Alex Improved from 2:30/100 to 1:50 And You Can Too
Alex W. shows us just what deliberate practice looks like
by Chris Bagg
Alex W. in March 2024, left, and then in March 2026, right.
Out of all of the ways I help athletes get faster, more efficient, or both, improving at swimming remains the most frustrating for those athletes. Learning to swim as an adult can feel more like learning a language, or—gulp—learning to play golf. Swimming is highly technical AND requires confidence and relaxation at the same time. No wonder swimming frustrates so many athletes—so many things have to go right for any kind of improvement to happen that most athletes just give up and say “I’ll just survive the swim.”
That’s so unfortunate, because, as we’ve said before, triathlon is an energy cascade: you do not get back energy you spend from one discipline to the next. If you skip your swim training the swim will require a lot of energy because you aren’t fit, first of all, and secondly your unimproved stroke is likely wildly inefficient, which means you’re leaking energy in two ways.
That is not a good setup for the bike, and if you don’t have enough energy for the bike…you can see where this goes: you’ll struggle on the run.
Is it hopeless? You might be asking, and I would be a pretty bad coach if I agreed with you. No, of course not, it’s not hopeless, and today we’ll walk you through Alex W.’s swim improvement from March 2024 through to March of 2026, a two-year period during which she shaved 40 seconds from her threshold pace (also called Critical Swimming Speed or “CSS”).
March 2024
In this first video, there are several things I want to bring your attention to. First of all is that most of the elements of a swim stroke are happening in the right order and in the right place. There is nothing completely out of whack about Alex’s swimming at this point in her development, but it just seems to lack…oomph. Her body position is excellent, not displaying sinking legs; she doesn’t over-kick; she breathes to both sides.
But for someone who wants to perform, the stroke needs a little more zip and punch to it, without losing what we like about it. So what isn’t working in this first video?
Alex is very…polite with the water, gentle, even. She was, at this point in her development, what Swim Smooth calls a “Bambino.” What does it mean to be a “bambino?” Let’s turn to the excellent Swim Smooth Guru for an answer:
A very gentle swim stroke which lacks "oomph".
A rotary / windmill style of arm stroke which lacks catch and hold at the front end of the stroke.
The lack of purchase at the front means the lead hand tends to collapse easily offering little support whilst breathing. Bambinos often struggle with breathing for this reason.
Typically a wide and deep arm pull through, relying heavily on the shoulder muscle groups to pull them through the water.
Very limited body rotation and lifts head noticeably to breathe.
Alex displays all of these elements, but what I’d really like to draw your attention to are two primary faults:
Losing “front quadrant” of swim
Lifting head/looking at sky to breathe
What does proper “front quadrant” swimming mean? When swimming, we should always have one hand in front of our head, whether or not that hand is in the water. Why might that matter? You could ask, since what does it matter what our arms and hands are doing when they are out of the water? Front quadrant swimming is about timing, which is a crucial aspect of swimming properly. You’ll notice that when Alex goes to breathe her recovering arm (the one out of the water) doesn’t bring her hand past her head until the underwater hand is already behind her head. If you want a better illustration of this aspect, jump to 1:45 in the video and you’ll see this fault very clearly. Why is this a problem? The hand that is out of the water isn’t generating propulsion because, well…it’s out of the water. And the other hand has finished the pull phase of the stroke once it’s behind your head under water, so there are a few moments when…there isn’t any propulsion at all! Obviously that’s not good for speed, but it has other ramifications, too.
The thing that makes it possible to breathe while swimming is the existence of something called “the bow wave.” Without getting too into the weeds of hydrodynamics, when a body moves through the water consistently, with consistent power on the water, it makes a small pile of water right in front of the head. Then, right behind the head (or bow, if we were talking about a boat), the water actually drops below the waterline of the head or the boat. That depression in the water gives you a little pocket of air you can breathe into without lifting your head to the sky, as you see Alex doing. Some swimmers lift their head out of the water, which has the unintended consequence of dropping their hips behind them, which creates a LOT of drag. Alex doesn’t do that, but you can clearly see she needs to look directly at the ceiling in order to breathe without swallowing water.
If Alex can make more propulsion by fixing the lack of front quadrant swimming, she’ll make more of a bow wave. If she makes more bow wave, she’ll be able to breathe more easily and without looking up at the sky. Why is that a problem? Well, it slows down her stroke, because she has to wait to get her head back down to keep swimming. One of the reasons bambinos lack “oomph” is because their stroke rates are too low, and here is the smoking gun of Alex’s low stroke rate.
September 2024
Alex already looks hugely improved only six months later, a trait of her deliberate practice and dedication to improving. She’s fixed the front-quadrant problem, primarily through doing thousands of yards of the “6/1/6” drill, which helps return a swimmer’s stroke to proper timing, leaving the front hand out in front just a little longer. You can also see she isn’t looking up at the ceiling nearly as much, and the stroke just has a little bit more…zip to it!
So what needs work? If you watch from the top you’ll notice that Alex drifts in the direction of her breathing. Watch closely and you’ll see her body move back and forth above the centerline of the pool. Also to note: she’s now leaving that hand out there in front of her just a little too long. She’s overcorrected while fixing the front quadrant fault, which is totally normal about swimming. When we fix something we have a tendency to take it a little too far, and then we need to bring it back. During this session Alex and I worked on speeding up the stroke rate without losing the front quadrant. We also introduced the “Javelin” drill, which helps swimmers stay in a straight line even when they go to breathe.
October 2024
Yeah! We’re really cooking with gas, here, only just over a month later! Stroke rate has gone up and Alex has gotten rid of the pause at the front of the stroke. She drifts much less to either side when breathing, and things are really starting to happen for her. Rhythm is great, she’s not lifting her head, the front quadrant is still present. Excellent work.
OK, what needs work now? If you watch Alex from the side underwater or the front underwater, you’ll notice that when she breathes her hand stays very shallow during the pull phase of the stroke. That’s the portion of the stroke after you’ve “caught” the water out in front of you and are now “pulling” yourself through the water. While we don’t want our arms to be straight during the catch-and-pull (that creates another problem) we don’t want our elbow angle to be as acute as we see in Alex’s case while breathing. We want to aim for something between 100-120° of elbow bend/flexion when viewing the catch and pull from the front. Alex’s is less than 90°. Why is this a problem? When a joint is at the end of its range of motion, which in this case would be a straight arm OR an arm bent like Alex’s, the joint can’t express maximum force. Joints at the mid-range of motion can express maximum force, and in this case that mid-range is 100-120°.
We prescribed Alex the Doggy Paddle and Scull #2 drills to address this issue. Let’s see what a year did.
November 2025
I think Alex looks astonishing in this video. Go back and compare it to the first video, simply on the basis of rhythm and oomph. Alex tested her CSS as 1:52/100 at this camp, a HUGE drop from the 2:35/100 we saw when she first attended swim camp. There are few hiccups (she reaches far to the outside with that right arm), and if you jump to 1:33 in the video you’ll see she’s fixed the elbow flexion issue…sort of. The arm angle is correct, but now Alex is leaving her upper arms nearly at the surface of the water, the effect being the only part of her arm applying force to the water is her hand and forearm, instead of hand, forearm, AND upper arm. The goal, now, is to maintain that 100-120° arm angle but rotate the whole arm down, so the hand is deeper and the upper arm is also providing some propulsion.
March 2026
I love this swim stroke. Alex has become a “swinger” (ha ha). Her rhythm is vastly improved. Her body position is excellent. There are still a few little things: she’s holding her head too far below the surface of the water, and she’s still pulling too wide/shallow with that catch-and-pull. She’s reintroduced a little of the pause at the front of the stroke, but this is how swim development happens: two strokes forward, one back. But there is so much to like about this stroke: it’s a great, effective open-water stroke because of the high turnover and straight-arm recovery. There’s still work to be done, but the distance Alex has come in two years is nothing short of remarkable.
And how did she do it? Practice. Alex has been, I would say, the most dedicated athlete I’ve ever worked with on developing her swim stroke. She has checked in every few months to get her stroke analyzed again, and every time she takes the assigned drills and REALLY works on them. She asks excellent questions and is totally dedicated to her improvements, which, again, is what improving at swimming takes. You have to engage in deliberate practice, which is when you focus on one aspect of the skill you’re trying to develop at a time, master that aspect, and then move on to the next one, but without rushing or impatience. Alex has clearly engaged with the drills necessary to improve and, as her reward, she’s taken over 40 seconds off her swim CSS or threshold pace. To put that into perspective that will result in an almost ten minute improvement for an Olympic-distance triathlon.
And all she had to do was practice. Motivating, huh?