Counting strokes will be a great way to check how you’re doing.  By monitoring your strokes per length, you can avoid the problem of falling into bad habits by just going back and forth.

There are different ways to count your strokes.  If you use a wearable device, or in our app, you’re going to count “stroke cycles”.  This is because typically the wearable is on one wrist, so if you wear it on your left wrist, it’s only going to count the strokes on your wrist.  Here’s an example.

This swimmer initiates his first stroke with his left hand, so we’re going to pretend he has a wearable on his left wrist.  Let’s count how many times the left wrist enters the water.

ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX  

This means your wearable would give you SIX stroke cycles to any calculations.

Now, let’s watch the right hand.

ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE

So, which wrist you wear your wearable on can make a difference in your stroke calculations.

But now lets do it the old fashioned way, in which even an odd stroke count can be understood.  This is the same length, but now let’s count the “hand hits”.  Each time a hand enters the water, add a stroke.

ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN.

If you’re using our app to help calculate your stroke efficiency, if you have on a wearable, we allow you to adjust what would be 6 stroke cycles for this swim, to 5.5 which would mean 11 hand hits.

Now that you’ve got an understanding of how to get your stroke count, how can it help you swim better?

Variations in stroke count will require changes in what you do.  Let’s watch our swimmer starting at 11 hand hits.  He’s going to do through a few lengths in which he’ll focus on taking strokes away or using fewer strokes.

The 2nd length he moves from 11 hand hits to 10 hand hits.  While he makes subtle changes in the stroke count, he has to do multiple things to impact this change.  He’ll start to add a bit more kick, maybe slow the stroke rate down, extend a bit longer.

Going from 10 hand hits to 9 hand hits, he’s going to have to add more kick, extend a bit longer, rotate more… just be an overall better balance.

Finally, moving from 9 hand hits to 8, now it gets challenging.  He adds a bit of length to his pushoff, adds a little more kick.  Reaches full extension.

This is the sharpening of the stroke, and whatever combination of things you focus on to take strokes away will help create a better overall stroke.

The goal is NOT to take as few strokes as possible, the goal of stroke counting is to check to see how you’re doing and if the way you’re swimming is productive.

If you start counting on the first length when you’re not tired, then check again in the middle of a practice, the difference may be eye-opening.  The goal will be to keep the stroke counts relatively close together no matter what you’re doing.

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Stroke counting