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Question:
Does taking less armstrokes mean you'll swim faster?

Answers:
Distance per stroke / efficiency
From: Edmund Gendreau

I have done a little thinking about the benefits of distance per stroke in freestyle swimming. I've put it on paper here and would like to get some feedback, and maybe some further information if anyone would like to tackle the subject. I do not profess to be an authority on any of this and will gladly accept others' input.

For the record:
My background is in swimming, having started at 13 years old and kept it up for the past 19 years. I've also picked up running along the way, and done some cycling and triathlons. I would classify my own freestyle arm stroke rate to be slightly below average :-).

When I started to get into cycling I wondered what cadence (i.e. crank revolutions per minute) was most efficient. The prevailing wisdom suggests that a cadence around 90 (say 85 to 100+) is considered optimal for maximum speed in a time trial on flat terrain. In cycling I heard a lot about the benefits of spinning (maintaining a high cadence, in the range described above) versus lugging (maintaining a lot lower cadence, as many beginners do). A higher cadence is more efficient because the leg muscles, heart and lungs, can maintain a higher work output without fatiguing. When cyclists lug, their leg muscles fatigue more quickly. I think there is a rough analogy here to being able to lift a heavy weight a few times before fatigue, and lifting a lighter weight many, many times.

Recently I've been running more and joined a track club. There I was exposed to the idea that there is also an optimal running cadence, and it's the same as in cycling! So 90 foot falls of each leg per minute is considered best for distance running. Again I assume the same justification is in order. One could lope along with a much greater stride length, and therefore lower cadence, but it would be inefficient because fatigue would set in sooner. For what it's worth, I also remember watching some marathon on TV and one of the commentators said that many top marathon runners are "world class shufflers". This again suggests that a relatively high cadence is good for distance running.

In swimming I've never heard any emphasis on a proper arm cadence. I've only heard emphasis on maximizing distance per stroke. However, after years of watching swimming, I have the impression that there are swimmers with relatively higher arm cadences who do very well, especially in distance swimming. I can think of quite a few races where I've seen a swimmer with a shorter freestyle stoke (i.e. higher cadence) beat a swimmer with a longer, lower cadence stroke. This can be very striking when you are looking at the high cadence swimmer chugging along with a stroke that looks a bit choppy, and he is beating a low cadence swimmer who is slicing through the water with a picture-perfect high distance per stroke freestyle.

So I have wondered if there is something to this. Is it possible that a great distance per stroke can amount to "lugging"? At what point does the swimming cadence become low enough so that efficiency is decreased and fatigue sets in sooner?

Now one could say that my observation is meaningless. I have presented no hard data, only my own impression. Isn't it possible that I just happen to have seen some highly skilled "chuggers" beat some less adept swimmers with good distance per stroke? My answer.... sure it's possible.

To try to bring some data to the table, and to make this post more interesting, I did some stroke counting while watching the video of the world championships held in 1994. The coverage of this meet here in the US showed views of the whole pool, as well as close-ups of individual swimmers. So when I was getting the stroke count of swimmer A, and they did a close-up of swimmer B, I had to resort to some rhythmic counting. It is possible that the stroke counts I present here are +/- one arm stroke, but I've done the best I could.

When counting the number of freestyle arm strokes per length, I am counting each motion of the hand from the position fully extended above the head to the position at the hip. Therefore, I count the first two strokes from the push off from the wall. This means that the first over water arm recovery represents the beginning of the third stroke. (Many people tend to count the first over water recovery as the beginning of the first stroke). Also, all stroke counts presented are for non-dive, 50m lengths. The names included below are those that I could count best based on the coverage. Also, keep in mind that the column labelled "approx. arm strokes/min." tabulates a number that is the total number of stokes (left and right arm combined) divided by time, whereas in running and biking cadence is defined as the number of contractions of one leg (i.e. left or right only, not the sum of both) divided by time.

                        stroke    approx. arm
Men's 100m free:        count     strokes/min.           Cadence
                                  (@ 25.7 sec length)
Rainmundas Majolis       42        97.9                   48.9
Stephen Clark            41        95.5                   47.7
Gary Hall                38        88.5                   44.3
Alexander Popov          38        88.5                   44.3
Gustovo Borges           40        93.2                   46.6
Tommy Werner             48       111.8                   55.9
Jon Olsen                42        97.9                   48.9
**** Popov 1st (49.1), Hall 2nd (49.4), Borges 3rd (49.5), Olsen 4th (49.9), Werner 6th (50.0), Majolis 7th 50.2, clark 8th (50.2)

In this sprint those with the lowest stroke count did best, Hall and Popov

NOTE: unfortunately we didn't get to see the men's 200 free here in the US, probably because there was no world record and no one from US did well.

                        stroke    approx. arm
Men's 400m free:        count     strokes/min.           Cadence
                                  (@ 29.3 sec length)
Daniel Kowalski          41       83.9                   41.9
Kieren Perkins           41       83.9                   41.9
Antti Kasivo             34       69.5                   34.8
Danyon Loader            38       77.7                   38.9
Joerg hoffman            43       87.9                   44.0
Pier Maria Siciliano     47       96.1                   48.1
***** Kasivo wins the low cadence of the meet award!! Perkins 1st (3:43.8 wr), Kasivo 2nd (3:48.5), Loader 3rd (3:48.62), Kowalski 4th (3:50.0), Sicliano 5th (3:50.9), Hoffman 6th (3:51.2)

What can you say here, except that there seems to be more than one way to skin a cat. We have a cadence range from 34.8 to 48.1, a 38% difference!!!!

                        stroke    approx. arm
Women's 200m free:      count     strokes/min.           Cadence
                                  (@30.2 sec/length)
Claudia Poll            52        103.3                  51.6
Christina Teuscher      44         87.4                  43.7
Franziska van Almsick   41         81.5                  40.7
******* Van Almsick 1st (1:56.7 wr), Claudia Poll 3rd (1:57.61, only .1 sec off previous wr), C Teuscher 4th (2:00.18). Here is one of the most striking examples of a high stroke count swimmer doing very well, Claudia Poll.

On an aside... after watching this race several times in slow motion, it was interesting to notice that Van Almsick has virtually no glide after pushing off the wall. She begins her first arm stroke almost immediately, sooner than anyone else.

                        stroke    approx. arm
Women's 400m free:      count     strokes/min.           Cadence
                                  (@ 31.6 sec length)
Zhou GuanBin             51       96.8                   48.4
Hayley Lewis             51       96.8                   48.4
Claudia Poll             52       98.7                   49.4
Christina Teuscher       51       96.8                   48.4
*********** Tuescher 2nd (4:10.2), Claudia Poll 3rd (4:10.6), H Lewis 4th (4:11.3). In this race all the women are swimming with about the same stroke rate!! 

                        stroke    approx. arm
Women's 800m free:      count     strokes/min.           Cadence
                                  (@ 32.0 sec length)
Janet Evans             48         90                    45.0
Jana Henke              51         95.6                  47.8
Hayley Lewis            51         95.6                  47.8
Brooke Bennett          53         99.4                  49.7
********* Janet Evans 1st (8:29.8), H lewis 2nd (8:29.9), B Bennett 3rd (8:31.3), Jana Henke 4th (8:32.4).

Here I was very surprised to see that Janet Evans had the best distance per stroke. I'll have to check my 1988 Olympics tape to see if she has changed her distance per stroke significantly.

=========================================
We can see from the data above that some world class swimmers are succeeding with higher stroke rates (Claudia Poll, Tommy Werner, PM Siciliano). Since the prevailing wisdom suggests that maximizing distance per stroke is the best approach, these swimmers are probably doing this despite their coaches wishes to the contrary. Maybe there are not more swimmers succeeding with higher stroke rates because the prevailing wisdom is correct, but maybe it's because they are not taught to swim that way.

Obviously if one is to argue the advantages of a higher stroke rate, this must be done while maintaining an efficient, highly propulsive arm stroke. A high arm stroke rate with an inefficient stroke would be no more successful than a cyclist who spins a high cadence on a small gear (i.e. getting no distance per revolution), or than a runner who maintains a high foot cadence by taking little baby steps.

In closing, here are a few more thoughts. The ideal cadence in distance cycling and running has been pegged at 85 to 100. Above we see numbers for freestyle arm stroke in the range of 35 to 50, or about half. It might be that there is no good correlation between what the legs are doing in biking and running, and what the arms are doing in freestyle. However, here is one possible connection. Cyclists frequently use 170mm crank arms, therefore the circumference of the circle they are pedalling is:

         2*pi*r = 2 * [170mm / 25.4 mm/in.  ] * 3.14159 = 42 in.
In running the horizontal distance that the body moves while the foot is on the ground is probably about the same (anyone have data?). In swimming freestyle the distance my arm travels from entry to exit is about 67 inches (I'm about 6'1" tall). So if we take the ratio of the distance the runners/cyclists foot travels to the distance the swimmers hand travels times the runners/cyclists ideal cadence, we get 42"/67" * 90 = 56. Not a great correlation, but it brings it into the ballpark.

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