Get faster
How to Get Faster at Swimming
Getting faster takes more work than you can fit into two or three pool swims a week. That is the real problem for most triathletes. Not effort, access. So the smartest move is not just training harder, it is knowing what to do in the water, and what you can finally do at home.
Most age-group triathletes get to the pool about twice a week. That is rarely enough water to fix everything that makes you faster.
You get faster by cutting drag and adding propulsion. The unlock is where you train each one.
Reduce drag in the pool, where balance and feel live. Build propulsion at home, between pool days, where you can finally see it. Now a busy week stops capping how fast you get.
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The short answer
Two levers, and they are pure physics. The first is drag, your body slipping cleanly through the water instead of plowing it. That is pool and feel work, and you have to be in the water to find it. The second is propulsion, the force your catch and pull turn into forward movement. That is the part you can train at home, between pool days. Most swimmers only ever work one of these. The fast ones work both. The rest of this page is how.
Lever 1
Reduce drag (do this in the pool)
Water is far denser than air, so the resistance pushing back on you is huge. For most swimmers, cutting that resistance buys more speed than adding power ever will. You go faster by getting smaller and cleaner in the water, not just by pulling harder.
Body line
Look at the bottom of the pool, not forward. Press your chest down and your hips ride up, so you lie flat and high instead of dragging your legs through the water like an anchor.
Rotate onto your side
Swim on your side, not flat on your chest. Rotating with each stroke gives the water a narrower shape to flow past, which means less frontal drag for the same effort.
Tight core and streamline
Hold a firm core and a long line off every wall, one arm stacked over the other, head tucked. A loose, wide body catches water everywhere. A tight, long one slips through it.
Change technique at slow speed
Here is the coach truth: technique changes happen slow. Fast swimming only reinforces what is already there, so a flaw you swim hard just gets grooved in harder. Drop the pace, fix the shape, then bring the speed back.
Why the pool: drag is about feel, balance, and where your body sits in the water. You cannot find that on dry land. You have to be in it. The pool stays where this gets fixed.
Lever 2
Increase propulsion (you can build this between pool days)
Most of your freestyle propulsion comes from the hand and forearm, through the catch, the pull, and the push. Get that shape right and each stroke does more work.
The high elbow catch (early vertical forearm)
Picture it. Just after your hand enters and extends forward, you bend the elbow and tip the fingers down, palm facing back, elbow high near the surface. Now your forearm and hand work as one big paddle. That paddle holds water, so you move past it. Let the elbow drop and lead instead, and the same arm slices straight down and slips, doing nothing useful.
The unlock: you do not need water to build this
You can groove the catch pattern and build pulling power at home, between pool days, on the ZWIM Bench with the patent-pending Power Paddles and Propulsion Bands. The Power Paddles measure the force and motion of your stroke. ZWIM turns that into Propulsive Watts, the useful part of your effort after an efficiency score, the work that actually moves you. Wasted Energy shows what leaked, the force that went somewhere other than forward.
The pool struggles to teach the catch because you cannot see what you are doing under the water, so you go on feel, and a guess repeated every session grooves the wrong shape into muscle memory. A number can fix that. For the first time the catch has one, so you can build the right shape on purpose between pool days.
This is Connected Swim Training. Not a replacement for the pool, a way to make the days between count toward the same stroke.
Get faster
Two more levers
Breathing
Exhale steadily underwater, so when you turn to breathe you only have to breathe in, not rush a full breath out and in at once. Practice breathing to both sides. Bilateral breathing keeps you balanced and stops one side of your stroke from collapsing.
Smart, consistent training
Swim with intervals and a clock rather than just churning out laps, so each set has a purpose. And be honest about the real constraint: for most age-group triathletes it is not effort, it is pool access. Life, work, and family decide the week, and the pool is the session that gets cut first. Keep swim-specific work alive between pool days so the skill never goes cold and one missed session does not turn into a blank week.
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Put it together
Here is the clean mental model. Pool days are where you reduce drag and prove the full stroke comes together. Between pool days are where you build propulsion with feedback, so the catch keeps improving even when you cannot get to the water.
Less drag in the water, more propulsion at home, both every week. That is the whole loop. Run it and speed follows, because each stroke meets less resistance and delivers more force.
For a structured version of this, read The ZWIM Protocol.
Straight talk
The honest boundary
ZWIM trains the propulsion side at home. It does not reduce your in-water drag, that is pool and feel work, and it does not promise you a faster race time. What it does is give the catch a number so you can tell whether the work is paying off.
We are also running a research collaboration with Professor Mario Costa's group at CIDESD, UTAD, on how this kind of training relates to swimming. That is a partnership, not a result claim.
FAQ
FAQ
How do I actually get faster at swimming?
Train two physics levers: less drag and more propulsion. Reduce drag by getting flat, long, and rotated so you slip through the water, and increase propulsion by building a catch that holds water and moves you past it. Pulling harder without fixing those just buys you a tired version of the same speed.
Does drag or propulsion matter more?
For most swimmers drag is the bigger lever, because water is dense and cutting resistance often buys more speed than adding power. But you need both. Fix drag in the pool, where balance and feel live, and build propulsion at home between pool days, where you can finally see it.
What is the high elbow catch, or early vertical forearm?
Just after your hand enters and extends, you bend the elbow and tip the fingers down with the palm facing back and the elbow high. Your forearm and hand become one big paddle that holds water, so you move past it instead of slicing the arm straight down and slipping.
Can I get faster training at home?
You can build the propulsion half at home. With the Power Paddles you can work the catch and see your propulsion as Propulsive Watts and Wasted Energy, so the days between pool sessions become useful instead of blank. Drag and feel still need the pool, since that is where balance and body position get fixed.
How often should I swim to improve?
Often enough that the skill never goes cold. Swimming rewards little and often over rare heroic sessions. If pool access is the limit, keep swim-specific work alive between pool days so one missed session does not turn into a blank week.
Does pool speed transfer to open water?
Not cleanly. Sighting, no walls to push off, chop, wetsuit feel, and mass-start stress usually add time. Use the pool as your controlled baseline, then expect open water to read a little slower, and keep the drag and catch work you built either way.
Connected Swim Training
Less drag. More propulsion.
Get faster the honest way: reduce drag in the pool, and build propulsion at home with a number you can finally see. Join the waitlist and be first in line when the swim trainer ships.
Related
Swim Pace Calculator · Critical Swim Speed Calculator · What is Propulsive Watts · The ZWIM Protocol
Photo: James Mitchell
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