How to Swim 130100m (step-by-step guide)

If you're stuck anywhere from 2.30 per 100 meters all the way down to 1.30 per 100 meters and you truly don't know what else you can do to drop those seconds, this video is for you. The truth is what works for 1.40 per 100 meter swimmer is not gonna work for a swimmer who's trying to go sub two minute pace per 100 meters. Simply because the issues that hold you back at each pace are different. Thus the fixes must be different too. I'm Dasha, a former swimmer and a coach with over 15 years of professional swimming experience and in today's video I'll show you what stops you at each pace level. I'll give you the exact drills and focus points to focus on so you can apply this in your next practice and drop up to 30 seconds per 100 meters. Let's go! I worked with many swimmers from 2.40 all the way down to 1.15 per 100 meters per kilometer and they all share some similarities at each pace level. And if you focus on adjusting exactly those things I'm pretty sure that you're going to find yourself in the next pace group. By the way let me know in the comments what is your current pace and what is your goal for this year. 2.30 per 100 meters. This is our beginner level swimmer. Most likely you just got into swimming less than a year ago and you're swimming 50 or 100 meters all the time stopping at the wall to catch a breath and that's totally fine. At this level you're going to be working on your breathing primarily and on your body position in the water. At this level we're not thinking about speed, endurance or anything else. We just want to make sure that you feel safe in the water, that the water doesn't get in your nose or in your mouth, that you understand this concept of inhaling and exhaling. You only inhale with your mouth and you exhale with your nose or with your nose and your mouth. At this level I want you to practice a lot of drills like floating and gliding. So you're gonna adjust to this body position. Floating you can do in a deadman position. Simply spread your legs and your arms and simply float on the top of the water holding your breath. You're going to float in a bowl position. Practice bowl sink where you gradually exhale the air and feel how your body is going down to the bottom. You're also going to practice the streamline position. Streamline float and streamline glide where you're going to lock one hand on the top of the other and then just push off the wall and float. And once this feels comfortable you can add kick. You can put on the fins and practice side breathing kick in fins. So you're gonna have a kickboard at the start. You're going to breathe to the side while kicking in fins and you can alternate sides here and then as soon as you feel comfortable you can then remove the board and your next transition will be the drill called six one six. You're going to do six kicks, inhale to the side, put your face back in the water, do one stroke and then again do six kicks, inhale to the side, do one stroke, six kicks. So basically you're doing six kicks, one stroke, six kicks. And this is your first step to actually having this high body position, having a really nice stroke and tempo as you're moving forward to swimming freestyle. And at this level the equipment that you can use I highly recommend is only the fins and only the kickboard. You pretty much don't need anything else. Don't overwhelm yourself with other pieces of equipment because this is just gonna complicate your learning experience. So the kickboard for the kick and the fins for general drills in general swimming freestyle, breathing drills etc etc. And swimmers of this level they tend to attend my beginner swim program of six weeks where they can literally swim from zero to 500 meters or more and if you're interested you can check the link down in the description below too. Two minute pace per 100 meters. This is our beginner to intermediate level swimmer simply because at this level you're gonna be able to drop maybe 10 maybe 15 seconds per 100 meters because the gains here will be much bigger than later on as you're getting faster. At this level you're still working on your breathing but here you're trying to sync your breathing with your stroke. You want to make sure that your side breathing does not break your stroke, does not stop your stroke. For example you're not stopping the arm out front or you're not pausing both of your arms at the back. You want to make sure that you swim in one continuous cycle and that your side breathing really timed nicely and it's really quick to the side. At this level you also want to make sure that your body sits high, that your legs are not dropped, that you're not really dragging your entire body because your legs are sitting low. You want to still make sure that you practice the high body position but you also want to practice your head position. Simply because I tend to see many swimmers at two minute pace per 100 meters they tend to take their head fully out of the water or really high in order to inhale but the reality is if you take your head fully out of the water you're not going to break the water in front of you with the top of your head and that's how it becomes really uncomfortable to side breathe. You're going to have mouth full of water so make sure that you really inhale nicely with your low head in the water. Make sure that it's still horizontal and half of your face is in the water half of your face out of the water and that mostly your mouth is out of the water. I used to teach that one goggle in one goggle out but right now I'm thinking even if both goggles out of the water still make sure that your head is horizontal and that you're breaking that water in front of you. So make sure your head is low because if your head is low your body is going to be high and flat and that's how you're going to have very minimal drag in the water. At this level it's also very difficult to navigate pacing so if the practice says 100 meters easy a swimmer swims easy and if the practice says 100 meters hard the swimmer swims hard but the pace is relatively the same because at this level it's still very difficult to navigate this pacing because you're still trying to work on that tempo with your arms you're still trying to sync that breathing with your arm stroke making sure that you're actually really moving forward. Also at this level I tend to see swimmers really don't quite understand this concept of easy recovery and strong underwater. In swimming you swim in the cycle so when your arm is out of the water that's called the recovery so your arm is supposed to recover and be easy and relaxed and when your arm is underwater that's where you're catching and pulling the water and you're engaging your muscles. If you're tense and uptight at all the phases in your freestyle you're simply going to get out of breath after just 50 meters so make sure when your arm is out of the water you're relaxed when your arm is in the water doing that catch and pull you are in very strong position with your arm and with your shoulder. Another thing that I see many swimmers tend to make is the crossover mistake where simply instead of entering in line with your shoulder yeah you're going to break that center line of your body and that's how you're zigzagging in the water that's how you're actually not able to set yourself up for that nice catch and nice rotation. One more important thing that swimmers at two minute pace per hundred meters do is that they enter with their elbow first and not their fingertips. How you want to do your recovery you want to make sure that you enter in the arc form meaning you enter first with your fingertips then your wrist only then your elbow. If you slap the water or if you put your entire arm on the top of the water with your elbow first you're not going to be able to have that high elbow catch you're just going to pull with a straight arm and this is how you just compromise your catch and compromise your entire stroke and the drills that you can do in this level are the 616 we are still sticking to this drill it's a really nice drill to practice if in the for beginners for intermediate even for advanced swimmers you're still keeping your fins on. Another great drill to fix that crossover mistake is the catch-up drill so basically you're going to catch that arm out front and do a little tap yeah you can tap or you you don't necessarily have to touch your arms but you have to stop them at here so that's how it's called catch-up drill to fix that crossover mistake. Another great drill for nice easy and controlled recovery is the finger drag drill so what you're going to do you're going to drag your fingers on the top of the water with that controlled recovery high elbow recovery and then making sure that you enter as you were dragging those fingertips you're going to enter with those fingertips and not your elbow first. Another great drill that you can do here is a single arm freestyle drill where simply you're only using one arm to move forward you're doing the strokes with only one arm keeping the other arm out front you can do that in fins or without the fins as you're getting more comfortable at this level the equipment that you can use is the exact same as in the previous level you're going to use the kickboard you're going to use the fins and you can also add the pull buoy so you're going to put the pull buoy between your legs and only pull with your arms and at this level you're already going to drop maybe even 10 or 15 seconds because as you're learning how to use your arms as you're learning and having a better body position and better breathing you're going to feel a lot of improvement and in this level and as you're fixing those mistakes I tend to see that many swimmers they just don't know what kind of drills to do and how to do them properly so they can fully benefit and improve their stroke and that's why we have a 20 drill course where you can find all the 20 drills how to do them what to do and how much to do and that's how I see many swimmers tend to get this course and if you're interested you can also get this course the link is down below. 145 per 100 meters this is our solid intermediate level swimmers and age group triathletes or age group open water swimmers at this level you already have a pretty nice and solid technique and you have relatively nice side breathing you're trying to increase that propulsion moving forward not only when you feel good but with every stroke you take some of the things that I see swimmers tend to make is the drop elbow when you're not having that high elbow position straight away so as you're swimming you want to make sure that as you enter the water you try to point your fingertips at the bottom making sure that you're pulling with that high elbow catch going into that pool and finishing your stroke by your side another thing that I also noticed that my swimmers tend to make is they cut their stroke short especially on their non-dominant side meaning if your dominant arm for example is right really make sure that you're not cutting your stroke short and finishing at your waist for your left side for your left arm pull all the way back you don't necessarily have to flick it or do it really strong because you're going to have a lot of propulsion forward this is a real hack if you finish the stroke by your side you're going to see your time improve and you're going to see more propulsion forward as you swim and another thing that I see many swimmers tend to make is they rush their catch as their side breathing so I want you to make sure when you swim you go into that entry together with the side breath so you initiate your side breath as you enter with that arm and you bring your face back and start that catch but you're never pulling and breathing at the same time because in this case you don't have any arm forward you don't have that balance and stability and another thing that I want you to focus on is improving your distance per stroke this simply means the number of strokes you take per 25 or 50 meters and you're always trying to decrease that number while keeping the same quality and the same time because the less strokes you eventually take with the same time that means the less energy you use while moving the same or even more and the drills that you can do in this level is the same for of course as for the previous ones but you here incorporating some advanced drills like single arm freestyle drill where you keep the other arm by the side and you're pulling and catching with that arm breathing on the working side arm you're going to do it in fins or without them if you feel comfortable on the top of the water you're also going to do the fist drill really nice drill one one of my favorite drills where you are trying to catch the water you close your hands in fist and you're doing all the strokes with your hands closed you're going to make sure that you incorporate that forearm and that you're forming that high elbow catch early on another great drill here to work on your catch and pull and on your underwater stroke is the dog paddle drill you're going to move your arms like in the dog paddle instead of taking your arms fully out of the water for the recovery you're going to keep your entire stroke underwater and for this drill i recommend you use fins and snorkel simply because you're just going to work on your underwater stroke and you don't have to be thinking about anything else other than your high elbow catch and a good quality high elbow pull at this level you can also try to incorporate different individual medley sets meaning that you're going to learn other strokes you're going to learn butterfly you're going to learn backstroke and breaststroke incorporating other strokes learning other strokes is going to help you eventually improve freestyle it's also going to diversify your training and you're still pulling you're still catching you're working on body position in all other strokes so i highly recommend you learn at least one different stroke by by the time you're at 145 per 100 meters and here you're also going to work on different breathing variations not only breathing on your dominant side but also trying to breathe on your non-dominant side and working on your hypoxic breathing meaning that you're swimming without taking a breath for a longer period periods of time my favorite breathing drill is 2-3-2-5 a little bit hypoxic a little bit practicing different breathing variations and bilateral breathing what you're going to basically do you're going to take two strokes breathe on one side you're going to take three strokes breathe on the opposite side take two strokes breathe to the same side and take five strokes and breathe to the opposite side great drill because it makes you really engaged makes you count makes you think when you breathe makes you really engaged in that stroke and breathing uh when you're swimming as for equipment for this level you can use pretty much all the equipment you can use a kickboard pull buoy fins you can use a snorkel and you can also incorporate paddles yeah paddles are going to help you work on that surface increase the surface area of your hand it's going to help you work on that catch and pull and increase the strength of your pull in the water just make sure that you're starting with small paddles and then you're gradually going into big paddles because it's really easy if you're not ready for the big paddles it's really easy to cut your stroke short and that's the mistake that we're trying to fix in this level so make sure that as you're pulling in big paddles you're not cutting your stroke short at your waist and that you're pulling all the way back and finishing the stroke by your side many swimmers at this level they already have a really solid technique they have really nice side breathing but they have some questions why they're not increasing they're not going to that 130 pace and that's why they send me their stroke for the video stroke analysis where i break their stroke down in details answer all their questions and give them the guidance and the structure to how they can move forward and improve their stroke quickly and if you want to do your video stroke breakdown you can apply for it down in the description below 130 or even faster per 100 meters this is our advanced swimmers and some of them are triathletes or open water swimmers swimming in the first or second pack these are also our swimmers who are competing in masters all around the world in this level you're trying to focus on very small and minimal fixes to get those big gains at this level we're not talking about improving 10 or 15 seconds we're talking improving one second or even half a second and that's how you're actually getting ahead of those other swimmers ahead of those other people you want to make sure that you're working on that high elbow catch initiating that high elbow catch early on making sure that you for sure not dropping your elbow that you're pulling all the way back making sure that your side breathing timing is really quick that you're not over rotating fully out of the water to inhale that it's really quick and it's together with your stroke that it's timed correctly and again you want to work here on your high elbow catch early on you still want to make sure that you sit high on the top of the water you want to figure out what kind of kick you want to do you want to do a two big kick a four big key or a six big kick and you also want to work on that strong and powerful pull another thing that you can also work on is distance specific skills so let's say if you're an open water swimmer or triathlete you want to make sure that you improve on those open water skills like drafting yeah sitting on somebody else legs and drafting yeah saving some energy in the open water making sure that you really know these tactics of drafting and then passing that those other swimmers sighting you want to see where you're going see where you're swimming you want to make sure you're not zigzagging in the water and swimming additional meters so you want to make sure you're sighting every four or six strokes and that your sighting is really efficient that you only take your eyes out of the water that you're not taking your entire head because it's going to stop your open water stroke great drill that you can do to practice uh the open water swimming skills as the sighting the drafting breathing on different sides also swimming without the walls so if you're for example in the pool you don't have access to the open water but you're preparing for a triathlon you can swim sets without touching the wall without pushing up the wall in the start and in general skipping the turns just going and turning like you would around the buoy now if you're preparing for master swimming yeah if you're working on some sprint distance like 50 100 meters even 200 meters you want to make sure that your dives and your turns underwater are really fast and really efficient you don't want to be losing time standing at the wall doesn't matter you do a touch turn or flip turn it has to be fast it has to be efficient and as you push up the wall you want to make sure you do those dolphin dives really nicely also you want to make sure that you are increasing that cadence but you're also not compromising your strokes so as you're preparing as you're tapering for those faster events you want to make sure that you still hold that form in the water as you're increasing the cadence and for the equipment you can use all the equipment from previous levels so the kickboard the pool buoy fins and snorkel paddles but you also can incorporate some advanced swimming equipment like parachutes yeah for more resistance and some of the advanced swimmers drills that you can practice at this level again dependent on whether you're preparing for the open water or for shorter distance in the pool you can do swimming without the walls as i mentioned before you can also do a single arm drill but keeping your arm next to your side and breathing on the opposite side not on the working arm side and here you're going to practice that timing for a side breath and the catch making sure that you're breathing but you're still not pulling with that non-breathing arm and as soon as you put your face back in the water you're going to initiate that catch another great drill a lot of schooling you can do in this level yeah you can do front school you can do mid pool position school you can do back school you can do four four four where you're schooling in front in the mid and at the back of course you're going to swim a lot of other different strokes individual madly fly sets if you are a swimmer of this level that means that you're an advanced swimmer and you're in the pool for many many years you know what you're doing but sometimes you just need a little bit more guidance a little bit more feedback and that's exactly what where i come in i can analyze your stroke and break down exactly what you need to be doing to get those small tiny gains i work with many athletes both online and on the deck with master swimmers triathletes where we work one-on-one and i give them feedback ongoing feedback constantly and if you want to be one of them you can apply it down in the description below now youtube is going to recommend your video right here go watch this go swim and i'll see you very very soon bye bye