At the end of last year, I made an effort to mesh technology with swimming. In doing so, I wanted to find a way to manage our goal setting sheet, so it would be even easier to access, update and manage. In the same way, I wanted to do a better job of putting tangible numbers to our swimming efforts.
During one of the last few weeks, I took some measurements of the guys measuring reach and streamline height. This was done as a baseline gathering of data to establish some calculations to get per-25 stroke counts. Using this data, and the idea of managing goals, we now have a unique to our team tool to manage these data points ONLINE.
Each swimmer can register for an account (don’t worry, it’s only to match goals and the measurement statistics) and start working on filling out their goals for the upcoming year.
Measurables
The idea for measuring stroke rate was snagged from the post How Many Strokes Should you be Taking? on the US Masters Swimming website. In taking the measurements for reach and streamline height, a simple math formula is used to find the proper amount of strokes you’ll be taking each and every 25. Putting that together with the push-off distance (or distance underwater) we’ll take that distance off the pool length to get a more accurate count. However, this means that EVERY effort needs to meet that push-off distance.
How to measure
- Reach: Extend one arm above your head while standing against a wall (or lying on the ground) and have a friend mark where your fingers are on the wall/ground. Then hold the same arm at your side and have a friend mark the position on the wall/ground. The distance between the two marks is your reach.
- Streamline Height: Either standing or lying down in a tight streamline, measure fingertips to pointed toes. The total in inches is your streamline height.
- Push-off Distance: An estimate (in inches) of how far you’ll push off of every wall. A good starting point is 180″, or about 4.5 meters (the distance of the flags from the wall).
OK Greg, so what does this mean?
Once you have your measurables, drop those into the Goals Tool and it’ll spit out the stroke count. Then start establishing some time-based goals. Once you get done with that, you’ll be able to see additional statistics for each race. Let’s take an example:
| Reach | Streamline Height | Push-off Distance | Free/Back | Fly | Breast |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 60″ | 93″ | 180″ | 14 / 16 | 8 / 10 | 5 / 6 |
Using this information alone, gives us a goal to shoot for on every length, in every effort. But as stated, we’re also looking at GOALS, not just efficiency.
Tying Measurable Stats to Goals
When it came to putting these together, it was tough. However, thanks to some help from a fellow coach (Ryan Woodruff) I was able to come up with a more efficient way to establish various timings, and stroke rate calculations. So given the above data points we would be able to get some additional information to setup our race pace sets in the near future (beyond JUST splits).
| Event | Goal Time | Swim Time | Underwater Time | Turn Time | 80% SR | 100% SR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 50 FR SCY | 0:22.50 | 00:16.38 | 00:05.32 | 00:00.8 | 0.51 | 0.59 |
| 200 FR SCY | 1:59.00 | 01:32.12 | 00:21.28 | 00:05.6 | 0.72 | 0.82 |
As you can see from the table above (there are two other fields I have not discussed regarding turn and underwater ability) we can take the goal time, remove the underwater and turn times to get a “swim time” or the total amount of time you’ll be swimming, based on your perceived abilities and actual measurable statistics.
In the final 2 columns, you’ll get the stroke rate (matching a value in Mode 1 on the Tempo Trainers) for your stroke rate running between 80% and 100% efficiency.
Now when we train, we aren’t just dividing swim times. We’ll be looking at taking swims apart even further to better expand our abilities as a team.
