By Olivier Poirier-Leroy on SwimSwam
Olivier Poirier-Leroy is a former national-level swimmer, 2x Olympic Trials qualifier, and author of several books on competitive swimming. He shares research-backed tips, workouts, and strategies to help swimmers get faster in his free weekly newsletter.
Sprint freestyle looks simple…
Just “try” really hard. Like, super duper hard.
So swimmers do what swimmers do and unleash full-battery effort in the water to try and get faster.
They sprint hard, lift heavy, and rock the fanciest tech suit on the planet… but still can’t hit those elite sprint speeds.
But sprinting is more than just effort. It’s training smart, too.
Unstucking Your Sprint Freestyle
When speed plateaus or stops improving, the standard reaction is to double-down. More sprinty stuff. More lifting. More resistance.
But piling on more work doesn’t necessarily address what’s keeping you from swimming faster.
Here are three things to focus on to kick your sprint freestyle into gear:
Train the correct mechanics
If you look carefully through all the white water that sprint freestylers rooster-tail into the air, you’ll see some subtle but very important differences in technique.
The glide is almost completely removed. There is less emphasis on patiently getting into the catch. There is more of a “press” at the beginning of the stroke. The catch is deeper. Head and shoulder position is elevated. The arms are in a constant state of propulsion (no “catch-up”). The kick narrows. Shoulder rotation is much faster, while the hips rotate less.And so on.
Swimmers often treat their sprint freestyle like a souped-up version of their regular freestyle stroke—the same one that they use in warm-up, aerobic sets, or even the 100m freestyle.
The mechanics are different at sprint speed and need to be trained as such.
Use resisted sprinting to build a more complete sprinter
One of the most obvious ways to train more speed is by using resistance in the water.
That’s when you dig deep into your mesh bag, untangle your drag chute or resistance tubing from the rest of your gear, and add load to your swimming.
While many swimmers and coaches intuitively understand the power of this kind of training, it’s not always done in a way that leads to faster sprinting.
With resisted sprinting—which can outperform “regular” sprinting for improving swimming velocity (Gznar et al., 2018)—the goal is working the full range of qualities that go into fast sprinting.
That means:
Training max force – Heavier loads bordering on being fully tethered, to be able to produce lots of force against the water. Training power – Moderate loads, race-relevant stroke rates, to produce force more quickly. Training speed – Lighter loads so that swimmers use race-relevant speed and mechanics.Swimmers will often grab the same chute, at the same intensity, using the same intervals and rest periods all training block long and wonder why they aren’t getting faster.
They will see some improvement, maybe, but it’s not up to their expectations.
Resisted swimming works best when you attack everything that goes into speed, and not just one part of the force-velocity curve over and over again.
Improve transfer to full-stroke sprinting
To improve our full-stroke swimming, we often target specific parts of our stroke or specific qualities to improve.
In the pool, this means doing drills, pull, kick, using paddles/fins. Outside of the water, this can mean all sorts of stuff, from strength training to jumping rope to working the core.
All very handy and can make us feel like we are making progress, especially when we see more plates on the barbell or faster times for kick/pull sets.
But where things can get frustrating is where we improve an isolated skill/quality and it doesn’t land in our race-day performance:
We kick past our teammates during dedicated kick sets, but our legs are a hot mess when it comes to swimming. We can deadlift half the plates in the gym, but those bigger numbers aren’t reflected on the clock at the Big Meet. We can make the straps on swim tethers and drag chutes crack with force, but that strength doesn’t slot neatly into our regular swimming.In each example, there is improvement. We are getting better. But not necessarily at swimming faster.
The missing piece is transfer.
To make sure the accessory work is landing where it matters, clear a path between isolated forms of training and full-stroke sprinting.
With kicking and pulling – Build them in isolation, but also train how those improvements fit into the timing and coordination of your full strokes. With lifting weights – Use resisted sprint training to take that raw strength and force and apply it to swim-specific movements in the water. With heavy tethered sprinting – Include lighter, semi-tethered efforts that better reflects how you actually move through the water.While it’s great to improve your kick, get stronger, or pull more load in the water, the ultimate goal is faster swimming.
And that means making sure those isolated forms of training have a path to your full-stroke swimming.
Wrapping Things Up
One of the hardest parts of feeling stuck with your sprint speed is that the obvious answer—apply copious amounts of fresh effort—isn’t always the right way to go about getting faster.
Often, it’s just training a bit smarter and more specific to your goals and dreams of blistering speed.
So develop the mechanics, use resistance to build the full range of qualities of speed, and give yourself pathways for all your hard work to land in your full-stroke swimming.
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.
For most aspiring sprinters, fast sprinting isn’t an effort problem, but a system problem. That’s the idea behind The 50 Freestyle Blueprint. It’s a step-by-step guide that shows you exactly how to build an elite 50 freestyle.
The start. Underwaters. Breakout. Sprint mechanics. Tempo. The right sets, training, and dryland.
Built on more than 260 peer reviewed studies and decade of research into sprint performance.
No more guesswork, and no more feeling stuck.
Get Your Hands on a faster 50 Freestyle here.
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