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SWOLF is an efficiency metric that can help swimmers improve technique and performance. Swolf on for how to use it for swimming success. Read on to learn how to use it for swimming success, swolf.

You may have heard swimmers talk about their SWOLF score but what is it and is it useful for swimmers? SWOLF is a combination of your stroke rate and the time you spend in the water to cover 25 metres or yards and is commonly used as a measurement of your swim efficiency. SWOLF is better than just counting strokes, as you can reduce strokes taken by sliding through the water more efficiently. When starting out with SWOLF, strive to reduce the number of strokes you take to finish one length or two by keeping the same pace. Get your FREE swimming workouts for triathletes book here. Your SWOLF is easy to calculate — you simply need to add together the number of strokes you take to swim a 25 metre or yard length of the pool with the time in seconds it takes you. For example, if you take 18 strokes counting both arms and it takes 29 seconds to swim a length, then your SWOLF score is

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SWOLF is a way to measure efficiency and encourage you to be a better swimmer. SWOLF sounds scary and like something that would stalk you in the dead of night as you walk home after a long session at the pool. SWOLF is a score that combines the number of strokes you take and the amount of time it takes you to swim a lap into a single figure. As with golf, a lower SWOLF number is considered good and is reflective of increased speed and efficiency in the water. While most swimmers focus solely on how long it takes for them to swim a lap, or a pair of laps, a SWOLF score gives you another metric with which to measure your swimming. Your SWOLF score takes two crucial numbers, one regarding your speed in the water and the other measuring your efficiency in the water to give you a holistic number that does a good job of reflecting how good of a swimmer you are. When you see elite swimmers in the water, they move with grace and precision, but they also take fewer strokes. This is because they are exceptionally efficient, maximizing every last stroke and kick in the water. By traveling across the pool with fewer strokes, they can swim longer and faster. SWOLF is a data metric designed to encourage you to think of both in terms of speed and efficiency. This is just the reality of expertise and mastery— the better you get, the harder it becomes to improve. But by adding stroke count and SWOLF scores to your training, you get a new metric to try and improve on. Swimmers, like any other athlete, need to be able to see objective improvement to stay motivated and focused during those long swim workouts at the pool. A sprint swimmer, for example, will generally have a higher SWOLF score during a 50m sprint compared to a distance swimmer.

Is a big number good or bad? In this case, the swolf score is computed over meter intervals, swolf. Notify of.

Here are all the answers. Your SWOLF is pretty simple to calculate — you simply need to add together the number of strokes you take to swim a 25m length of the pool with the time in seconds it takes you. You can do this yourself using a basic stop watch or pool clock and counting your strokes, or for ease, ask a friend to do it for you poolside. Many sports watches will do it for you though — in the example below, a Garmin Fenix was used to calculate SWOLF and averaged the score out across the swim based on stroke rate and m swim times. Like so much data, your SWOLF score is pretty useless unless you understand it and can use it to improve your swimming. Using your base starting score, play around with tweaking your swimming and working on technique improvements.

Apple, Fitbit and Samsung have joined the likes of Garmin, Suunto and Polar in dishing out fitness trackers and smartwatches that are built for swimming. These wearables can help you massively improve your swimming, but as with any piece of tech, you have to know how to use it to make the most of it. You get in the water, start tracking and both during and post-swim you try to work out exactly what all of that data means. Read this: Best smartwatches for swimming. We feel your pain. Which is why we're here to help. We've broken down some of the most common metrics used to measure swimming to tell you what they mean in easy-to-understand, jargon-free terms.

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Check out our tips for reading SWOLF analytics and learn how to improve your stroke efficiency to improve your score! Efficiency fixes this problem, so you can compare apples-to-apples in different pool lengths. For freestyle and backstroke, stroke count is calculated each time an arm pulls underwater. For breaststroke and butterfly, a stroke cycle is completed when both arms complete a pull together. As you can see in the 4 x 50s IM set below, each stroke carries a different pair of metrics. The highlighted repetition is the 50m butterfly. Looking at the graphs you can see this swimmer averaged s per 25yd of butterfly taking 10 strokes on the first length and 8 strokes on the second length. ST represents total Swimming Time.

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Swim tools are an easy way to improve technique and fitness in the pool. Juan Cena. Olivier Poirier-Leroy. Soon as back in the pool will make use of this. This article is an orphan , as no other articles link to it. Garmin v v smart watches. Or check out all our most popular swimming posts right now. He is an author, former national level swimmer, two-time Olympic Trials qualifier, and swim coach. A good drill to improve your pull are the sculling drills and fist drill. It is a swimming metric designed to help measure swimming efficiency.

SWOLF is an efficiency metric that can help swimmers improve technique and performance.

Toy with reducing stroke count and maintaining speed and find that balance between taking too many strokes and gassing out and hitting peak efficiency. If you want to find some easy exercises to do at home and improve core strength read our core strength training article with a 10 minute routine you can do from home. Tracking SWOLF can be done using your brain and memory or one of the many swim-tracking devices and wearables on the market. If you struggle with dragging your feet and a weak core we recommend using buoyancy shorts to help provide elevation. Apple conscious it wanted to keep up with Garmin for tracking swimming and competing for this market. Swimming with a very slow glide through the water using few strokes. When you see elite swimmers in the water, they move with grace and precision, but they also take fewer strokes. What number should I be aiming for? Your email address will not be published. One sneaky little trick swimmers will pull author included to shave a stroke or two off SWOLF scores is to extend their underwaters by adding a dolphin kick or two into the breakouts.