Have you logged what feels like THOUSANDS of hours in the pool, but never see your actual paces get any faster?

You're not alone. The swim is the discipline I hear the most confusion and frustration around, and it's not surprising: we are upright, bipedal creatures who extract oxygen from air. When we try to swim we become horizontal, quadripedal creatures who move in an environment that we cannot extract oxygen from (i.e. one that can kill us!).

Our primary subconscious goal while swimming isn't about going faster or being more efficient.

Our primary subconscious goal is not drowning.

That's a high-stakes situation, one in which it is difficult to truly focus on skill work. When was the last time you learned something while under significant stress? It doesn't work.

The answer is "deliberate practice," which our case study, Alex, performed with iron focus while she took 40 seconds off her threshold swim pace over the course of two years. That's almost ten-minutes in an Olympic-distance swim leg.

How'd she do it? That's the subject of this week's Infirmary episode, which you can listen to on Apple or Spotify, or watch on our YouTube Channel.

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When Alex came to swim camp the first time, she was, in Swim Smooth terms, a "Bambino," which means she was deeply uncomfortable in the water. That lack of comfort led to a series of stroke faults, which she tackled one after another through assiduous, deliberate practice:

✅️ Understand the finish line - what are you trying to accomplish?
✅️ Learn the individual parts that contribute to the final whole
✅️ Isolate those parts so you can focus on them one at a time
✅️ Incorporate that focused practice for a few minutes every time you perform your sport or activity
✅️ Engage with the practice in a real way, analyzing in real time if you are performing the skill correctly - try not to "just do drills" hoping that your dissociated mind will...absorb the lesson through osmosis.

Watch the video for month-by-month analysis of Alex's stroke and the drills we used to help her make this huge leap forward.

Do YOU want to make the same kind of improvements Alex did? If so, get in touch for a video swim analysis, and don't fret! Even if you don't live near me, you can find a Swim Smooth coach near you, or I can analyze your stroke remotely. Click below to learn more.