Most sports require athletes to do a lot of strength and weight training in order to excel in their sport. We often see NFL and NBA players benching and squatting insane amounts of weight so that they can be faster and more explosive. Although strength training helps, the same cannot be said about swimming as many Olympic swimmers spend hours in the pool perfecting their technique instead of in the weight room. Studies have shown that strength training does not necessarily translate to faster swimming times.
Muscle and Body Mass
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Intense weight training usually leads to increased body mass, which can be detrimental to speed when it comes to swimming. A study published in 2013 measured the optimal body mass for swimming speed and muscle power output in frogs. Although the experiment wasn’t done on humans, it is still applicable in explaining how humans move through the water. After all, one of the four swimming strokes, breaststroke, is basically swimming like a frog. Most people would expect the frogs with the highest muscle and body mass to swim at higher speeds; however, this study found that the relationship between body mass and speed was a rainbow-shaped curve, which means that frogs with lower body mass did not swim very fast and neither did frogs with higher body mass. The body mass for optimal speed was somewhere in between. This suggests that for a human to swim at optimal speed, their body mass should be a balance between being too light and too heavy.
Strength
An experiment conducted in 1992 aimed to determine the relationship between muscle power and swim performance. They measured both sprint and mid-distance events for 22 swimmers. Because they couldn’t use any invasive methods to measure muscle power, the scientists used the Wingate Anaerobic Test (WAT) and the Maximal Sustained Power Output Test (MPO) to measure the peak and mean muscle power of each swimmer. The scientists then timed the 50 meter and 400 meter swims of each swimmer while recording the number of arm strokes per length. The results show that although more power in the arms and legs correlate to faster swim times, stroke efficiency (number of strokes per length) had the strongest correlation to an increase in speed. In other words, strength helps, but stroke efficiency helps more. In order to get faster, a swimmer should focus on improving their technique and efficiency while having strength training as something on the side. Technique is king for swimmers.
So How Do Swimmers Improve Their Technique?
Technique and efficiency in swimming is all about reducing drag. Drag is something that is considered in other sports such as track and field, but the effects of drag in running is negligible when compared to swimming as air is around 800 times less dense than water. This is why reducing drag is such a big deal when it comes to improving swimming efficiency. In fact, competitive swimmers often wear expensive, special suits, called tech suits, which can decrease drag by 38% and increase buoyancy leading to longer stroke glide phases and better efficiency. Another way swimmers improve efficiency during the stroke is by attempting to replicate the streamline position created when they go off the start blocks and go off walls. They do this by keeping their bodies as tight and as narrow as possible while gliding, resulting in increased efficiency and reduced stroke count. The next time you‘re at the pool and want to swim faster, make sure to focus on your technique first.