How to Swim FAST (No one tolls you this)

You're pushing the water, following your training plan and putting in a really hard work but still can't hit the times that you want. All the coaches out there say fix your technique and you'll swim faster and better. Although technique is the key in swimming, alone it won't make you faster. When it comes to swimming, there is a list of things that you can do specifically to develop speed in the water. And today I'll cover the exercises, the drills and training strategies for you to not only swim faster but also make it more fun and enjoyable. I'm Dasha, a former swimmer and a coach with over a decade of professional swimming experience and today I'm going to reveal all the secrets for you to swim faster. Let's go! You have to swim fast simply because to be fast you have to include fast intervals in your swimming session. Slow sets or only technical sets will not get you the speed that you want. So you have to swim intervals and specifically fast intervals that will work on your speed in the water. They don't have to be long. 25 or 50 meter sets are totally enough for you to develop the speed. The most important is that you have to include them in your main set. So for example you can do 4 times 25 meters full out or 2 times 50 meters full out followed by 2 times 25 meters full out and here you can compare the speed difference and make a progress. And if you have nothing to swim, I have made 5 swim practices to build the speed. All of them include fast intervals and drills that work specifically on your speed. So I will leave the link down below. Do you swim your regular drills and wonder why you're still not swimming faster? You need to include specific speed drills in your practices. These are the drills that will work specifically on developing high cadence and speed in the water. Some of these drills are 3 strokes easy 3 strokes fast where you're going to swim 3 strokes max full effort high cadence followed by 3 easy strokes cruising through the water. Another really nice drill is to swim first and last 10 meters of your lap. So let's say if it's a 50 meter lap you're going to do first 10 meters and last 10 meters max full out effort and this is going to help you to have really fast starts and strong finishes when you're swimming a particular distance. And another really great drill that you can do is to swim first half of the pool or 10 meters max full out effort and here what you really want to do is to hold your breath develop the highest cadence you can possibly have and really work on really fast kick and fast moving arms. But when I say max effort or full out I don't mean that you're going to move your arms and your legs in a discoordinated way. You still have to think about your technique, a good quality catch and pull just working on a really high cadence as well. Stop swimming freestyle all the time and you're probably going to say but Dasha why do I need other strokes? I love freestyle and I can't swim other strokes and that's the whole point. Swimming other strokes is going to help you improve your freestyle time and technique simply because the stroke the pull and the catch are the exact same in all the other strokes. Yeah the angle is a bit different the mechanics are different but still in backstroke butterfly and breaststroke you have to have a high elbow position in the water you have to keep your elbow above your hand you have to have a flat body position you have to keep your head low and compact. So for that reason you should be learning other strokes and then it also going to help you to diversify your swim practices. Imagine you can throw some backstrokes some medley and other things in your practice. You can also rest from freestyle and by the time you're gonna come back to freestyle you will see your freestyle pull catch and the times are going to improve. And let me know in the comments below which of the strokes is your least favorite and which one you struggle with the most. One of the biggest mistakes that swimmers make is swimming in a gray zone. In other words swimming at a one comfortable pace throughout the whole practice. It feels like training but it doesn't make you swim any faster. Swimming in a gray zone basically means that you are going to swim with the same pace and relatively same heart rate throughout your warm-up your cool-down and your main set. It's really easy to get stuck in a gray zone because you're still coming to the pool you're following the practice you're showing up but it doesn't make you swim any faster. The way you can fix that is by decreasing the rest time between the sets or between the laps within the set. For example you would be to swim 4 times 50 meters and between the 50 meters instead of resting for 30 seconds you knock and rest for 10 seconds and that's going to help you raise your BPM and raise your heart rate. You can also increase the intensity of swimming of course instead of just cruising through the water you can now swim at the highest level and full out max 4 times 25 or 4 times 50 meters. You can also add different breathing variation. Let's say if you're breathing only on your right every second stroke you now can try breathing every fourth stroke or you can try breathing on your right and on your left and that can also help you raise your heart rate and help you improve and have better speed in the water. So remember swimming in the gray zone won't get you any faster in the water you have to escape that to swim faster. If you want to break out of your comfort zone swim with other people. Training alongside faster swimmers will push you to the probably would never have alone. It's also really nice and fun when you're coming to the practice and there's other people that you can swim with and sometimes you can think that this is the best result the max effort that you can push during that practice but there's somebody faster than you ahead of you swimming there and you're just trying to draft or catch them and this is going to help you a lot both mentally and physically to get better results in the water. It's also really nice and fun when you come to the pool and you can do relay practices or for example you can do exercises or drills in the water where you need two people to perform that for example body sprints where there is one person in the right side of the lane and one person in the left side of the lane and both of you are going to sprint and see who is swimming faster. So all of these things when you swim together with other swimmers can help you develop better speed in the water and can help you push to the time that alone you would probably never have. Do you know what's the real engine of your stroke is? It's your catch and your pull. This is exactly where most of the movement and the power come from. The back of your stroke is the most important part of your pull so don't drop your elbow, don't try to cut it short and remember to always keep your elbow high and above your hand in all of the strokes. When you start the catch don't enter the water with your elbow first enter the water with your fingertips and then followed by wrist and then only then with your elbow then you're going to pull the water under your body and finish the stroke at your hip. Remember to work on your catch and on your pull during each practice that can help you work on a better movement and eventually help you with better and faster speed in the water. Your turn isn't your rest time. Remember when you're in a pool and you're swimming and you're going to do a turn or a push off the wall this time is not for you to take a break. I see many swimmers during the hard sets or during any sets they're going to stop at the wall and take a breath breathe and then push off the wall and continue swimming. Do the simple math. If you're going to swim and do a flip turn in two seconds that's going to be eight seconds throughout the 100 meter swim. If you're going to do a flip turn in one second that's going to be four times per each flip turn during 100 meter swim. This is going to cut off half of the time so it's going to be four seconds versus eight seconds and this is exactly where most of the valuable seconds lay in. You can cut off these seconds easily by just performing faster flip turn or faster push of the wall so do that and you're going to cut off some seconds from your swimming. Does your pool feel weak? Sometimes all you need to do is to work on your power and your strength in the water and paddles are great tool for that. Paddles will help you to improve the volume of your pool. In other words here's your hand and they will help you to improve the surface of your hand so without the paddle you will be pulling that much water with the paddle you will be pulling this much water so they can help you simply increase the amount of water you will be pulling. The only problem with big paddles that you can have is you're going to cut your stroke short if you don't have enough strength and power in your shoulders and in your arms so I recommend starting with small paddles first and small paddles cover only half of your hand and once this feels comfortable you can then move to the bigger paddles and work with that. Another way to advance swimming in the big paddles you can put a pull buoy between your thighs and in this way you're going to pull your whole body only with your arms and shoulders and in the big paddles just remember to not cut your stroke short so this is one of the ways you can work on your strength and power in the water just like you worked outside of the water so use your paddles just use it smart and you can improve the volume of your pool the movement and then eventually the speed. Play with your pace. We already discussed in the beginning of this video that you can include speed specific intervals in your practice so 4 times 50 meters or 4 times 25 meters where you're going to work only on your speed and here these intervals are going to help you work on the speed difference within a particular set so there are three different types of intervals that can help you work on the speed differences in the water and these are build up, descend and negative split. Build up intervals are intervals where you're going to build up your speed within that particular repetition for example you're going to swim 4 times 50 meters build up meaning that within that particular 50 meters you're going to build up the speed so you're going to start easy then increase speed and swim a little bit faster faster and finish fast and repeat that 50 meters 4 times. Descend intervals means that you're going to increase the speed so build up the speed but instead of building the speed within that repetition you're going to build up the speed within the whole set so let's say you're going to swim again 4 times 50 meters and here you're going to build up the speed after each single repetition so 50 meters easy 50 meters a little bit faster 50 meters fast and 50 meters full out and the last one is negative split intervals and here you're going to increase the speed in that second half of the repetition so the second half has to be faster than the first one and let's say you're going to do the exact same 4 times 50 meters negative split and here you're going to swim second 25 faster than the first 25 so first 25 doesn't have to be easy it has to be still strong and with a good speed but the second 25 has to be faster so if we split it for example first one will be 15 then the second has to be 13 or if first one is 18 second one has to be 16 or 17 or at least one second faster there's these three different types of intervals build up descent and negative split and all of these will help you work on a better speed and more power in the water you can throw these in your main set and i can promise you you will see improvement in your speed immediately no reach no speed sometimes the problem is in not reaching for the catch so low flexibility can cause not reaching enough front and then not pulling from there enough water so you need to work on the range of motion both in and out of the water this is exactly why sometimes bodybuilders or lifters come to the pool and even though they're really strong they can't reach for that stroke because the flexibility is really low so it's really nice to have good mobility in your shoulders in your spine and in your ankles in order to have more power and more strength in the water and eventually having better flexibility will mean having better reach for the catch and means pulling more water and having better and faster speed are you sure you're swimming enough sometimes one two or three time sessions per week is just not enough to see results and for that reason you have to do block trainings block trainings the specific times of the year where you can put more time and effort into training and it doesn't have to last forever let's say you're going to do eight week block training or in 12 week block training and for that two or three months you're going to put lots of time and effort probably swimming five or six times a week it's almost every day sometimes even twice a day and incorporating gym as well just to see better results but in the rest of the year you're going to just maintain your fitness level and this is amazing for you to build base and build better speed so sometimes instead of just swimming one two or three practices the whole year putting sometimes into block training and eventually see results in the whole year or in the whole sports career and that's how all professional swimmers or professional triathletes they train they do block trainings and in the rest of the year they just maintain their fitness and you should do the same to see better results and speed in the water here you have it you don't have to do all of these things at once but incorporating some of them in your training program will definitely help you get better speed and get faster times in the water so if you want more content like this subscribe to our channel comment down below if you need any help i'll read through all the comments and answer all of them and if you want to keep learning youtube is going to recommend a video right here so go watch that go swim and see you in the next one