By Olivier Poirier-Leroy on SwimSwam
To get faster, swimmers need to sprint.
This means lots of intensity, lots of white-water stroke rates, lots of block-rattling starts.
And one of the best ways to unlock even more speed is by adding resistance to your sprint work.
Resisted sprinting—lassoing our body to a form of added load, whether it’s via drag chute, resistance tubing, or a rack—and letting our stroke rip improves how much force we generate in our stroke.
Here’s how that works in practice, and why it may outperform regular sprint swimming.
Resisted Sprints vs Unresisted Sprints
A study (Grznar et al., 2018) took a group of experienced competitive swimmers who’d been in the sport for an average of eight years.
They all completed the same eight-week sprint program focused on super short efforts, full recovery, and maximum intensity.
Half the swimmers used a parachute. The other half sprinted au naturel.
Three times per week, swimmers did the following sprint set:
3 rounds:
3×6 seconds freestyle all-out 3:00 rest between reps Plus 5:00 between roundsNot a lot of swimming, as we can see. Less than a minute of total work. But really high-grade swimming—each repetition was truly maximal effort. Actual sprinting and not just “fast” or “hard.”
Parachute size for the resisted group was also chosen carefully. Researchers chose a chute that slowed swimmers by approximately 10% so that they could still move through the water instead of trying to sprint with cinder blocks on their ankles.
This ensured that they were interacting with drag forces and preserving stroke mechanics, which relates to how well resisted sprinting carries over to your regular sprinting. Another study showed that semi-tethered sprinting better predicted sprint performance compared to fully tethered sprinting.
Anyways—results of the study:
Both groups got faster, but the resisted group got faster-faster:
Outcome Resisted Sprinting Regular Sprinting 12m Speed Improvement +3.5% +1.6% 25m Speed Improvement +3.7% +1.6% Power Improvement +11.2% +3.1% (NS)Why Resistance Improves Sprint Performance
Swimming speed depends on a lot of things to happen, from holding water under high tempo to optimal body roll to using the right stroke coordination.
But above all else, sprinters need to be able to generate lots of force.
The added drag from a chute pushes swimmers to pump out more force with every stroke within the movement pattern of sprint swimming.
Over time, these highly specific strength gains transfer back to free swimming.
Resisted swimming is a tool that isn’t always properly used or understood, and it has a wide variety of applications for swimmers, from getting more from your dryland training to coaxing out specific technique improvements from your stroke.
But for the speed-obsessed, increasing top end velocity is the best one of all.
The Practical Takeaway
Regular sprinting also worked in this particular study. But resisted sprinting simply worked better.
The elite-minded sprinter understands that both have a role to play in improving performance—it’s definitely not a case of one or the other.
The resisted work develops force production, while unresisted sprinting teaches swimmers how to blast that force at race speed.
Used together, they create an unbeatable combination for improving top-end velocity.
Happy sprinting!
ABOUT OLIVIER POIRIER-LEROY
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national level swimmer, 2x Olympic Trials qualifier, and author of several books for swimmers, including YourSwimBook, Conquer the Pool, The Dolphin Kick Manual, and most recently, The 50 Freestyle Blueprint.
The book is a beastly 220+ pages of evidence-based insights and practical tips for improving freestyle sprint speed.
It details everything from how to master stroke rate, technique, build a thundering freestyle kick, improve your start and underwaters, and much more.
The 50 Freestyle Blueprint also includes 20 sprint sets to get you started and a bonus guide on how to master the 100 freestyle to complete your sprint preparation.
Learn more about The 50 Freestyle Blueprint here.
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