Practice Of The Week

This is a practice I designed for a swimmer who is doing very well with technique but is having some challenges with training his exhale from nose and inhale from mouth, keeping the airways clear of water. In order to not let the breathing troubles restrict his fitness development we use a combination of snorkel and no-snorkel swimming, to start with no breathing challenge and gradually add complexity over the course of the practice.

4x 50 warm up with gentle movements

Swim 3 rounds of 4 cycles of (2x 25 and 1x 50) with short rest between repeats

Each cycle use a different focal point:

  1. Neutral head, consistent depth breaking the surface
  2. Fully extend into skate
  3. Hip drives extension
  4. Hip pulls catch

Each round increase the complexity:

  • R1 snorkel plus tempo at 1.50
  • R2 snorkel plus tempo at 1.40
  • R3 rhythmic breathing with tempo at 1.40

Should You Use Longer Strokes?

Once you come into the TI training world, you realize that stroke count (stroke length) is an important indicator your improvement in efficiency (but not the only).

You may wonder what stroke count you should be using.

You may wonder how to make your stroke count lower.

You may wonder why this is so important!

I’ve added this article to the library to give you an argument for working on A Longer Stronger Stroke.

If this raises any questions for you, I would be glad to answer those for you or point you to the articles or posts we already have on that topic.