Theory

4 Essential things to improve your swimming:

#1: Increased volume
(three times a week 1 hour each) 
#2: Proper mechanics 
#3: Proper training plan
(most important)
#4: Having a coach 

3 Essential Aspects of Swimming to Work on:

#1: Tautness
#2: Alignment 
#3: Propulsion 

Tautness

It’s the ability to hold properly our bodies in the water. It’s about holding a proper pasture of your body in the water when all your weight is displace in the water. Don’t be a spaghetti stick. To develop it we do:

  • A lot of kicking. You need a snorkel and kicking board. Face in the water, hands are holding the board under, stabilize your upper body and kick for several laps. Don’t wobble, stabilize the upper body. 
  • Vertical kicking. Begin from 10-15 seconds and work your way up. 

Workout:

Warmup: 2500 (zone 3: 70% effort)
Main Set: 6x(50 zone 5: fast/uncontrollable followed by 100 zone 2: easy/recovery)

Alignment: “The channel”

Imagine the straight line going through your spine, your head and between your legs. The goal here is to keep this line straight while we swim. Look at your hand, watch it stay in the channel between center of your body and a shoulder line all the way through. The hand can’t go to the left or right, outside of the channel. If it does, your body gets miss aligned. 

Another thing to focus on is the position of your head. It has to stay absolutely stationary. It turns only when you take a breath. When you ride the bike and turn the head, you get misaligned and loose balance. Same occurs with swimming. 

Pull with buoy, ankle band and snorkel so the head stays stationary. Feel the fishtail. Engage your core. Point your toes. Take off the equipment and replicate it without. 

Workout:

Warmup:
500 Pull with snorkel, ankle strap and buoy (easy 60-70% effort )
5×50 Keep snorkel and strap on

Main set:
12×200 swim with 30 sec rest:
1: 4×200 (Easy Zone 2)
2: 4×200 (Medium Zone 3)
3: 4×200 (Fast Zone 4-5)

PROPULSION 

There are 2 phases in propulsion:

  1. Set up (or commonly called a “catch”)
  2. Propulsion 

In the set up phase a lot of athletes reaching straight upwards. Wrong! It slows you down. While you extend upwards you also extend downward. Thats important. Don’t try to create the “distance per stroke“, there is no benefit to extending upwards. It loads your shoulders and slows you down. 

The next thing you need to focus on in the set up phase is keeping your palm and forearm in a straight lane. Don’t twist or bend your wrist, it got to stay straight. As you move into propulsion phase your elbow starts to bend sideways and stays above the wrist. 
You need to create the tension in your hand and forearm. There will be not much of propulsion without tension. To create the tension you need to keep in your hand and forearm straight and sturdy. 
So you’re bending your elbow more and more as you move along the propulsion phase. You are holding onto the water with your wrist straight, now you focus on the direction on the pull phase. Keep it super simple: You literally pushing water straight back towards your feet. Always keep your finger tips pointed towards the bottom of the pool.
As you push the water towards your feet, you need to do it explosively. Your hand goes faster and faster as you push back, making the movement ballistic. Most people push the water at the very consistent but slow pace throughout the propulsion phase. Grip it and Rip it.