Stroke count?

Apart from losing weight, what has worked for you to reduce your stroke count per length? I'm at around 18-20 with a six-beat kick. I don't feel I can reduce the count without adding an element of glide. thanks The biggest thing for me is working your underwaters. If you've got good lung capacity and a strong dolphin/flutter kick, you'll be able to pick up quite a bit of ground at speed under the surface. If I'm swimming at aerobic pace, I do 3-4 dolphin kicks off each wall and take 11-12 SPL. If I just flutter kick off the wall, I take 12-14 strokes, depending on how far I kick. All that said, it also depends on how strong you are in the water; more specifically, how strong your pull is. We've got one guy on the team (probably the strongest guy) who just thrashes the water when he swims, no matter the pace--he's at ~20 SPL at aerobic pace. I watched a video of him on one of our 200Y free relays, and his SPL was 18/24 with a relay start. He just spins through the water and doesn't really work his walls. He's a slightly faster sprinter than I am, so it works for him to at least some degree, but I personally think he needs to work more on catching the water. I went back and looked at videos of my freestyle races from the last year, 4x50 (two relays and two individuals) and 1x100. Here were my stroke counts: Spring Regular 50 free #1: 12/18 Fall regular 50 free #2: 13/17 (last event of the meet, so I didn't have as high a turnover as I wanted) Nationals Relay 50 free #1: 12/18 Fall Relay 50 free #2: 9/14 (I tried galloping and wasn't running at 100% speed, to boot) Fall 100 free: 12/14/14/16 (last event of the meet, so I was completely burned out and had no turnover) My underwaters on a relay are better than in the individual 50 free, but I've been working at increasing my turnover, so my SPL is about the same now as it was at Nats last year.

Apart from losing weight, what has worked for you to reduce your stroke count per length? I'm at around 18-20 with a six-beat kick. I don't feel I can reduce the count without adding an element of glide. thanks The biggest thing for me is working your underwaters. If you've got good lung capacity and a strong dolphin/flutter kick, you'll be able to pick up quite a bit of ground at speed under the surface. If I'm swimming at aerobic pace, I do 3-4 dolphin kicks off each wall and take 11-12 SPL. If I just flutter kick off the wall, I take 12-14 strokes, depending on how far I kick. All that said, it also depends on how strong you are in the water; more specifically, how strong your pull is. We've got one guy on the team (probably the strongest guy) who just thrashes the water when he swims, no matter the pace--he's at ~20 SPL at aerobic pace. I watched a video of him on one of our 200Y free relays, and his SPL was 18/24 with a relay start. He just spins through the water and doesn't really work his walls. He's a slightly faster sprinter than I am, so it works for him to at least some degree, but I personally think he needs to work more on catching the water. I went back and looked at videos of my freestyle races from the last year, 4x50 (two relays and two individuals) and 1x100. Here were my stroke counts: Spring Regular 50 free #1: 12/18 Fall regular 50 free #2: 13/17 (last event of the meet, so I didn't have as high a turnover as I wanted) Nationals Relay 50 free #1: 12/18 Fall Relay 50 free #2: 9/14 (I tried galloping and wasn't running at 100% speed, to boot) Fall 100 free: 12/14/14/16 (last event of the meet, so I was completely burned out and had no turnover) My underwaters on a relay are better than in the individual 50 free, but I've been working at increasing my turnover, so my SPL is about the same now as it was at Nats last year.