to it.

You should learn a great deal about your feel for the water when doing this drill. If you find yourself feeling like you are completely standing still in the water (or going backwards for that matter) you’ll have discovered that your stroke has serious issues. Swimming the crawl stroke really well is largely about how you position your arms and the fist paddle drill proves this. Your hands act as paddles when you swim and most swimmers rely on this exclusively to propel them through the water. The giveaway is a high stroke rate, lots of motion in the water, and low elbows.

The real trick to improving how you anchor is a combination of arm angle and shoulder movement. Here are some stills that illustrate this well:

Alexander Popov freestyle crawl swimming  technique Alexander Popov freestyle crawl swimming  technique Alexander Popov freestyle crawl swimming  technique

 Ian Thorpe freestyle crawl swimming  technique Ian Thorpe freestyle crawl swimming  technique Ian Thorpe freestyle crawl swimming  technique

Stephan Nystrand freestyle crawl swimming  technique Stephan Nystrand freestyle crawl swimming  technique Stephan Nystrand freestyle crawl swimming  technique

Most swimmers I see have never learned how to access the most efficient muscles when swimming. They tend to rely on their triceps and shoulders to move through the water. This is often sufficient if you want to swim only for your fitness, but if you have read this far in the hopes of finding drills to improve your stroke technique then the fist paddle drill can do wonders for you.

As you think about the arm position of the images above and keep your hands relaxed, but in a fist you will start to feel which position moves you through the water the best. Here is a set of Ian Thorpe from the front to give you an idea of how high is elbows actually are.

Ian Thorpe front freestyle crawl swimming  technique Ian Thorpe front freestyle crawl swimming  technique Ian Thorpe front freestyle crawl swimming  technique

The danger I personally run into when swimming the fist paddle drill is that of pushing up with my arms instead of back. You can see above with all of the strokes that they have a way to bring the lever of their arms to apply force back. I often find that as start to move my arm into the high elbow position that I am pushing down with my catch, rather than back.

Overall, it is a good drill and should allow you to easily spot issues with your anchors,er, your arms.

Stefan Nystrand Swimming Slowly

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.

 

bscap0000 bscap0030
bscap0005 bscap0054
bscap0009 bscap0057
bscap0013 bscap0059
bscap0016 bscap0065
bscap0019 bscap0078
bscap0024 bscap0085
bscap0027 bscap0089

Getting Back on the Horse With the Right Workout: 41.77 seconds on 50 meters

It is immensely frustrating to not see any progress on my personal best times. Ten weeks ago I had dropped below 17 seconds on 25 meters and below 38 seconds on my 50, but as the time has passed my times have gotten worse and worse. The funny thing is that I feel like I am improving my technique.

The disconnect between feeling more comfortable in the water and improving my swim time is connected the way I practice. When I practice by sprinting almost as fast as I can on every lap I saw a constant decrease of my swim time. What I notice is that when I swim around 24 seconds per lap (in 25 meter pool) my technique is, what I feel, quite correct. However, when I sprint I revert back to the technique that I had six months ago.

The ideal situation is where you swim very slowly to work the kinks out of your stroke, but then sprint enough to apply those to your sprint stroke. Within a workout I’d advise swimming a few 100s quite slowly, a few 50s slowly, and 2x25s on a Dolphin kicks and Sharks. Then once you are really focused begin swimming 25s and 50s as fast as you can. No need to use the blocks, just push yourself to swim your max, then rest.

If you feel your technique is slipping then do a couple of Superman drills (usually called side kick drills). Then go back to your sprints. Finish up with some sprints off the blocks and see where you end up.

Frame by Frame Analysis of Ian Thorpe and Grant Hackett

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.

image 1

image 2

image 3

image 4

image 5

image 6

image 7

image 8

image 9

image 10

image 11

image 12

image 13

image 14

image 15

image 16

image 17

image 18

image 19

image 20

image 21

image  22

 image 23

 image 24

It’s All in the Shoulders: 23.22 seconds on 35 meters

Crawl - all - ms

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.

bscap0006 bscap0007

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.

bscap0008 bscap0010

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.

Entering the Water: Freestyle Swimming 17.36 seconds on 25 meters

Doing a bit of analysis I had a realization. Here are the basics: My fastest time is a little above 17 seconds on 25 meters. That time is dependent on using the starting block. My natural sprint stroke (meaning the speed I go when I want to go fast, but that doesn’t really wind me) is around 21 seconds. After doing a few checks I go around 10 meters underwater from the blocks and it takes me around 5 seconds. That means I swim the remaining 15 meters in 12 seconds. The table below shows the stats.

 

Distance  Time  Meters/second

10 meters - 5.22 seconds – 1.916

15 meters – 12.04 seconds – 1.246

25 meters – 21.06 seconds – 1.187

 

What strikes me is that if you take the out of water portion of my sprint and figure I could keep that speed up for 25 meters it works out to be 20.067. I’ve certainly swam faster than that without using the starting blocks so it is a bit surprising.

What I am thinking is that even though I have continually broken my own record my approach to sprint needs some work. It would make more sense to get as much distance and speed as possible off the blocks, but then I should just swim with natural sprint.

To understand the mechanics of it my current sprint stroke is quite flat and causes quite a bit os splashing. I don’t really rotate that much and I only breath two or three times. My natural sprint stroke has a great deal of rotation as I really reach forward as far as I can and use my lateral muscles and I breath on every stroke. I try as much as possible to emulate Alexander Popov in my natural sprint and my current sprint is just going as fast as I possibly can. Below are a couple of videos that are good for understanding what I am getting at. The first is Ian Thorpe off the blocks.

You can see that he begins his stroke around 3.200 seconds. It’s hard to say how far he goes in that much time. The first movie I count 5 and a half and 6 and a half dolphin kicks on the second movie. Referring to a study on dolphin kicks by a top swimmer you can guess Thorpe goes about 2.4 m/s per cycle (feet being up then going down and going back up). So 5.5 kicks would propel him about 13.2 meters. Also, swimming rules don’t allow you to be underwater for more than 15 meters, so this seems reasonable.

Let’s say that Thorpe swims 50 meters in around 22 seconds, that makes the rest of his trip about 1.957 meters per second. The 50 meter world record is still held by Alexander Popov in June of 2000 of 21.64 seconds. This averages out to be 2.311 meters per second.

Anyway, all of that is just to say that my start time can definitely be improved, but it isn’t terrible, but my stroke work is really horrid and I have a really long way to go.

Interesting Swimming Article: Swimming In A Dynamic Fluid Vortex

I found some extremely interesting articles that absolutely every swimmer should read. I will write more as I have time. Amazing!

http://www.h2oustonswims.org/articles/get_better_grip_I.html

There are many parts to it, but the first two should give you enough to think about. It discusses the importance of having a proper feel for the water and how to improve that.

Doggie Paddling: 17.63 Seconds on 25 Meters

One step closer to my new target of breaking 17 seconds. I am always shocked when I beat my targets.

I swam every day last week; pushing myself too hard on Sunday without warming up. Afterwards my should was sore so I didn’t swim yesterday. So today I was taking it really easy.

I was practicing the roll-over drill below. It is a very interesting drill. The goal is to exagerrate the rotating you do when crawling. It takes a lot of focus to keep yourself straight when rolling. Each stroke rotates your body from a horizontal to a vertical position. I breath on every stroke and if you keep your head in place your mouth will naturally come out of the water. It is also very difficult to remember to keep your elbow very high as you begins recovery. The video is much easier to understand than my explanation so check it out.

I also regularly practice my dolphin kicks and am definitely seeing improvement. At the very end of my swim I jumped off the blocks and hit 17.63. Good stuff.

Here is a bonus video just for fun. (1.418 m/sec)