What is the average stroke count for a 25 yd free swim? Assuming no block start? I'm trying to count mine and was wondering where I should be aiming for.
Love this thread... I feel like I know everyone so much better now ;)
When I first started swimming a few years back I worked really hard on DPS and when I started swimming seriously as my main mode of exercise a couple of years ago I could hit 9-11 SCY when focused, but my times didn't get much better for a long time simply because I didn't want to sacrifice any of those strokes to increase speed. My problem, as I found out last year, was obsessing about stroke count and completely ignoring stroke rate. It's important to find your optimal stroke rate too... you can have a really low stroke count but with a really slow turnover rate you won't do much more than glide. That's where I was for a while. Now I'm happy with a stroke count of 14-17 per 25 because the speed trade off was worth it. At some point I'll probably revisit the stroke length again to see if I can increase it slightly while maintaining the same stroke rate.
Love this thread... I feel like I know everyone so much better now ;)
When I first started swimming a few years back I worked really hard on DPS and when I started swimming seriously as my main mode of exercise a couple of years ago I could hit 9-11 SCY when focused, but my times didn't get much better for a long time simply because I didn't want to sacrifice any of those strokes to increase speed. My problem, as I found out last year, was obsessing about stroke count and completely ignoring stroke rate. It's important to find your optimal stroke rate too... you can have a really low stroke count but with a really slow turnover rate you won't do much more than glide. That's where I was for a while. Now I'm happy with a stroke count of 14-17 per 25 because the speed trade off was worth it. At some point I'll probably revisit the stroke length again to see if I can increase it slightly while maintaining the same stroke rate.
