![]() If you're amping up your workouts, supplement with an electrolyte beverage that contains sodium. Sip half your body weight in ounces of water each day, suggested McIntire, who is also certified in sports nutrition. Dehydration can make you feel fatigued and a bit out of it, especially while working out. What you do outside of the pool in day-to-day life counts when learning how to be a faster swimmer, too. It's not all about what you do in the pool. Research shows that pull-up performance is related to swimming speed, per a 2018 issue of The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, likely because it's a marker for upper-body strength.Īim for one or two strength sessions per week and consider working with a personal trainer to help you programme correctly. Specifically, training pull-ups may also pay dividends in the water. And core work helps improve stroke efficiency and proper body position and helps guard your body against injury, he said. Strong lats are important for your stroke, as this muscle group allows you to pull more water as you swim. "The more powerful the lower body and hips, the less you have to rely purely on your upper body ", he said. Hamstring strength will improve swimming resilience for later in the race. For instance, quad strength will help your kick strength and power. "All these movements translate to the water very well", said Lee Sommers, strength coach for the Nation's Capital Swim Club, Rockville-Montgomery Swim Club and All Star Aquatics. Exercises that focus on hinging (such as deadlifts), squatting, single-leg balances, pulls (such as lat pull-downs) and core work are all important to do out of the pool when you want to become faster. Resistance training can help your stroke and body position in the water. "Rotate your body back and forth, maintaining this position as you swim", McIntire said. This means you remain level from head to hips to ankles. To do that, imagine that you're swimming between two invisible lines. Maintain a nice streamlined body position in the water, which will improve efficiency. That's the perfect head position", she said. "One goggle should be in the water and one out when you are breathing out of your mouth. Not only does this disrupt your body's alignment but it also affects how efficiently you move through the water. In other words, try not to lift your head up out of the water as it could cause your lower body to drop. When doing a freestyle stroke, make sure your face is level with the water and gently rotate your head from side to side to breathe. ![]() "The way you breathe contributes to faster speed", McIntire said. In addition, long fins can help improve ankle and foot flexibility, which can better your kick, McIntire said (wear short fins for speed workouts). "The longer blades help you float better, keep your hips up and keep legs straighter, reducing the amount of incorrect 'bicycling', or bending of the knees", she said. In addition, choose a long fin to practise kicking in the water, McIntire said (fins come with a long or short blade). For a whole body stretch to loosen up before hopping into the pool (or to recover after), McIntire likes a move known as "the world's greatest stretch"-a lunge that involves twisting and lifting one arm up to the ceiling. To practise ankle mobilisation exercises, try pointing and flexing your feet, circling your feet clockwise and anti-clockwise and doing a stand-up calf stretch. Doing ankle mobility work outside of the pool will help. "It's not always easy for people who are just starting out in swimming if your ankles aren't very flexible", she said. ![]() Whether you're a beginner swimmer or have more experience, work on your flutter kick, McIntire said. Next to improve efficiency, try these three things: ![]() Distance per stroke can be used as a measurement whether you're looking to swim a faster freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke or butterfly. McIntire recommended counting your strokes per lap (each time your hands enter the water). For context, this is how far you're able to move your body through the water with each stroke. To start, measure your distance per stroke. "Everything in swimming comes down to efficiency, which will help conserve your energy, so you can use that energy for speed", McIntire said. Efficiency is how much energy is used to get from one end of the pool to the other.
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