Counting your strokes is one of the most under-appreciated aspects of tracking your improvement and speed.
I’ve already discussed how to pay attention to and develop your speed, which is a critical aspect of improving your swimming.
If you know how fast you’re swimming, you’re going to be motivated to make adjustments if you believe you can be better, or continue to do what you’ve been doing if you’re happy with where you’re at.
However, there’s more to performance than speed alone.
Measuring your stroke counts provides you with information about HOW you’re swimming.
It’s a simple and effective measurement of how efficient you’re swimming.
Less strokes = more efficient and more strokes = less efficient.
Are you swimming more or less efficiently than before?
Is your efficiency changing within a repetition or within a workout? Is that good or bad?
How does your efficiency relate to your speed?
These are all questions you can answer when you know your stroke counts.
How should you start using stroke counts?
Find out here.
#1 Pay Attention
The first strategy is simple.
Just pay attention.
As the saying goes, what gets measured, gets managed.
By learning to pay attention, your stroke counts will naturally decrease and more importantly, they’ll get more consistent.
You don’t have to actively try to change anything.
Just start keeping track and develop the habit of counting your strokes for all of your swimming.
Even if you do nothing else, creating this habit will improve your swimming.
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