Building Technical Accountability Into Endurance Training

Courtesy: Andrew Sheaff

Successful endurance training is all about consistency. While physiological consistency is clearly important, technical consistency is critical as well. One of the biggest challenges coaches face is ensuring that their swimmers are performing their endurance training with excellent skills. As swimmers get tired, this becomes more and more difficult to achieve. Nothing is more frustrating than watching swimmers let their technique fall apart or swim sloppy despite constant reminders.

While endurance training clearly has a physiological impact, it also has a technical impact. Every stroke swimmers take is reinforcing their skills, for better or worse. The more swimmers train with poor skills, the more likely it is that they will race with poor skills. Endurance training with poor technical skills is not a recipe for long-term success, and if we want to help swimmers optimize their long-term development, we need strategies that help swimmers use effective skills as often as possible, especially while training hard.

In this article, I’m going to show you a simple strategy that is easy to implement and extremely practical. It’s a strategy that makes holding swimmers accountable to their skills a lot easier and a lot more effective, especially in large groups. The more accountability there is to technical skills in training, the more swimmers are going to improve.

The Power Of Stroke Counts

Let’s say you have a group of swimmers performing 15×100 Freestyle @1:20, and one of your swimmers is able to consistently hold 1:05 throughout the whole set. It’s a solid display of endurance and consistency. But what if I told you that this swimmer started out the set taking 13 strokes per 25 and ended the set taking 16 strokes per lap. Even though they were able to maintain their speed, there was a significant loss of technical efficiency. We may not know which skills fell apart, but we do know that something bad has happened from a technical perspective. While they may have successfully trained their physiology, they also trained themselves to swim with progressively worse skills. If this swimmer had maintained their stroke counts, they would have ensured that they maintained effective skills throughout the set.

The skills swimmers use will directly show up in their stroke counts. If they shorten their stroke, the stroke count will go up. If they lose their body position, their stroke count will go up. If they’re sloppy with their turns or holding their line, the stroke count will go up. If their breathing falls apart, the stroke count will go up. If they reduce the number of dolphin kicks they’re taking, the stroke count will go up. In contrast, if they stay on track with these skills, the stroke count will stay exactly the same.

The simplest way to build technical accountability into endurance training is by using stroke counts. In this case, the goal is NOT to take fewer strokes or to take as few strokes as possible. The goal is just to keep the stroke count the same throughout the set. If swimmers can maintain the same stroke count throughout the entire set, they will have maintained their technical efficiency. If swimmers start to struggle with their stroke counts, they’re going to get the feedback they need to double down on their skills. Which brings us to why stroke counts are so effective.

It’s All About Feedback

Swimmers learn skills based upon the quantity and quality of feedback they receive. Better feedback holds swimmers accountable to their skills, and helps them make the changes they need to make to improve. Stroke counts provide feedback that is relevant. They are a direct measure of efficiency and efficiency is a direct result of technical skill. If a swimmer’s stroke count is changing, they can be sure that something is changing technically. Every time a swimmer counts their strokes, they are getting direct information about how well they are executing their skills.

Stroke counts also provide feedback that is immediate. After each lap, swimmers get feedback about their performance. In the example above, after every lap, our swimmer would be receiving feedback that their stroke count was climbing. That would provide them with the opportunity to immediately refocus and adjust. Without that feedback, they may never realize that their skills are deteriorating.

Most powerful of all, stroke counts are objective. It’s black and white. The stroke count was 15 or it wasn’t 15. From a swimmer’s perspective, this provides crystal clear feedback. They know if they’re on track or if they need to change. From a coach’s perspective, it’s about having more effective conversations. Telling a swimmer that they’re dropping their elbow is a debatable opinion. Telling a swimmer that they took two more strokes is a concrete fact. It’s much easier to hold a swimmer accountable to their skills when dealing with facts versus opinions. There is nothing to argue about.

Once swimmers realize their stroke counts are off, now the learning begins. They have to figure out how to get back on track. And throughout that learning process, stroke counts continue to provide feedback as to whether their attempts at creating change have been successful or not. If they are, they know what they need to do to be successful. And if they’re not, they know they need to find a better solution.

Best of all, stroke count feedback comes from the swimmers themselves, not from us as coaches. That means each and every swimmer in the pool has access to the feedback they need to effectively execute their sets at all times. While we can certainly provide feedback as coaches, we only have two eyes and one mouth. We can’t see what every swimmer is doing at all times, and we can’t speak to all swimmers at the same time. Stroke counts can help us coach more effectively by helping swimmers learn to coach themselves. And when we do intervene, we can have much more productive conversations based upon concrete facts.

Implementation

Of course, if your swimmers haven’t been counting their strokes at all, start there. Take a couple of weeks to establish the habit. Just ask them what their stroke count is, and expect an answer. Don’t worry about the specific number for now. A little patience will pay off. Once swimmers are aware of their stroke counts, start asking for consistency. Again, don’t worry about the specific number. Just ask that swimmers stay consistent with whatever number they choose. The goal is to maintain their stroke count and skills throughout the set. You’ve now incorporated technical accountability into your training.

Once your swimmers are able to be consistent with their stroke counts during their endurance training, you can ask swimmers to hit specific stroke counts or work to lower their stroke counts. Or you can ask them to try to create more speed without changing their stroke counts. For instance, you could have swimmers performing descending efforts while keeping their stroke count the same. These are more advanced challenges that can further develop your swimmers’ abilities to create efficiency and speed under pressure.

Of course, implementing stroke count strategies isn’t limited to endurance training. These same ideas apply equally to speed work and race pace training. You can use them to help swimmers learn how to create and maintain stroke length at speed, which is exactly what they need to do in races.

Any time where you want swimmers to maintain technical accountability, stroke counts are a powerful tool. They provide relevant, immediate, and objective feedback which makes it easier for coaches and swimmers to recognize a loss of skill. And once that recognition occurs, they provide feedback about whether attempts to get those skills back on track have been effective.

ABOUT ANDREW SHEAFF

Andrew Sheaff has coached swimming for almost 20 years, including 6 years at the University of Virginia where he helped the Cavaliers win 3 NCAA team championships. He is the author of the book ‘A Constraints-Led Approach To Swim Coaching’, which identifies strategies for optimizing individual skill development in large group training environments. The book focuses on enhancing skills that directly improve performance and training those skills to reliably show up in races. He currently works as a consultant to coaches, clubs, and swimming organizations.