How to Swim Backstroke Faster
PS: It’ll work for any stroke.

In a message dated 9/15/07 Sharadha writes:

Terry

My 14-year old daughter has been a competitive swimmer since age 8. She attended a TI freestyle workshop last January on my recommendation, then took several private lessons from a TI coach in March. We have both fallen in love with your method. Fishlike swimming, the Kaizen approach, mindful swimming all make a lot of sense to me and to her. Thanks to TI she now looks extremely comfortable in all strokes.

We feel she is now ready to begin focusing on speed, especially in Backstroke. She swims for her high school team and would like to improve from her current best of 1:14 in 100 backstroke to the state cut-off time of 1:04. Can you give us some tips on how to transition from an emphasis on efficiency to building greater speed?

Thank you in advance. We really appreciate the work you do.


Sharadha

I appreciate your enthusiasm for Total Immersion. The exercises on our Backstroke for Every Body DVD are intended for stroke formation, not as much for speed. Even so, most swimmers should realize improvements in speed from the drills, mainly because increased economy, and decreased fatigue, will allow them to maintain initial speed longer. Most swimmers of her age – indeed most of any age – lose speed in the last three-quarters of a race from the first quarter because of inefficiency.

Once you’ve significantly improved efficiency – and learned to keep that efficiency consistent – the next place to look for speed gains is stroke rate. If you can take strokes of consistent efficiency faster you’ll swim faster. This is a circular and continuous process. Improve your stroke a bit, then learn to swim with that stroke a bit faster. Then raise your efficiency again…

When you try to swim faster with your “new” stroke for the first time – in practice – it should probably be only a little more speed, and hold it only briefly, perhaps 25 yards or even less. If that goes well, then you can try to add a bit more speed and/or maintain it for slightly longer.

If on the other hand, you quickly reverted to your “old” stroke, that’s a signal you need more practice to imprint new “muscle memory” more deeply. Competitive swimmers should include BOTH kinds of training most of the time. How much skill work vs. speed work depends on what point of the training cycle they're in. During meet season, you'd include more speed exercises than out of season. It will also be influenced by level of fatigue vs. freshness. In season, after a day or two of higher intensity swimming, most swimmer benefit from one or two sessions that mostly focus on skill and are less physically taxing.

Here are several training exercises that should help your daughter gain a feel for swimming faster without sacrificing more efficiency:

1. Swim 25 yards or meters of her most efficient backstroke. Count strokes. Then swim with +1 to that count (i.e. if her “perfect” stroke count is 14, try a length at 15SPL) and examine how efficient/fast she felt. If that feels good, try +2. If that feels good, try +3. Work within that range of “perfect” count to +3 trying to feel as smooth at +3 as at base count.

2. Swim 25 at the highest speed at which she can swim quietly. Work at improving the combination of speed and silence, then at maintaining the combination for longer distances. Anything you do more quietly will automatically be more efficient and this is the simplest way I’ve found to practice what we call “sneaky TI” while also working on speed. (PS: Quieter also works for turns.)

3. That state qualifying time of 1:04 works out to a pace of 16 seconds per 25. Use this as a benchmark in both exercises. For #1, how few strokes can she add to her “perfect” count and be able to swim 16 seconds for 25. E.G, if she can swim 16 seconds at +3 initially, then progress gradually to swimming 16 seconds at +2, +1, etc. she greatly increases her ability to repeat 16 seconds for 50, 75, then 100 yards. Likewise, the more quietly she can swim a 16-sec 25, the better her chances of sustaining that pace.

To learn more about how to swim backstroke – or any stroke faster – order Extraordinary Swimming for Every Body from which these suggestions are drawn.