You can swim a lot faster with the same effort when you use the right technique and effective skills. The trick is to glide through the water like a fish. Full body suits streamline your shape and reduce fatigue by minimising unwanted muscle vibration.

Power Training

Each week do three endurance sessions for stamina where you swim for a given length or time, say 200 meters distance per session. Also do three resistance sessions for strength where you aim to swim 50 meters in one minute or less, fully clothed.

If you keep this up consistently, preferably with a training partner to keep you motivated, then you will notice the difference. Use these strokes for both your endurance and resistance training.

Learn more than one Swimming Stroke

Breaststroke, backstroke, and side stroke can all be used both to give you a rest from crawl and to help you to stay on course. Fly stroke can be used if you really want to impress people or just have them think you're plain crazy (just joking, but you probably already realised that).

Efficient Swimming Strokes

An efficient stroke will significantly reduce wasted energy output through less drag in the water and a cleaner execution of hand and arm entry and recovery. When considering swimming technique for any stroke, analysis should follow the format described below, in this order:
1. Leg kick
2. Arm cycle
3. Timing
4. Breathing

The leg kick will control the body position in the water, while the arm cycle will provide the propulsive force. The timing between the two is vital to the efficiency of the given stroke for a greater speed through the water with minimum wasted energy.

Breathing

Finally, breathing technique should be analysed and improved to ensure that when you breathe your overall technique is not disrupted in any way that would reduce your efficiency.

You may have been to the gym or fitness centre and spent good money on monotonous repetitive exercises. If you simply flap your arms about you may gain some extra muscle after a long time. Or you could use some weights to get faster results. Increase the weights over time and your results get better, until you get injured.

A Safe Alternative

Swimming pools are a safe alternative to repetitive gym training with less risk of muscle injury. You can use wet clothing instead of weights, so the load is spread more evenly over your body. Keep moving against sufficient resistance often enough and you gain strength no matter what you do, because your muscles get exercised. This is fairly hard training, but you will notice the difference if you keep doing this persistently, preferably with a training partner to keep you motivated.

Skill Refinement

In swimwear or speedy bodysuits you may get away with a bad swimming stroke. You still move ahead somehow. The moment you tow a casualty or wear clothes that slow you down, you'll notice how bad your stroke might be and that you're not going anywhere fast. Swimming in clothes will quickly highlight issues with your swimming stroke. The added resistance requires that you adapt your swimming stroke and fine tune it. Any adjustments you make will immediately result in a clear diffrence of speed and effort. This gives you the right feedback you need to adjust your stroke. As soon as you improve your skill, your speed picks up quickly.

Set Your Goals

If you are sleeping late every morning, start getting up earlier and earlier. Get a post card, write your goals on it and tape it to your mirror. Seriously, go and do it now. Write on it things like "Do 5 push-ups every morning" or "Fast Walk for 30 minutes every night."

You need to look at your goal card every morning as a reminder of your commitment to yourself. If you can discipline yourself to do this, you can achieve anything you want. If you think this is a silly idea, that you don't need a goal-list staring you in the face every morning, well then, don't say that you weren't warned!

Keep Warm

Keep your "heaters" (legs) moving vigorously to keep your body warm. You can stay warm by wearing a lycra suit and/or an anorak. Adjust your clothing to suit your fitness level. It is a bit like weight lifting, you can just go up or down a notch by adding or removing a layer.

Hydration and Fuelling during Exercise

Drink water before, during and after your workout to regulate body temperature. Failure to maintain a hydrated state can lead to detrimental changes in the cardiovascular response to exercise, over-heating of the body and decreases in both maximal power and work capacity. Just a 2% drop in body weight due to dehydration can have an overall negative impact on exercise performance. In addition to staying hydrated, athletes are faced with the task of fuelling their bodies for performance.

Encourage your swimmers to consume 6-8% carbohydrate-electrolyte beverages frequently (about half a cup every 10-15 minutes) during workouts lasting longer than an hour to maintain fluid balance (prevent dehydration) and spare glycogen. Together, these effects are likely to have a positive impact on day-to-day practices, and ultimately competition performance.

Eat Well

Stop eating fast food, junk food, candy, soda, and all that other fatty food. If you smoke - stop right away! Cigarettes stink and are tactically unsound for resuscitation training.

Start eating potatoes, rice, non-fried home prepared vegetables and fruit. Start drinking lots and lots of water to get properly hydrated. Drink water before, during and after your workout to regulate body temperature. Combine it with a high quality nutrition program. See VitaminBiz.com for details.

Swimming Team Recommendation

In our swim team we practice all swimming strokes fully clothed. I wasn't convinced at first, but the difference it makes is remarkable, especially for our competition swimmers and strength training. Their results improve much faster now. Hence our team coach recommends that we wear clothes for most training sessions. Swimsuits are for wimps.
Robert, Quebec, Canada  

Class for College Students

One of the new physical education options offered to students this year was swimming. Students enrolled in the course were instructed on basic swimming skills. As part of the course, students learned the proper techniques for each stroke including freestyle, backstroke, elementary backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly.

In addition, students were introduced to several rescue skills, proper diving techniques and breath control. They also learned how to retrieve objects from the bottom of the pool, how to tread water, and how to swim fully clothed.

Our physical education teacher and swimming instructor reported that all classes put so much hard work and effort into their swimming. The students truly love coming to class and can't wait to get in the pool and swim. We're is so proud of the tremendous progress they made throughout the semester!

Carmen, Barcelona, Spain  

High School Swim Team

When I was on my High School Swim team, one of our coaches encouraged us to practice our swimming in tee-shirts and jeans. Hoodies or track-suits were suggested for those who wanted to push themselves harder. This should make us stronger and faster for swimming meets, due to the extra drag and weight.

I am not sure if it worked but it certainly was fun and I love swimming in jeans to this day. I had a pair of jeans that rarely dried during the academic year.

Kevin, Toronto, Canada