What Every Swimming Speed Looks Like

Take a look at these swimmers. Which one do you look like? Are you even on the list? Today, I'm breaking down what every swimming speed looks like and what actually separates a swimming newbie from world-class speed. If you want to level up, where do you even start? Is it the catch, kick, body position, breathing timing, or perhaps the secret lies in a very specific skill that will unlock everything? Stick around until the end to find out what that is. But right now, the fastest human beings alive can swim 100 meters in less than 47 seconds. On the complete other end of the spectrum, more than half of the adult population can't even do the basic skills that keep them safe in the water, like swimming 25 meters without stopping. It's the same sport, the same pool, and the gap between every one of these levels isn't really talent or genetics. It's a stack of very specific and learnable things. So let's dive in. We've seen swimming at every single angle and every speed, from adults who are terrified to put their face in the water, all the way up to the world-class athletes that you see on TV. And here's what we've learned. At every level, there's one dominant thing that holds people back. Fix it and you jump the levels really fast. If you ignore it, you'll stay stuck and won't make any progress. Let's start at the beginning. Level one is the swimmer who can't make it one length of the pool without stopping. Look at the head here, up and out of the water the entire time. Legs are kicking so hard, doing almost nothing. And every few strokes, a complete standstill just to breathe. Now, here's the thing. This isn't a fitness problem, but swimming is the only sport where you have to control your breathing, body position, and move forward all at the same time. And this is in an environment that your body isn't built for. So panic automatically sinks in. Your head comes up because that's where it feels safer. You need to breathe. And that one decision destroys everything. Watch what happens the second the head lifts out of the water. The hips and legs drop straight down. Now you're not swimming forward. You're just dragging your entire body through the water like an anchor. And the fix has nothing to do with strength. It's just getting comfortable putting your face in the water and exhaling underwater so that way you're not holding your breath and panicking every three seconds. Now, here's a simple progression to build exactly that. Now, if you're new to swimming, start by holding a wall, face in the water, and blow bubbles while you gently bob up and down. Nice and relaxed. The whole goal here is just to be comfortable exhaling underwater. Once that feels easy, keep your face in the water, lift your legs up behind you, and add a light kick. Now with your body in an actual swimming position instead of just standing. And the last step, take a breath and turn your head to the side instead of lifting it straight up in front of you. That's the exact motion that you'll use every time you breathe in freestyle. That way you'll keep your head in line and your hips will stay high in the water. If you nail that progression, you're not going to be level one anymore. You're going to be a three minute swimmer. So let's talk about level two. Level two is for anyone who can swim around three minutes for 100 meters. So that means it takes you three minutes to swim four lengths of a standard 25 meter pool or two lengths of an olympic size 50 meter swimming pool. This speed describes a lot of people. If you can swim continuously without stopping, but you feel like you're working way harder than the distance demands, then this is probably you. Look at the hips here. Do you see how they're sinking? Almost like there's a parachute tied to their legs. It's drag. And remember water is 800 times more dense than air. No matter how much you pull, no matter how much you try and improve, if your legs are sinking, you're going to be struggling. And the faster you swim, the more drag you're actually going to have. So every single inch of your body that isn't lined up and flat is going to cost you more energy than you would if you just had a higher body position. This right here is almost always the difference between a three minute swimmer and a two minute swimmer. It's not really power. It's not fitness. It's really just your body position in the water. Now, two quick drills to fix this faster than anything else. The first is push and glide. Push off the wall in a tight streamline, arms locked overhead, legs squeezed together, and just glide. Don't kick. Just float and see how far off the wall that you can go. Keep your eyes in check, your body position on point, and of course, point your toes. Now, the next part is the streamline kick. On your back or your stomach, it's the same body position. Streamline is the most important word in swimming. So make sure you squeeze your ears and really lock down your body position so that way you're stretching your body as long as possible. Start to add small flutter kicks, keeping your toes pointed, kicking both up and down with an amplitude that's less than a foot and a half or about half a meter or less. If you can do both of these skills for a few minutes, maybe with fins, you're going to improve your body position automatically, and this will help you learn how to swim without dragging your legs. And that three minute pace per hundred is going to quickly become two minutes per 100. And that's where level three comes in. This is the two minute per hundred swimmer. They're riding higher, they're kicking less, and breathing starts to feel pretty normal. So why is this person still stuck at two minutes when an Olympian is swimming literally twice as fast? Watch the arm here. Do you see how it stays basically straight the entire way through the pole? That hand is pushing the water down. It's not pushing backwards. There's no propulsive force here for most of the duration of the arm in the pole phase. This is what makes a swimmer bob up and down. So this swimmer is working harder, not going as fast. Kind of ironic, right? And that's what separates a two minute pace from a one minute pace. It's mostly the catch and body position working together. So let's actually break that down. Coaches call this the early vertical forearm or EVF for short. Your hand enters the water and reaches all the way forward, reach, reach, reach. And that part is essentially the same for everyone. But here's the difference. So instead of pulling with a straight arm, you bend at the elbow, you angle your fingertips down towards the bottom of the pool while keeping that elbow up in front of you. And that keeps more water and more surface area between your hand and the pulling direction. This additional leverage creates more propulsion. And you want to think of your hand as simply being paddle. And you want to increase the surface area of that paddle. The best swimmers in the world are able to do this every single stroke. And it becomes automatic. From that point, you pull the water straight back, keeping the elbow higher than your hand for the entire pull. And this continues out of the water on the recovery as well. And the best swimmers are able to do this repeatedly. If you want to feel this for yourself, try the fist drill. This is where you essentially eliminate the extra surface area of your hand to really focus on pulling water with your forearm. Then you can gradually add fingers so that way you can re-feel this engagement with your hand to increase this total surface area. And that'll make it easier and faster to pull more water. Now one more common mistake at this level, the hands are just crossing over at the midline on the entry point. Now it looks efficient, and most swimmers can't really tell the difference, but actually makes you go in a zigzag pattern down the lane. That's wasting distance, energy, and it increases your risk for injury. So fix the catch, stop crossing over, stop pulling with a straight arm, and at this point we're going to start to see a real swimming technique. Now a level four swimmer is someone who's closer to swimming one minute per hundred than two minutes per hundred. And visually there's a pretty big difference. If you think you're stuck in the middle, you're probably closer to one versus the other. And if you're in the middle, just forget about a hundred meter assessment and add a zero. If you had to swim a thousand meters straight, would you be closer to 10 minutes or 20 minutes? Now you have your answer. If you're closer to 10 minutes, you've entered an entirely new world. At this level, take a look at this swimmer. Watch the stroke count. Instead of falling apart the moment they get tired, it's controlled and consistent, lap after lap. Instead of a flat body with arms just spinning on top of it, watch the rotation. The hips and the shoulders are working together. The kick is precise. It's nimble, it's short and powerful, and it's contributing to propulsion, but it's not the primary driver of it. The timing and the breathing and the stroke all clicks together. At one minute per 100, the distance per stroke is so predictable and consistent. The swimmer already has a solid catch and good body position when they're locked in. It looks like they could go for a stroll in the park and swim the exact same mechanics over and over and over. What we're building now is not just the ability to hold it together when you're swimming fresh, but when you're fatigued and your heart rate is elevated. Anyone can look smooth for 25 meters with a low heart rate, but how do you look when your heart rate is spiked through the roof and you've been swimming for 20 or 30 minutes? This level is about looking smooth for the entire workout. So what are the most important variables to get this level and keep advancing? It's training structure, it's swimming with intervals, threshold work, specific technique, planned rest, test sets, and instead of swimming laps until you get tired, you follow a progressive workload that increases in intensity and specificity based on the goals that you're trying to achieve. Now if you're stuck and you don't know how to do this, that's why we created the MySwimPro app. If you want a plan and you want to build it around specific goals that you have, instead of just guessing, check it out, link down below. But this structure only pays off once your technique is already passable. If you're at the three minute pace or slower, you've got some work to do on the technique side. When you start to get faster than that, you're going to hit plateaus if you're not following a structured plan. But here's the thing, you can go even faster. Yes. Welcome to the sub one minute pace. This is the one percent of one percent who can hold this pace for several minutes. We're talking about international, national level, and olympic level swimming. Let's be clear about one thing here, nobody at this level is here because of one technique attribute. Every swimmer at this level has already mastered their body position, improved catch, and really what separates them is a small stack of tiny margins layered on top of each other one by one. This is where years or really decades of experience and training shows up. No one who started swimming last month or even last year is at this level or anywhere close to this level. Watch the streamline off the wall. The arms are locked overhead, the core is tight. They've done this literally millions of times. A weak streamline at this level and explosiveness and speed will cost you half a body length in a race just from pushing off the wall. Look at the kick. It's not big, it's not small, it's tight and precise and fully connected with the rest of the stroke. It generates propulsion for the sake of moving you forward, not for the sake of splashing. Look at the rotation, the hips and the shoulders working as one connected unit as if this person was born in the water. Using the arms and the legs together, it's really beautiful to watch. Take a look at this pull. Not only a near perfect early vertical form but initiating the catch from the very very start of the stroke and leveraging an immense amount of power with that beautifully high body position in the water. Now it's important that you understand this, none of what you're seeing is secret information. It's just really really really hard to do consistently at full speed and for an entire race or even an entire workout. Right now, the fastest human being alive can swim 100 meters in 46.4 seconds. The fastest woman in history can do 100 meters in 51.68 seconds. Getting to this level isn't something that happens by accident. It takes years of layering these small details over and over. After a few million repetitions, it becomes automatic. So here's the real question for you, what level are you? Be honest, drop your 100 meter time in the comments and if you want to actually fix the things that are holding you back in swimming and stop guessing, the drills, the technique breakdowns and the world's number one swimming training app are linked down below. We'll see you in the water and happy swimming.