The Coach Amy and Coach Liz Show
Promoting a healthy and positive experience for endurance athletes.
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The Coach Amy and Coach Liz Show

Created with endurance athletes in mind

Created with endurance athletes in mind. Coaches Amy and Liz have a combined thirty years of coaching and seven decades of competing in endurance sports. They cover topics relevant to athletes at various levels of participation: those training for a personal challenge to those competing for an age group placement or race qualification.

 

Making the Leap from Technique Work to Speed Work in Swimming

What is this episode about?

INTRO 0-3:00

Favorite Holiday movies: Christmas Vacation, Elf, Love Actually. And Anti-Holiday Movies that have now become Holiday movies…..listen to find out which ones.

Making the Leap from Technique Work to Speed Work in Swimming

Everyone loves swimming in the winter!

Once an athlete has developed their swim technique to the point they’re ready to introduce speed and strength work, there are specific steps to do this effectively.

Speed skill work is building the ability to go faster and speed strength is the ability to hold a faster pace for longer.  

One key step is learning how to pull with power in the water. We have to learn what it feels like to move the water.  Using a stretch cord in the gym is a good way to learn what this feels like.  You aren't changing your FORM - you are changing the way you power your form. The more power you have with each pull, the farther you will move with each stroke. This is called distance per stroke in swimming.  

Another step is learning to increase how fast your arms are moving (turnover). This sounds easy but to do this effectively, you must be able to do keep your form and apply force while moving your arms faster. The goal is to be able to put the force behind effective technique and high turn over to increase speed. This takes slow patient work.

It's important to understand the goal of what you are trying to do.  For triathlon, we are aiming to develop the ability to hold form under fatigue. This is the ability to hold your stroke over a longer distance.     

Swimming often has a slow timeline for improvement. Liz recommends look at swimming in year long chunks so you can see all the progress you ARE making. It can also help to track micro progressions - look for the tiny improvements (like even 1/4 or 1/2 a second!). Remember, pure swimmers often work a year to drop a second off a 500! Going from 1:01 to 1:00.5 is a big deal in swimming. That is what you are looking for! 

Keep showing up - that’s the most important part of getting better. Swimming 3-4 times a week is key!

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